Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers: The Eye Behind the Lens 9780367362621, 9780367362638, 9780429344985

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 Maryse Alberti, ASC: Collateral Beauty, Creed, The Wrestler
Chapter 2 John Bailey, ASC: Ordinary People, In the Line of Fire, The Greatest
Chapter 3 Robert Elswit, ASC: There Will Be Blood, The Bourne Legacy, Salt
Chapter 4 Kirsten Johnson, ASC: Fahrenheit 9/11, Cameraperson, Trapped
Chapter 5 Kira Kelly, ASC: Queen Sugar, 13th, Self Made
Chapter 6 Ellen Kuras, ASC: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Blow, Bamboozled
Chapter 7 Edward Lachman, ASC: Dark Waters, Carol, Erin Brockovich
Chapter 8 Matthew Libatique, ASC: A Star Is Born, Black Swan, Venom
Chapter 9 John Lindley, ASC: Reservation Road, You’ve Got Mail, Pleasantville
Chapter 10 Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC: The Greatest Showman, Atonement, The Hours
Chapter 11 Reed Morano, ASC: The Handmaid’s Tale, I Think We’re Alone Now, The Godmother
Chapter 12 Polly Morgan, ASC, BSC: A Quiet Place II, Lucy in the Sky, Legion
Chapter 13 Rachel Morrison, ASC: Mudbound, Black Panther, Seberg
Chapter 14 Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC: The Irishman, Brokeback Mountain, The Wolf of Wall Street
Chapter 15 Cynthia Pusheck, ASC: CSI Miami, Good Girls Revolt, Brother and Sisters
Chapter 16 Harris Savides, ASC: Zodiac, American Gangster, Milk
Chapter 17 Nancy Schreiber, ASC: Mapplethorpe, Motherhood, The Nines
Chapter 18 John Seale, ASC, ACS: The Tourist, City of Angels, The English Patient
Chapter 19 Sandi Sissel, ASC, ACS: Master and Commander, Salaam Bombay, Mother Teresa
Chapter 20 Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC: Public Enemies, Red Dragon, Wonder Boys
Chapter 21 Salvatore Totino, ASC, AIC: Everest, The Da Vinci Code, Frost/Nixon
Chapter 22 Amy Vincent, ASC: Footloose, Eves Bayou, Hustle and Flow
Chapter 23 Mandy Walker, ASC, ACS: Mulan, Hidden Figures, Australia
Index

Citation preview

Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers

Packed with gems of wisdom from the current ‘masters of light’, this collection of conversations with twenty leading contemporary cinematographers provides invaluable insight into the art and craft of cinematography. Jacqueline Frost’s interviews provide unprecedented insight into the role as cinematographers discuss selecting projects, the conceptual and creative thinking that goes into devising a visual strategy, working with the script, collaborating with leading directors such as Martin Scorcese, Spike Lee, and Ava DuVernay, the impact of changing technology, and offer advice for aspiring cinematographers. Interviews include Maryse Alberti, John Bailey, Robert Elswit, Kirsten Johnson, Kira Kelly, Ellen Kuras, Edward Lachman, Matthew Libatique, John Lindley, Seamus McGarvey, Reed Morano, Polly Morgan, Rachel Morrison, Rodrigo Prieto, Cynthia Pusheck, Harris Savides, Nancy Schrieber, John Seale, Sandi Sissel, Dante Spinotti, Salvatore Totino, Amy Vincent and Mandy Walker. Filled with valuable information and advice for aspiring cinematographers, directors, and flmmakers, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the art and craft of cinematography. Jacqueline B. Frost has been an educator in flm production, cinematography and flm history for thirty years. She has continued to produce and photograph flms that have screened in flm festivals worldwide throughout her academic career. She is currently a Professor at California State University, Fullerton where she teaches Cinematography, Documentary production and the Language of Film. Frost is currently cinematographer and co-producer on a feature length documentary and she is the author of Cinematography for Directors.

Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers The Eye Behind the Lens

Jacqueline B. Frost

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Jacqueline B. Frost The right of Jacqueline B. Frost to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-36262-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-36263-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-34498-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Maryse Alberti, ASC: Collateral Beauty, Creed, The Wrestler

vii viii 1

2 John Bailey, ASC: Ordinary People, In the Line of Fire, The Greatest

15

3 Robert Elswit, ASC: There Will Be Blood, The Bourne Legacy, Salt

35

4 Kirsten Johnson, ASC: Fahrenheit 9/11, Cameraperson, Trapped

53

5 Kira Kelly, ASC: Queen Sugar, 13th, Self Made

71

6 Ellen Kuras, ASC: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Blow, Bamboozled

85

7 Edward Lachman, ASC: Dark Waters, Carol, Erin Brockovich

105

8 Matthew Libatique, ASC: A Star Is Born, Black Swan, Venom

125

9 John Lindley, ASC: Reservation Road, You’ve Got Mail, Pleasantville

145

10 Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC: The Greatest Showman, Atonement, The Hours

163

11 Reed Morano, ASC: The Handmaid’s Tale, I Think We’re Alone Now, The Godmother

179

vi

Contents

12 Polly Morgan, ASC, BSC: A Quiet Place II, Lucy in the Sky, Legion

197

13 Rachel Morrison, ASC: Mudbound, Black Panther, Seberg

215

14 Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC: The Irishman, Brokeback Mountain, The Wolf of Wall Street

231

15 Cynthia Pusheck, ASC: CSI Miami, Good Girls Revolt, Brother and Sisters

251

16 Harris Savides, ASC: Zodiac, American Gangster, Milk

271

17 Nancy Schreiber, ASC: Mapplethorpe, Motherhood, The Nines

289

18 John Seale, ASC, ACS: The Tourist, City of Angels, The English Patient

305

19 Sandi Sissel, ASC, ACS: Master and Commander, Salaam Bombay, Mother Teresa

323

20 Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC: Public Enemies, Red Dragon, Wonder Boys

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21 Salvatore Totino, ASC, AIC: Everest, The Da Vinci Code, Frost/Nixon

353

22 Amy Vincent, ASC: Footloose, Eves Bayou, Hustle and Flow

375

23 Mandy Walker, ASC, ACS: Mulan, Hidden Figures, Australia

391

Index

405

Acknowledgements

There is no way I could have created this book without the support of the cinematographers who agreed to speak with me! It was an absolute pleasure speaking with everyone. Thank you so much, Maryse Alberti, John Bailey, Robert Elswit, Kirsten Johnson, Kira Kelly, Ellen Kuras, Edward Lachman, Matthew Libatique, John Lindley, Seamus McGarvey, Polly Morgan, Reed Morano, Rachel Morrison, Rodrigo Prieto, Cynthia Pusheck, John Seale, Sandi Sissel, Dante Spinotti, Salvatore Totino, Amy Vincent and Mandy Walker. Thank you to Mick Hubris-Cherrier and Gustavo Mercado for encouraging me to go to Routledge to propose this book. Thank you to Sarah Pickles at Routledge for your understanding, patience and support while I slipped past my deadline. Last, I have to thank my family for enduring my absences while zooming and writing this book nonstop since January!!

Introduction

I love the light, color and magic of cinematography. So, of course I love speaking with cinematographers, which is why I wanted to create this book. My own background in fne arts, art history, photography and cinema is a common bond I found with each cinematographer I spoke with. The power of images to convey emotion and transport us to another time and place is a connection we shared. I began interviewing cinematographers in 2007 for my frst book, Cinematography for Directors; A Guide to Creative Collaboration. While listening and transcribing the interviews, it was like I was getting master sessions in cinematography. But for that particular book, I was only using quotes. The frst edition of Cinematography for Directors came out in 2009. But I continued to collect interviews with cinematographers whose work I admired and who would speak with me over the next few years, with an interview book in mind. All of those early interviews were conducted in person, either at the cinematographers’ homes or in coffee shops. I proposed the interview book to another publisher, and it was accepted, but my mother’s diagnosis of dementia and caretaking set me off track for a while. By the time I had pulled all the interviews together, many aspects of the industry had changed, especially with digital image capture replacing flm. I felt like I had a responsibility to share the voices of these cinematographers who had kindly taken the time to speak with me be heard. I began updating some of the existing interviews while continuing to gather new ones. I revisited all of the interviews in 2019 while I was working on the second edition of Cinematography for Directors. With a shift in the industry, more women cinematographers were becoming visible and working on bigger flms, so I was able to add more women’s voices into the mix. My intention was to create an equal balance of both female and male cinematographer voices, which I have not seen done before. I updated all of the existing interviews and set my sights on new cinematographers to speak with, primarily women. During the early months of 2020, I visited both Kirsten Johnson and Ed Lachman in person in New York City. But once the COVID quarantine came, I could no longer visit anyone. I began interviewing Directors of Photography

Introduction

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(DPs) online, starting with Cynthia Pusheck. I continued doing updates with Sandi Sissel, Dante Spinotti, Matty Libatique, Ellen Kuras, Nancy Schrieber, Sal Totino and Amy Vincent. I expanded my reach to include zoom interviews with Rachel Morrison, Mandy Walker, Polly Morgan, Maryse Alberti, Kira Kelly and Reed Morano. Zoom and the COVID quarantine enabled me to gather a collection of interviews that would have been extremely diffcult, if not impossible, to acquire at any other time, because in normal circumstances all of the DPs would have been busy working! With the earlier interviews more focused on the Director/DP relationship, I wanted to expand the conversation to include how each cinematographer got started on their paths toward the careers they are currently in. I also wanted to include how each DP manages career and family and provide advice for aspiring cinematographers. There are some technical issues discussed and numerous aesthetic ones. I have included DPs who primarily work in television or documentary as well as narrative feature flms. The common bond I found with this incredible group of artists I have spoken with is their love of telling stories, through images or still photography. They all have a driving passion that has brought them to a level of achievement that has opened numerous doors for their careers to fourish. Being a cinematographer is a lifestyle choice, it is not an easy job and involves long hours and lots of time away from home family. To be a cinematographer, you must have a passion to create the images that tell stories. I am very happy with the collection of interviews I have had the privilege to gather in this book that I hope you will fnd as insightful and educational as I have. Jacqui

Maryse Alberti, ASC

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Maryse Alberti, ASC

Maryse Alberti knew there was much more for her to explore in the world than her little village in the South of France had to offer. At a young age, she made the decision to come to New York where she worked as an au pair. Having a TV in her room for the frst time exposed her to numerous latenight classic flms, where she began her discovery of cinema. But the suburbs of New Rochelle could not hold her. She decided to explore the United States, where she traveled for three years with an instamatic camera in hand, documenting her adventures. She returned to New York, and a friend gave her a Nikon 35mm single-lens refex camera (SLR) camera. She learned the basics of photography and began shooting stills for the rock n’ roll scene and downtown arts. She was exposed to set life from shooting stills for X-rated movies where she met students from NYU and Columbia. Her networking lead her into the evolving independent flm scene. She worked on numerous flm sets in various crew positions before working her way to becoming the Assistant Camera on Vortex (1982), a punk-noir flm photographed by Steven Fierberg, ASC. Her unexpected big break came after she photographed the documentary H-2 Worker for Stephanie Black. The flm went to Sundance winning the Grand Jury Prize. In 1991, she was the cinematographer for Todd Haynes’ Poison, which also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. She photographed Crumb for Terry Zwigoff (1994) and she was the cinematographer for Todd Solondz’s Happiness (1998) and Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998). She received her frst Sundance Award in Cinematography for the documentary H-2 Worker (1990). She won her second Sundance Award in Cinematography for her work on the documentary Crumb (1995). She won The Independent Spirit Award in Cinematography for Velvet Goldmine (1999) and was nominated for her work on We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004) and took home the Independent Spirit Award again for The Wrestler in 2009. She was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy for her work on All Aboard Rosie’s Family Cruise (2006). Highlights of her narrative credits include working with Ron Howard on Hillbilly Elegy (2020), Chappaquiddick (2017), We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2014) and Stone (2010), John Curan on Collateral Beauty (2016), David Frankel

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on Creed (2015), Ryan Coogler on Freeheld (2015), Peter Sollett on The Visit (2015), M. Night Shyamalan on The Wrestler (2008), Darren Aronofsky on Tape (2001), and Richard Linklater on Joe Gould’s Secret (2000) with Stanly Tucci. In terms of her documentary work, she has an equally impressive list of credits including her frequent collaborations with Michael Apted on The Incident at Ogala (1992), Moving the Mountain (1994), Me and Isaac Newton (1999) and The Power of the Game (2007) and with Alex Gibney on Eron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), Gonzo (2008), Carsen Jack and the United States of Money (2010), Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010), Dear Governor Cuomo (2012), We Steal Secrets (2013) and Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown (2014). She photographed Love, Marilyn (2012) and A Good Job: Stories of the FDNY (2014) with Liz Garbus and West of Memphis (2012) with Amy Berg and worked with many others. Maryse continues to create an impressive body of work in both narrative feature flms and in documentary flms. She has also worked in television and has photographed many commercials. She shows no signs of slowing down and is one of the pioneering female cinematographers to successfully manage her career while also raising her son. In speaking with her it was obvious that her enthusiasm for living, for travel and adventure are what drives and motivates her to continue to perfect her craft.

What made you decide to leave France and move to New York? I come from the deep South of France, and as a kid, I used to look at the hitchhikers on the side of the road and wonder where they were going. I wanted to get out of my little town and America, at that point, was the furthest away that I could think of. England was too close; Australia was not even part of my consciousness. It was the beginning of the 1970s, and I had discovered Jimi Hendrix, who for me, was like an alien god, because there were no Black people in my little town. I loved Hendrix’s music, although I didn’t really understand the lyrics. I decided that I would go to America to meet Jimi Hendrix. But really, I just wanted to get out of my little village. I convinced my parents, who were in the process of separating, to send me as an au pair to New York. I frst arrived in New Rochelle, but I didn’t stay very long. I took care of three kids, and thank god I didn’t kill anybody, because they put me in charge of a seven-year-old, four-year-old and a two-year-old, and I was only 19!

How did you become interested in working in flm? In New Rochelle, I had a little blue television in my room and there was a TV in the kitchen. To me there were TVs everywhere because I didn’t grow

Maryse Alberti, ASC

3

up with a TV. My grandmother was the frst one to have a TV on the block, I was probably 12 at the time, and once a week, people on the block would go to her house to watch Au theater Ce soir, (To the Theater Tonight), which was the reporting of a play. I only went to the movies twice before I left for the States; the frst movie I saw was The Duel by Steven Spielberg. I didn’t know who Steven Spielberg was of course, but it blew my mind. I haven’t seen it since, but it’s in my brain forever. It’s a story about this guy who is driving his car across country and there’s a truck behind him, a truck that passes him, then he passes the truck, and then it’s a duel between him and the truck. You see him, but you never see the driver of the truck. It was amazing, just that experience. Then, right before I came to the states, I took a plane to Paris to stay with a distant cousin and she took me to see Howard and Maude in the theater. I thought that was an amazing story. So when I came to New Rochelle, I would watch The Late Show movies at night. Black and white movies. I really fell in love with movies, but I never ever thought, that I could make them. I didn’t really understand how people were making them. You know what I mean? It is like my uncles asking me now, “What do you do?” I say, “Well, it’s like what you see on TV. Someone is there on the camera. That’s what I do.” But it’s still not very clear. I never really planned to become a cinematographer, but all of these things in my life brought me here.

How did you start working in New York City? When I left New Rochelle, I came to New York City. I had a boyfriend who introduced me to this woman, and I moved in and took care of her little girl and it was great. New York was great. I stayed there for a year and then I decided I wanted to take off and go see the big United States. I traveled for three years, North on 95 and back South with a stop in the Virgin Islands. I took pictures as a tourist and I kind of liked that. I worked in theaters. I did a lot of things to survive, but there was a comfort in photography, I always liked it. When I came back to New York, a boyfriend gave me his Nikon camera. So, I started to take a lot of pictures. I worked for the New York Rocker magazine which was kind of the bastard child of Rolling Stone. The New York Rocker died, but I still have a lot of pictures of Iggy Pop and Wendy Williams. I did a lot of the clubs, My Kansas City and The Mud Club and The Ramon. But I had to work in a restaurant too, because taking pictures was fun, but getting paid was a whole other story. I met this guy who was a neighbor, and he gave me a Super-8mm camera, so then I discovered motion! I made little movies with my friends, the girls on the bike, in the woods. But this guy, he was a director of photography (DP) and encouraged me; he said I had a good eye. Then I got a 16mm camera and I went back to France because my mother was getting remarried. I made a little movie about that part of France. My mother was kind of a character and the

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whole thing about France and the church. It’s a short but was actually quite good.

So, you were getting your own self-taught training, frst in photography, then with Super 8 and 16mm flm, making your own movies. How did you start shooting flms for others? Stephanie Black, who is a documentary flmmaker, had seen my little flm and connected to it. She was starting a movie called H2-Workers about the Jamaican farm workers, who worked in slave camp in Florida. She asked me to shoot it, whatever that meant, so I went with her. The frst week we borrowed a camera and we were kind of crazy; we got arrested because we were trespassing, we walked into these huge barracks full of 500 Jamaican workers who were wondering what we were doing there. But Stephanie was amazing. She made the flm, and it went to Sundance, so I went to Sundance, not really knowing what Sundance was at the time, but I was invited, and I knew I could ski. At the awards ceremony, the frst award was cinematography, and I heard my name and I totally freaked out. The movie won best cinematography and best documentary, which was amazing.

This movie is really what got your career as a cinematographer going right? Yes, I did a good job on my frst documentary. Next thing, I’m on the map. It was quite extraordinary. Stephanie Black remains one of my friends to this day. Then I connected with Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon, who had this company, and I shot a short flm for Todd, that was a fction flm, so a different approach. Then Todd did a little flm, Dottie Gets Spanked which was fun, followed by Poison which I did with him. Poison was a really interesting flm, and it got a lot of attention, because there was one section of the flm where there were gay men in jail, and the flm had been partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). I think a religious, right-wing group ended up protesting it, so the flm got press and was talked about, and I was associated with that. So again, I got on the map. I maintained a collaboration with Todd, but I didn’t do Safe because I was pregnant. But then I did do Velvet Goldmine with him.

You got into the New York indie scene at a very interesting time, and you got started with documentary. Now you’re doing these big-budget, Hollywood studio flms. Are there any sacrifces you feel you have had to make along the way? I have a son and I quickly realized that when you do a movie, you are out of life for at least three months, sometimes four. When I did Velvet Goldmine, I was able to keep going because I had a partner who made room for me. Then

Maryse Alberti, ASC

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we took turns. I was asked to shoot Boys Don’t Cry and American Psycho, but it was my time to be home, so I couldn’t do them. But I do have a great relationship with my son. There is no regret. I did ten documentaries with Alex Gibney and we still talk about working together. I’ve been so lucky to have worked with him. I love the guy and we’ve had some amazing adventures. So, I have done a lot of documentary work. When I was doing them, I might go away for two or three weeks. So, it worked out and Scott, my son’s dad, stayed home at the beginning. When Marley was a little bit older, he started to work in television in New York. So, he was always home while I was roaming the world. But we found a balance, we gave each other the time to go out into the world and do our work and then be home to take care of our son. But it was not always easy. I saw a lot of women who were in the business, who had a husband with a regular job, and he couldn’t leave because then he loses a job. I was lucky because Scott is a sound man. So, he could not take work and still go back to work, it was good to have that kind of partnership where you could do that. Also, understanding the hours, if I said that I’d be home by 9:00 p.m. but oops, the day goes longer. For a while, before Marley was born, we worked on documentaries together a lot. Then when my son went to college, it was like, “Okay, here I go.”

What was your experience in documentary like? When I started to work with Alex Gibney or with Michael Apted, I did the whole flm, so you brought your crew. Now, there’s more of a tendency that if you go somewhere you get a local crew. Then the cameras changed, forever. I shot with my little Aaton which would allow me to sit and wait in my corner until they forgot I was there. But then, the world of digital came, so I did a lot of movies with the Varicam, but still on the shoulder with my eye in the viewfnder, I’m old school. I always liked that connection with the camera. Then the Canon 6300 came aboard. Canon really pushed that camera, but it was like a box. I started not to like the digital cameras. My last documentary adventure with Alex Gibney was when he was doing a series for Netfix, he said, “look, I’m going to Australia in the Northern Territory to spend time with the Martu Tribe, going kangaroo and iguana hunting. You want to come?” Of course, I want to come. So, I went there, and it was amazing. I went kangaroo hunting which great story, we slept in a little tent with scorpions coming in the morning. So, I have to say, I truly miss the adventure of documentary. I miss going into those worlds. I spent a week with the Dalai Lama in his compound, in Dharamshala walking with him on my arm.

That’s amazing. When am I going to do that again? Probably never. I miss the crazy things I’ve done for documentary. Although every time I did a doc, I would think, “Okay, now I’m going to go fnd a movie, so I can make sunshine when it’s raining

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outside. We have control.” But I have to say, right now I don’t miss the shooting. I have been so lucky to work on great docs, to have amazing adventures in every corner of the world. I’ve spent time with Gorbachev, the King of Spain, Lance Armstrong. I did the Tour de France from the inside, in a car. I feel really lucky. But now the challenge is still in narrative movies, with every movie I have learned something, I’m challenged with something. That’s what I want in life. A challenge and to keep on learning.

Yes, it is an ongoing learning process. But were there any obstacles that you faced along the way of your career that derailed you? Yes, I went through that. At the beginning, some guys, not all, but some men like if I would ask the gaffer, “What kind of tool do you like to use with that?” Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. I got a lot of, “don’t worry little lady, I’ll take care of it.” The frst movie I did, The Zebrahead, a small studio movie, I always remember the producer asking me, are you going to be able to take care of the big lights? And part of me went, “Is he really asking me that? Should I be sarcastic?” How do I answer that? And I said, “Well, actually I don’t touch the big lights. I just have big men pick them up and I tell them where to put them.” Everybody cracked a smile and went on. At the beginning, a couple of times, I had to go to the bathroom and have a good cry. It’s funny when the “Me Too Movement” came along, I was saying, “Oh, I never really experienced that.” But in fact, I really did. There was a commercial director who I like, and he was good. I did a lot of work with him. But he was always making sexual jokes. In front of everybody, even me, he was telling jokes with a lot of sexual innuendos. Then he started to push me a little bit. We walk, a little push. Okay, whoa, whoa. Then one day he tripped me on purpose and laughed. Then I lost it. I was like, “What the fuck?” Really loud. I could be hurt. What is that about? One of the producers told me it was about his power. So, I didn’t want to work with him again. But once in a great while, there is still a frst Artistic Director (AD) who talks to me in a way that makes me think, “Would he talk to me like that if I was a six foot guy, with a bigger name than me?” No, he would not. But I have to say that 99.8% of crews now are respectful of women DPs. Ron Howard was kind of surprised, because I’m kind of short. I’m fve, four. I’m not big. But I run a crew, mostly male, and they listen to me and respect me. So, I think now we are in such a better place for young women. I think for women DPs, it’s easier now but for women directors, I’m not so sure.

You have worked with very interesting directors. Can you talk a little bit about your recent experience with Ron Howard? Such a nice guy, love him, had some great laughs with him. I enjoyed working with Ron because he’s very much a collaborator. He’s well prepared, he

Maryse Alberti, ASC

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comes on the set holding his clipboard with all of his notes. We had worked a lot in prep, so it was a great experience, one of the best as well as being a lot of fun. Plus, we were working only ten-hour days, which was a change, so I wasn’t tired. That movie was such a great experience, and it was a really good script. I love telling a story that matters with fabulous actors like Amy Adams and Glenn Close, wow.

How do you like to collaborate with the director? What attributes draw you to want to work with someone? What I want is for the director to be the captain of the ship. I want the director to be prepared, to be respectful of me, of my crew. Ideally, it’s great when a director is also a collaborator. I want a director to really know how to do their job. I loved working with Ryan Coogler on Creed, he’s so smart and such a good collaborator. We were a good team. It was a great experience that I got to shoot that flm. I’ve done a couple of movies with John Curran, who I would do a movie with any time because I really like working with him. Once, quite a long time ago. I quit a flm within the frst ten days of preproduction. Because I felt, “Whoa, this director, this producer, I don’t think I want to spend four months with them. That’s for sure.” The movie turned out to be a disaster anyway.

Some directors are very into their storyboards and others are more spontaneous, how do you like to work? Todd Haynes makes beautiful little storyboards; he gave me some really great images to work from. Darren (Aronofsky) did not use storyboards on The Wrestler, which I think it was a very specifc adventure for me. But there was an idea that we stuck to. It was more of a fuid way to follow Mickey, but Darren was there to hold Mickey in the boundaries sometimes. Ron (Howard) told me he doesn’t do storyboards, but we do spend time together looking at the script, taking notes, and discussing ideas. In the morning, he comes to the set to talk about key moments that he wants to get. Ron always shoots with two cameras, which was a great learning experience for me. I have resisted shooting with two cameras for a long time. But I totally embraced it. We do a lot of coverage and fnd things that were not on the list, or things that were not in my head. In advance, we talk about specifc moods. When I frst talked to Ron on the phone, there were three time periods in the flm. I frst told him, one handheld, one on the Steadicam, the other on dollies; then, we fne-tuned that approach. With colors, I work with the production designer and we came up with a more saturated look. So, I showed Ron a lot of tests.

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Maryse Alberti, ASC

Do you have a specifc way you like to prepare for a flm? I read the script, a few times. Then read whatever books or references the director is giving me. I always fnd my own references as well. I like to spend time in bookstores, looking at books from whatever time period the story takes place in. I also like to look at photography books. For Ron’s flm, I clicked on one image that was through the foliage of a naked young boy. I connected very much with that image in one part of the script. So, I told Ron, look at this image and let’s do that for this scene. He said, okay, so I worked with the production designer who brought in trees and foliage. That’s the beauty of doing a big budget movie. You can bring trees and foliage! I like to immerse myself in the story, in the time period. Then I think it’s important to spend a lot of time with the director, for different reasons. Because it’s their artwork, it’s their flm, and they are the author, you have to respect that. So, when shit happens on the set, and it does happen, you want to be a team so you can fnd solutions. It’s important to feel comfortable with the director and not be intimidated. Because we are all making this movie together!

What kind of projects are you attracted to? What themes speak to you? I’m attracted to edgy things. If you look at Happiness, it’s so weird. I had an agent at the time who told me, “Don’t do this movie.” I said, “Why not? I want to do this movie.” The agent said, “Are you joking? It’s about pedophilia.” I said, “Okay, but I don’t think the movie is supporting this.” The agent said, “Don’t do this movie.” But I just said, “No, I want to do it.” So, I did, and the movie is great. Not for everybody. I think my son saw it just a couple of years ago and he’s 26 now. He saw it and said, “Mom, that was a weird movie.” So, I read the script, sometimes I know right away if it’s boring or not for me. But I’ve always gone with my frst impression of the script. I know some cinematographers go with the director. That clicked in with me at this point in my career, I want to go with the director who I connect with, but I’ve always focused on the script. Like The Wrestler, it was a good script, but not really a fantastic script. But I was interested in working with Darren Aronofsky, of course. What made the flm was Mickey Rourke. Darren always wanted him for the role, but the studio didn’t want him. So, Darren went back to the budget to cut it down so he could get him, and my rate was cut in half, but I stayed on. It was about the flmmaking. I think Darren had this idea of always following the characters, always those very long takes. He came with the idea of one lens and I tested different lenses, and we stayed with it. We committed

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to it. That made the flm with Mickey Rourke, who really became The Wrestler.

Have you made any choices that turned out not to be the best for you? Any regrets? I think I’ve missed a few, maybe one good one that I said no to and after it came out, I was like, “Wow, what did I miss?” But in general, I’ve had no regrets. I’ve made a few mistakes. Because every movie, especially now that I’m in the realm of bigger budget, not huge but $35 to 45, you can hire really good crews, people with great experience. And you learn from those people and they make you be better. For me to go back now to a $5 million budget with a crew who is in the process of learning, like we all had to do, working with limited tools, limited time, I feel I’ve done that. It’s not just about my rate. But I want to work in a structure where I can be the best I can be. You have access to new tools, lighting with LEDs. For me it has been an evolution from documentaries to indies to bigger budget movies. But hopefully I’m going to keep on fnding those good movies with bigger budgets and content that you can feel good about.

What if you were offered a big budget Marvel movie of a comic book type of flm? I was offered a series like that. I read the frst three scripts and I was going to make a lot of money and I would be in Atlanta, which I love. But I said, “I can’t do that.” I still have to have some kind of passion to fnd ideas and energy. I can do it for two weeks on commercials. I’ve sold my soul to the company store. But for four months? I know people who do one for the bank and one for you. I read the frst three scripts and I just passed.

For flms that you’ve done, they haven’t had too many visual effects. You’re not shooting a lot of green screen, are you? There was an article about the way movies might be done more in stages. The technology has been kind of amazing where you can create a whole environment with LED panels. Like Parasite, which I love. The whole second story of the house outside was blue screen. None of the street was down the street. There’s just a little piece of the street, the rest is blue screen, because they didn’t fnd the right location. The whole environment, where they go down the stairs and go into the basement where the husband is, is virtual. It was really interesting to see that. Blue screen and green screen are not something that I like to do because I prefer to light and to deal with the world. I’m sure that comes from my documentary background, but that

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might be something that we are going to be doing more of in the very near future.

What makes you decide on a format? Do you decide that on your own or with a director? Usually with the director, some let you decide, which is not always my favorite. I prefer to have a collaborator, someone who has strong ideas and a visual sense. For the format, we talk about what is the story? I have more of an affnity with the long width angle, 2.35. But it would be interesting to work in 1.33. This is not something that I would want to do, but if the director felt really strongly, then I would embrace that challenge to work in the square. But I’m more attracted in general, even in my artwork, to a longer rectangle.

Do you do artwork? Or you’re talking about what you’re attracted to? I’ve always done artwork, less in the last few years. Photography that I’ve shown in galleries. Always with multiple images. I’m not sure if it’s really great, but it is fun to do. I use my iPhone a lot. I also have a Sony camera. I did the safari on my own where I spent a week in Maasai territory. I went to Cambodia with a smaller camera and then I did a trip with my son. We went to Zhangjiajie Park in China, the park that inspired Avatar. It was amazing. I decided on that trip not to take the camera, because then we were going to Barakai and I wanted just a little backpack, to travel light.That’s why I shot everything with the iPhone, which was great until you want to blow it up.A little bit, but not too much. I hiked in the Sahara for ten days and I just brought the little Lumix camera. It was great. It was in my pocket. I took amazing pictures. That was not a photo trip, it was an adventure trip, so it was the right choice.

How did you feel about the shift to shooting digitally? You mentioned it having to let go of your Aaton. I’m not a purist. When we did The Wrestler, Darren and I talked about shooting in S16mm, and I think that was the right choice. For me to go back to flm now, it will have to be special, like a road movie. But not just to go back to flm for the sake of flm. Once in a while, I see a movie and all I was seeing was the grain crawling up the wall. If I was doing Lawrence of Arabia, I might go to flm. But I like the digital world. I like also the communication with the director. There’s no more “Trust me, it’s not too dark,” or “Trust me, it’s not too bright.” Here it is. I like that and I’m happy with the image. The world of digital is great. The images can be beautiful.

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I still think it’s good for flm students to learn flm, because you learn lighting better with flm, you learn contrast.

Do you shoot more tests when you are shooting digitally than you did with flm? I do shoot more tests in digital, because in digital you have to test the cameras. When in flm, the Arri versus the Panavision versus Movie cam, that was kind of a choice. But in digital, the camera matters for the picture you’re going to get. For example, with the Sony, Venice, because Ron’s flm is Netfix, it had to be 4K. I could not choose the Alexa, which is ridiculous. They let you use any shit camera you want, as long as it’s 4K, but not the Alexa because it’s 3.2K. But now ARRIFLEX is making a new LF ALEXA that will be like 8K. But it was too big because we were doing a lot of handheld.

It’s interesting they wouldn’t let you use ALEXA. It seems to be the camera of choice by a lot of cinematographers. Yes. It’s beautiful. I mean, if you look at the way it captures skin tone. It’s really a beautiful camera.

There are many younger women cinematographers working today who are on set, pregnant, can you talk about your experiences? Being pregnant is not a disease. You can work and make clear decisions while being pregnant, maybe you can’t carry a heavy camera. But I think now that the door is open, it will stay open and that’s fne. I remember a long time ago when I was pregnant, 27 years ago. I was shooting a commercial with Michael Apted. We were in a conference room with all these guys I was meeting for the frst time. People used to mistake my name as a man’s, Maurice. So, I was wearing overalls and I was clearly pregnant. First, they say, “Oh, she’s a woman! This is a woman cinematographer.” Then they said, “Whoa she is really pregnant.” And Michael says with his dry British humor, “Well, let’s all get to work before my cinematographer gives birth on the table.” But then it went fne. But each one of us has to make choices. I do think there is more pressure on women. Men historically, traditionally, in most cultures, have been the ones going to work and the women stay home and take care of the kids. It might be also baked in our DNA. You want to take care of the babies. But then it’s actually the choice of every woman and their partner. When do you go back to work? How much time do you spend away from your family? You have to fnd what works for you.

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What happened for me was, that I thought I was going to give birth and give that baby to my husband and go back to work. I gave birth and it totally blew my mind the love that I felt for my son, and I didn’t want to go back to work. The frst year I barely worked, a little bit, but not much. I do think, you can have it all. There’s 24 hours in a day and you have to decide how you want to spend that time. You have to make your own choices.

Do you have any advice to share with aspiring cinematographers regarding the balance of work and home life? Our business is very long hours. When you’re working, you have your phone on in case of emergency. But when you’re on the flm set, that’s where you are. It’s kind of a Buddhist attitude, which I’m a student of. You are there. You’re working. When you are home with your kids, that’s where you are. When you are home, don’t spend your time on the phone with the producer. That time at home is for your family. I really tried to do that and it has worked. Sometimes I made the choices not to work, not to take the project because it was fun to be home, or I felt like I needed to be home. Find a way that works best for you and your partner. But your kids are only going to be two years old once, or fve years old once and you don’t want to miss those moments. I always remember Bob Richardson, who I admire as a cinematographer, had written an article for American Cinematographer. He was on a flm set in Morocco and they had to flm until Christmas and then he went home just for two days and then went back to work, and I was really touched when he said, “I love making movies, but it is at a cost. My daughter is eight years old and I think I basically only spent three years with her.” So, you have to decide. My son is one of the best two people in my life. I love to travel with him and he is a friend of mine. I have no regrets. My career might be in a different place, but my career where it is now is good, and I have a great relationship with my son.

Do you have any advice for young cinematographers starting out? At the beginning, shoot a lot because at some point you have to choose carefully because you can do a great job on an okay movie. But no one is going to know you. But if you do a good job on a great movie, that’s it, you’re on the map. I was thinking about something Glenn Close said at the end of the flm I just shot with Ron (The Hillbilly Elegy). It was the last day and a wrap and everybody’s hugging, she said she just wants to be with a nice group of people she has fun with. I like that. I want to be with a nice group of people I have fun with on a project that I can feel proud of.

John Bailey, ASC

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John Bailey, ASC

John Bailey selects a flm based on his instincts, the script and the director. He is drawn to character-driven stories. He has a great admiration for the written word. He has frequently been attracted to family dramas and romantic comedies, although he has also stepped into the action, suspense and horror genres. John began his career as an assistant and quickly worked his way up to becoming a cinematographer shooting numerous Academy Award-winning flms. There is a naturalistic quality to his lighting style that has inspired numerous cinematographers working today. John has worked with an impressive list of directors including Robert Redford, Paul Schrader, Lawrence Kasdan, John Schlesinger, Stanley Jaffe, Norman Mailer, Robert Benton, James L. Brooks, Michael Apted, Callie Khorui, Donald Petrie, Ken Kwapis, John Krasinski, Phil Alden Robinson, Shana Feste and others. Despite his acclaim and experience, he also enjoys cultivating new relationships with young, often frst-time writer/directors. His credits are vast, beginning in the early 1970s, but he seems to have really hit his stride in the 1980s starting with the Academy Award-winning flm Ordinary People, which was followed by American Gigolo, Honky Tonk Freeway, Cat People, That Championship Season, Without a Trace, Racing with the Moon, Mishima, Crossroads, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Light of Day, Swimming to Cambodia, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, Vibes and Accidental Tourist. In the 1990s, he shot Hollywood Mavericks, My Blue Heaven, A Brief History of Time, Groundhog Day, In the Line of Fire, Extreme Measures, As Good As It Gets, Living Out Loud, The Out of Towners, Forever Mine and For Love of the Game. In the 2000s, he began with the documentary Michael Jordon to the Max and followed with Antitrust, Nsync: Bigger than Life, The Anniversary Party, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, Digital Babylon, Searching for Michael Cimino, Incident at Loch Ness, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Must Love Dogs, The Producer, The Architect, License to Wed, Mad Money, Over her Dead Body, The Greatest, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and He’s Just Not That Into You. From 2010 to 2020, he photographed When In Rome, Ramona and Beezus, Country Strong, Big Miracle, The Way, Way Back, A.C.O.D, Snake and Mongoose,

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The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, The Forger, A Walk in the Woods, Burn Your Maps, An Actor Prepares, Phil and 10 Tricks. John has been happily married to the esteemed flm editor Carol Littleton since 1972. As a long-time fan of his work such as Ordinary People and The Big Chill, both of which I had written papers about in flm school, I felt like a privileged student listening to a Professor Emeritus discussing the numerous flms he photographed as I interviewed him.

What made you want to be a cinematographer? I went to USC when they frst started the graduate program, I think it was 1965. Gradually, I found my way behind the camera when I realized that the language of flm was the image. So, along with my classmate Caleb Deschanel, I began to concentrate more on cinematography. Everyone else wanted to direct so we ended up shooting a lot of flms. The cinematography teacher was a wonderful documentary, newsy kind of guy named Gene Peterson. Lighting was not his forte, but he loved camera and he got me very excited about it. I apprenticed as I went up through the ranks of cinematography. I got into the union in 1969 and crewed on small 16mm educational flms as a dolly grip. I worked for an educational company that was contracted to do work for the BBC whenever they came to town. They interviewed Hollywood flmmakers and celebrities, so I was actually holding the microphone for interviews with John Ford, George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne and Henry Fonda. It was kind of amazing because even at that time they were all legendary. I remember sitting at the feet of John Ford holding a shotgun microphone. The BBC interviewer was a real Oxbridge kind of guy and you could tell that Ford hated him. Ford had one eye with a patch over it and he was giving this interviewer monosyllabic answers and being very curmudgeonly. The interviewer continued to hoist himself on his own petard by getting more Oxbridge and pretentious; when fnally Ford stopped listening and looked down at me with his one eye as I was holding a microphone and said, “young man what is that thing on your face?” I replied, Mr. Ford, I’m growing a mustache. He said, “Don’t.” (laughs). But what sealed my fate as a cinematographer occurred one afternoon at the Regent Theater in Westwood. I saw a flm called The Conformist, which absolutely knocked me out. It was not just the cinematography by Vittorio Storaro, but the music, the editing, the movement of the camera, the lighting, the production design and the way that the whole sense of European politics and culture was subsumed into this intimate story of a man losing his soul. I’d seen a lot of French New Wave flms as well as Fellini and Antonioni, but there was something about that flm (The Conformist) and its absolute, complete and perfect blending of all the elements that go into a flm. I sat there and thought, I’m going to watch this again. Right before the flm started playing the second time, I phoned Jim Dickson, who was a very eminent commercial cameraman at the time, and I said, “Jimmy, I’m here in this theater in Westwood and I’ve

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just seen the most amazing flm you’ve got to come down and see it.” And he said, “John I’m just getting ready to have dinner.” I said, “Eat fast and come down and see it. I’ll wait for you and we’ll see the last show.” I went back in and watched it a second time. When I came out of the theater, he was waiting for me and I went back in and watched it a third time with him! That day changed my life. A few years later, I fnally met Vittorio Storaro when he came to Hollywood and subsequently, we became good friends. Although I never worked with Bertolucci, I did work with the production designer of The Conformist, Nando Scarfotti. I ended up working on four flms with him. So, The Conformist was the turning point that made me decide to devote my life to cinematography.

As a cinematographer what is it that attracts you to a project creatively? I know everybody says this, but it’s absolutely true, it’s all about the script. I don’t do action flms, science fction or special effects movies. I abhor flms that deal with what I consider to be gratuitous violence. So, that leaves you with character and story, which is sort of the bedrock of what all drama is about in theater. I read a screenplay the frst time only for the content. I deliberately try not to think about it at all visually. I see if there is a character or a couple of characters that hook me into the story. I look for compelling characters and a sense of momentum and urgency in the work. I’m highly attracted to the issues, problems and turmoil of the nuclear family in flms like Ordinary People, The Accidental Tourist, Nobody’s Fool or The Greatest. Beyond that, any kind of relationship story attracts me. I’ve done some flms with very strange relationships, if you think of a flm like Cat People, which I did with Paul Schrader, it’s about a brother and sister, so you could say it’s a family drama but it’s a weird one. Or The Anniversary Party, which is about a group of friends that are close like family or The Big Chill is another one, in fact my wife, Carol (Littleton) and I refer to The Anniversary Party as “The Little Chill.”

What attributes do you like a director to possess? I’m very attracted to a frst-time director that by defnition is the author of the script and has a clear vision into the material because they have created it. For me, that’s the most compelling thing. I don’t expect anything more of a frst-time director than an understanding of the screenplay, the characters, the development, the intertwining of and evolution of the relationships and fnally, how it resolves itself. There have been a couple of times when I’ve worked with frst-time directors who were also producers such as Stanley Jaffee or Mark Turtletaub. Robert Redford did not write the screenplay for Ordinary People but he defnitely had a clear vision of it. There are times when the frst-time director

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may not be the writer of the script but does have some experiential fulcrum to be able to articulate his vision of the material. For me, Robert Redford was the quintessential example of that. This is a man who worked very carefully with Alvin Sargent the screenwriter in developing Ordinary People. Every day of the shoot he had a focused intensity and clarity of what he wanted. It was almost breathtaking at times. It was the closest I’ve ever felt that a director was almost living the script as we were doing it. I never had a chance to talk to Bob about it, but I feel like there were elements in that story that converged or refracted off of elements of his own personal story. Ordinary People seems to be in an odd way the closest thing I have ever done that is timeless. When I do events at flm schools, invariably someone will say that Ordinary People is what made them interested in flm or it’s a flm that has been the most meaningful or in the case of Shana Feste, The Greatest, the screenplay parallels a lot of the elements of Ordinary People because it’s about dealing with a crisis in the family over the death of a son. The particulars are different, the resolution is different, but Shana was very clear when I frst met with her and my ears perked up when she said, “I just want you to know that Ordinary People is one of my favorite flms, it’s been the most infuential flm I’ve seen in terms of writing the screenplay for The Greatest.” I’ve had all kinds of people tell me that that Ordinary People spoke to them. For me even, it’s a flm that I continue to reference for myself.

I think Ordinary People is the perfect orchestration of classical direction where Redford gets amazing performances from the actors and the cinematography subtly underscores it. Like those wide shots that just slowly and gently push in, add to that the production design that is so muted; it’s just a perfect combination of all of the elements working together. That became very clear to me, especially after I did American Gigolo, which was all about style. But Richard Gere’s character was about veneer, so it was about the superfcial qualities of the lifestyle. The story of the flm is the discovery through the crisis of his soul and getting beyond that. Paul Schrader and I decided we needed to make a flm that had high style in it. Then to follow up a stylized flm with the challenges of Ordinary People, which was very intimate and takes place mainly in interiors. There are scenes in the house and the psychiatrist’s offce and there isn’t much more in the movie. It was very important for me to fnd a style that did not intrude or try to establish its own persona, yet underscored the drama of the flm, as a contributing element. There were things that Redford and I discussed that subtly gave a visual design and progression to the flm. This was only my third flm as a cinematographer, but that flm became a template for how I would approach flms from then on. That’s why I keep referencing it, not in any obvious way in terms of technique or style, but in terms of process.

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Once you’ve read a script a couple of times and decide that you want to do it, how would you prepare for the flm? There have been a few flms where I’ve done what I think Storaro does on almost every picture. I’ve written a three or four-page outline regarding the stylistic approach with references to one or two scenes. Much of that comes out of rehearsals if you have the opportunity to have rehearsals with the actors in the physical space where you are going to be shooting. Then it’s all real, you’ve got real people in a real space and you can think about the reality of it and not some abstract notion of wouldn’t it be cool if we did this? That’s the progression I do in terms of looking at the script and I always carefully read over the next day’s work so I go in knowing what the location of the set is going to look like. Usually, I make some notes, a rough or general shot outline that I write on a piece of paper and put in my pocket. I may use it as a reference, but I don’t show it to the director. Since most of the flms that I do are so actor oriented it’s a futile gesture to make up a shot list because you don’t know how you are going to shoot the scene until you stage it. Then you have an idea based on the architecture of the space, but you can’t know exactly unless you want to treat the actors like pieces of furniture. Some actors really need that, so it can be helpful. Ken Kwapis has an instinctive sense of knowing when an actor is going to be more comfortable and more expansive by having a guideline of what to do. I like to have a game plan of my own before the actor’s positions are marked on the foor. But it’s a delicate situation, because in an ideal world the blocking is the director’s domain. As a cinematographer, the greatest challenges and opportunities for me have nothing to do with what people think a cinematographer does; the lighting, the movement of the camera, the composition. It’s really about how to defne and interpret that dialog with the director so that it is both collaboration and a realization of the director’s vision. That’s always a very tricky thing because as a result of the French New Wave, which my generation was greatly infuenced by, we developed this myth that the director by defnition has a vision.

What you’re saying is that if the director does have a vision, it’s easier to interpret into cinematic language? Yes, assuming that the director is also verbal. Even though my business is creating images. I came to flm school as a graduate student with an undergraduate major in literature. The written word and the spoken word are paramount to me. That’s why most of the movies I do are dialog-driven flms.

What would make you want to pass on a project? I have done both an action and horror flm and in both of those experiences I thought I could work with the director and supersede the limitations of the

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genre. Well I couldn’t, and he couldn’t either. It was very frustrating, and I found myself in situations that I never wanted to be in where I ended up saying “I fnd this revolting.” It’s not that I have antipathy towards any genre. Cat People was by defnition a horror flm, but it was a very sophisticated one. You could say In the Line of Fire is an action flm, but it’s a thinking man’s action flm because it’s really about the metaphysical duel between a man who has an insistent and unquenchable life force even though his embers are burning low and a man who is a total nihilist. I like all kinds of genres in principle. But I will certainly not do a flm that is gratuitously violent especially if it involves violence towards women or children. Many years ago, I wrote an article about this in the DGA magazine; this was about the time that Natural Born Killers came out. There was a whole raft of movies that were coming out as well as the early generations of very sophisticated and very violent video games. After Columbine, there was a huge internal dialog within the flm industry about violence in movies. Also, the government started to get in on the act and there were a lot of very eminent flmmakers, producers and directors who said, “We just refect the condition of the society; we don’t contribute to its debasement.” Which I felt was an incredibly subversive and mendacious position to take given the whole notion of what Columbine was about and how it so clearly tracked back to identifying with violence in a couple of movies. I’ve always been very concerned about that. Even though Carol and I don’t have children, I feel a global kind of responsibility to not be a part of the flmmaking world that puts violent images out there for impressionable minds or people who are mentally unstable or compromised. I don’t want to be part of a flm that creates a seductive fantasy of harming people. Especially women. My agents don’t even send me stuff like that. I don’t ask them to flter out a whole lot. But (Wayne and Pete my wonderful agents) would never send me anything that they think I would fnd offensive.

You have worked with an interesting group of directors, Lawrence Kasdan, Ken Kwapis, Paul Schrader, Robert Redford, do you fnd that each one approaches their preparation for a flm differently? There are directors I’ve worked with who will storyboard almost the entire flm. But one of the things I’ve found is that a lot of times those storyboards will actually give them a vision that they don’t develop out of the script. These are directors who are not as word oriented. I don’t mean this as a value judgment, but they are more visual, so they will take the script and deconstruct the scene and either work with a storyboard artist or sketch themselves to break it up into visual elements that they can then atomize, then create a nucleus. That’s just how they create their vision, they don’t do it directly from the words. That’s fne, we all have our different ways of working and I feel that

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part of my job is to be fexible enough to accommodate the vision or nonvision of whatever the particular comfort zone of the director is. Some directors like to prepare very carefully. If a scene requires the coordination of moving vehicles, stunts, special effects or green screen, it needs to be storyboarded because so many departments have to be brought in to coordinate. But those are the only scenes that I feel compelled to have storyboards for. The whole issue of storyboarding is very interesting. I fnd them of very limited use, but I did a flm with Sam Rami, the Kevin Costner baseball flm For Love of the Game and Sam storyboarded huge sections of that flm. Sam actually had two storyboard artists working sometimes together and sometimes on completely separate storyboards and he would then take elements that he liked from both storyboard artists and have what he called a “storyboard bake off.” I think he still does that, works with two storyboard artists who know each other and know going into the project that they will be working in opposition to each other; but that’s the way Sam works and it’s essential to his style. I’ve also done entire flms without a single storyboard. We didn’t storyboard anything on The Greatest. I don’t think we storyboarded anything on Ordinary People. The only thing I remember is Mr. Redford drew a picture of the lanes of a bowling alley on a paper napkin when he was trying to explain a shot to me. I had that napkin for a long time and eventually it disappeared, and I don’t know what happened to it (laughs). But he could draw what he wanted to; we just did not do a lot of storyboards. He may remember differently than me, but I don’t remember storyboards. For example, the opening sequence in Ordinary People with the montage of the fall seasons was not even a scripted sequence. What I have found is that every director I have ever worked with is absolutely different. Their ways of working and personalities are different. For me, that’s one of the great things about being a cinematographer, I get to be uniquely involved in the best part of production, the shooting and also experience the personalities and collaborative visions of a wide range of personalities. My sense is that most directors could never be cinematographers. I am not making a value judgment, because most of them do not have the personality type where they can be like a chameleon. Part of what it takes to be a signature director, an auteur, is a strong personal vision and ego. It’s not that cinematographers don’t have egos, but our ego has to be worked within the collaboration of other people’s egos.

The opening sequence of Ordinary People is brilliant when you realize the serene lake you are looking at is the cause of the tragedy. It’s a classic montage establishing sequence that shows the audience this beautiful town where horrible things shouldn’t happen. I was back in Lake Forrest for preproduction in early October right as the leaves were starting to turn, and I said to Bob, “Why don’t I just go out with

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Jimmy Glennon, the camera operator and shoot some of these things, just steal them because they are beautiful shots and maybe you can use them somehow to bridge sequences or something like that.” He and Jeff Kanew (the editor) created the title sequence out of those shots and it’s a beautiful introduction to the flm; but it was not scripted.

Have you ever worked with a director who brings you photographs, postcards, paintings or pictures of paintings as visual references to represent the look of a flm? Or have you used any of these things to communicate with a director? There are certain painters who are real touchstones for cinematographers; Rembrandt, Hopper, Vermeer, those are the three big ones. Caravaggio for Storaro, for Nestor Alemendros, it was George De La Tour. One of the key painters who has always been important for me is Mark Rothko, because I love those colors on a set. A lot of what we see other than the actors’ faces are the walls of interiors, so what do the walls look like? Mark Rothko was preeminent, nobody had the ability to create a sense of depth on a fat canvas through just color as he did and the work was laborious; it was layer upon layer and then the scraping, it was agonizing. But his colors and textures are some of the most exciting I’ve ever seen in painting. Some directors have brought me books of paintings or some photographs, but not very many. More likely it tends to come from the production designer who may already have presented them to the director in terms of a color palette or the use of space, especially if you are building sets. There have been a number of flms where I’ve shown directors and production designers paintings that I thought were very important. There are twentieth -century European modernist photographers, Bauhaus oriented, Germans and Hungarians whose sense of composition was a very strong element in their photographs. They have always been infuential to me because I consider the composition of a shot as having the same weight as the lighting or image size. This is why I love the anamorphic aspect ratio so much because you have so much more compositional area to evaluate.

Do you prefer the anamorphic format to Super 35mm? I like anamorphic over Super 35mm for a couple of reasons. One is that there is a great history and tradition to anamorphic that existed for decades before Super 35mm came along. It’s a flm format where you can take the negative and contact print it with another piece of flm and make a real release print. Super 35 uses the full frame, including the soundtrack area, so you can’t get a print directly from the negative. I love anamorphic because there’s no waste in the frame. Like with 16mm, you use the entire vertical frame, so you have 40% more information in that frame than you do in a 2:40 aspect ratio in Super

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35mm. I like a very highly resolved image. This is the reason I don’t like to do DIs (digital intermediates). I love the anamorphic aspect ratio although it has not always been easy to work with because Panavision went through a period when they didn’t keep up with their technology on improving anamorphic systems. Panavision was an anamorphic camera system for a decade before they ever had spherical lenses. For the frst decade, if you shot Panavision you shot anamorphic. It began as an alternative to 20th Century Fox’s Cinemascope process. There was that kind of a history that was also very appealing to me, the history of anamorphic flm making; also there’s the fact that you photograph an image and you squeeze it together on the captured negative and then you un-squeeze it when you’re projecting it, it’s sort of wonderfully perverse in a way (laughs). But Panavision basically neglected the format for a decade while their energy went into developing a high defnition Sony camera, the “Panavised” Sony 900 that they did for George Lucas and the Star Wars Trilogy which I think was a terrible mistake. I started in on them through my good friend at Panavision, Phil Radin after In the Line of Fire to develop new anamorphic systems, especially a zoom that was fast and resolved enough that you could use it in interiors. The only viable anamorphic zoom lens that they had was a T4.5 lens and you couldn’t shoot at a 4.5 because it was so out of focus around the edges and nobody is going to light an interior set to a 6.3 T-stop. I started talking to them in 1994 and ten years later they fnally developed a short range anamorphic high speed lens for me, a 40–80-mm T2.8 which I used for the frst time on Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and then a couple years later I went back to them and said it would really be great if you could develop another lens more like a portrait telephoto lens and they were able to develop a 70–200-mm T3.5, which is a little slower but still viable. I have those two lenses and the frst time I used the 70–200-mm was on He’s Just Not That Into You. Now the lenses are going out often and it has revitalized the anamorphic aspect ratio and a lot of young cinematographers are getting very interested. Panavision built thirty-fve of the 40–80mms and they are rented all the time, they’re building the 70–200-mms, I think they have seven to ten of them now and along with that they have developed a new generation of prime lenses they call the G series. Anamorphic has suddenly become very hot. Which is great, I’m very happy. There are probably some flms that I would not feel the anamorphic aspect ratio would be the right one for, but there are very few. I’ve shot enough flms with it and I feel very comfortable with it.

Do you ever choose to shoot standard 1:85? I do, but it’s been a long time. I actually convinced Jim Brooks to shoot anamorphic for As Good As It Gets, but when I suggested it, he said I don’t know, I come out of TV, I’ve never done anamorphic and I said, “Well, The Accidental Tourist was the frst flm I did in anamorphic and it’s essentially a

24 John Bailey, ASC

three character drama and most of the scenes only involve two people.” I suggested we look at it together. I had a print sent over and we went into a projection room over at Sony and fve minutes into the screening he says, “John that’s not anamorphic it’s 1:85.” I said, “No it’s anamorphic,” and he insists it’s 1:85, so I call back to the projection booth to bring the side mats in to 1:85. So, the projectionist closed it in and cut off the sides of the picture and I said “Jim that’s 1:85.” “Oh really? Open up back up to anamorphic.” Then he agreed to do the flm in anamorphic. But a week before we started shooting, he changed his mind and said, “I don’t know, I’ve never used it, it’s a lot of space out there beyond the actors and I don’t know what to do with the space.” I said, “Well Jim, that’s my job I’ll fgure it out, I think it would keep the flm from being claustrophobic.” But he couldn’t wrap his mind around it, just couldn’t do it, so we shot it 1:85. I really appreciate this dilemma. There are many cinematographers who are ambivalent about shooting anamorphic. To me, that was one of my great lost discussions, because I really think As Good As It Gets would have looked better and would have had more breathing room to it if it had been in anamorphic.

Can you talk about your preference for formats? I did a short with the Genesis and two small features with the Sony 900. I also shot two features shooting with my little Panasonic DVX 100s, which have a one-third-inch chip, and for one of them we did a 35mm flm out from it. It’s not that I’m against any particular format, I’ve shot in Super 16mm, I’ve shot in Super 35mm. We did Silverado on Super 35mm before they called it Super 35mm. At the time it was called Super Techniscope, because of the old Techniscope two perf systems that the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns were done on. It was essentially a two perf spherical system blown up vertically to four perf anamorphic. My frst experience with it was the very frst industry flm I did as a camera assistant Two Lane Blacktop, Monty Hellman’s flm. We shot that in classic Techniscope. When John Alcott developed what he called Super Techniscope, opening up that soundtrack area, at that time it was all flm answer printing. I talked with Larry Kasdan about using it for Silverado because I wanted it to be a very American western. I said, “We’re going to be out there in Santa Fe, New Mexico shooting in the dead of winter, we may not always have much depth of feld and it would be a shame not to have expansive deep focus for a flm dealing with that kind of beautiful landscape. Super Techniscope would give it to us, and besides, it would be a great homage to Sergio Leone. That fnal shoot out at the end between Brian Dennehy and Kevin Kline is a homage to Leone’s great shoot outs at the end of The Good, Bad and the Ugly or For a Few Dollars More. I love anamorphic, it is my preferred format most of the time because I feel that even with intimate dramas it’s not claustrophobic, it provides a sense of space around the actors that allows the physical space they are in to also be alive. It also gives them the ability to move around the frame a lot more

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without having to pan the camera back and forth. Especially if you are dealing with a very stylized and controlled frame, you can hold the frame and let them move. There’s a very obscure flm which I think everybody who reads this book should try to fnd, very interesting black and white flm that Tony Richardson did in the mid 1960s called Mademoiselle with Jeanne Moreau from a Jean Genet story about a schoolteacher in a small village in provincial France. She’s a very disturbed character and she essentially tries to destroy the livelihood of the village, she poisons wells, she poisons cattle, she sets fre to the buildings, it’s very Jean Genet. I think David Watkins was the cinematographer. They started shooting the flm as a normal flm, anamorphic controlled pans, dollies and they were a week and a half or two weeks in and they realized they had not been moving the camera much because of the anamorphic controls. They decided to do the flm without any movement of the camera at all, so they went back and started over. When you look at this flm, which is in glorious black and white with very deep, rich lighting, there is not a single pan, tilt, dolly move or zoom in the flm. I have talked to people who have seen it and when I mention this, they are incredulous. For me as a cinematographer, I don’t know how anybody could watch more than ten minutes of this flm and not notice there is something very strongly stylistic going on. For me, that flm is one of the flms that truly illustrates how dynamic and yet static an anamorphic frame can be. How much movement you can have within the frame without actually moving the camera. So, that’s yet another reason why I love this format so much.

Do you think there is a preconceived look to lighting for particular genre flms? I don’t think you could light a romantic comedy to look like Touch of Evil, with either the focal length of the lenses or the low camera angles. Can you imagine shooting your leading lady in a romantic comedy like the opening shot of Touch of Evil where Orson Welles introduces the character Quinlan with that low wide angle close up when he steps out of the car (laughs). Romantic comedies do have a restricted lighting palette, so you can’t push it too much. How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days is within the limitations of what you can do with a romantic comedy. I don’t subscribe to the theory that just because it’s a romantic comedy it has to be lit fat and I don’t think most of How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days is lit fat. I try to light pretty much the way I would light a drama. The worst romantic comedies are the ones that are so high key and fltered that they look like fantasies. Even though Romantic comedies are sort of fantasies, I think that we like to believe that they work on the fringes of credible behavior and that it would be possible for all of us to fnd a partner in the real world that approximated the way romantic comedies tend to resolve themselves. That’s the kind of idea behind what I try to do in lighting romantic comedies. But do I love when I can sneak something in that pushes at the edge of the genre just a little bit.

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What about lighting based in realism? You have to be careful with realism because what you think of as realism could start to look very stylized. A key exponent of that is my good friend Roger Deakins who sometimes will actually light a scene very realistically, but it looks incredibly stylized because of the way flm captures it. It’s really kind of a stylistic thing he does where he’ll have somebody in a bedroom or on a sofa with a table lamp next to them and the lamp will be lit and it will be casting a little bit of light on the actor but basically lighting the wall behind and he shoots it in such a way that the actor sitting in front of the lamp is actually silhouetted. It’s a signature thing you see in a lot of his work where the actor will be three feet from the lamp and they are very dark but the wall is lit. Have you ever noticed that? It’s bold and beautiful.

Yes, there’s a scene like that in No Country for Old Men. He does it a lot, it’s in Doubt and it’s very realistic but he’s using the real practical light as a key. Of course, it’s not strong enough at that distance to give full exposure to the actor.There are things like that which can be lit very realistically but don’t look that way at all because of the way flm captures the light.

Can you talk about the difference between the use of a dolly and the use of Steadicam? I think the Steadicam has been tremendously overused. A lot of the time it’s used in such a way that it places a burden on the Steadicam operator to fnd a way to photograph the scene. A director and/or cinematographer who doesn’t want to or doesn’t seem able to really block a scene will have the actor’s kind of move around with incredible spontaneous freedom and just have the Steadicam operator move around and adjust to capture whatever happens. But this can be a very deliberate aesthetic too and can work very well when it’s more planned. For example, one way the Steadicam was used is in a way that seems nominally spontaneous but is highly controlled. If you look at the way Gus Van Sant uses the Steadicam in Elephant or in Gerry, which has these long, long shots of actors moving through the desert before they get lost and there’s this high energy and the Steadicam is just moving with them and around them. You would have to have a crew of ffty grips to lay that much dolly track. It’s beautiful but they look like dolly shots until they break the axis, and you realize it’s a Steadicam shot, beautifully done. Sometimes, it’s used for a bravura effect. That happened when it frst came out. You can tell when certain flms were made by the use of a new piece of equipment. When wide use of Steadicam came in during the late 70s through the mid 80s, there were flms that had the obligatory fve-minute Steadicam shot such as the opening shot of Bonfre of the Vanities, which is a bravura shot in a lot of ways.

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Do you think that it’s exploiting the use of the Steadicam? Yes, which every flmmaker has a right to do. Marty Scorsese did it in that scene in Goodfellas in the kitchen and it turned out to be really beautiful, it really worked as a whole expositional thing, it was dramatic. It’s a great tool, although I tend to use it sparingly and I don’t think it’s a substitute for a dolly. Most of the time when you come to the end of a Steadicam move, the operator can’t hold it absolutely steady on a static frame, so you have to cut out of it pretty quickly into conventional coverage. One of the things that can cause a disjunction for me is the fact that the Steadicam shot tends to be done on the wider lenses and then you cut into longer lenses for the coverage. Whereas if you were shooting it on a dolly, you would probably use a longer lens and the transition between the focal length of the dolly and the coverage would be less noticeable. It’s antithetical for what the Steadicam was created for, to use it with long lenses.

But the Steadicam can go where a dolly can’t. Yes exactly. There are a tremendous number of uses for it such as following people upstairs. We did it on Cat People, which was shot in 1983, people were using it then although it was pretty new at the time. But it’s not a substitute for a dolly, it’s just a great tool. Don’t get me wrong I do love Steadicam, but with anamorphic I tend to work on the dolly more and use the Steadicam only when it’s necessary. For example, on The Greatest we basically used the Steadicam for a scene when Pierce Brosnan throws Susan Sarandon, his wife, into the ocean and these rip tide breakers are pulling at them and we wanted the camera to be right in there with them as they are being tumbled about by the waves and the sand. Jim McCalkey is a very fne Steadicam operator from New York who shot the scene, and he was right out in there in the surf, I don’t know how he held his ground, but it was a beautiful shot. We didn’t have time to do much coverage; it was the end of the day and we essentially did the entire scene in one continuous shot but then jump cut it and broke it up in such a way that it had several cutting points but he got the entire shot in one take. This was good because the actors didn’t want to have to go back in the cold water.

Do you think that flm is going to remain a viable format to work in? The frst thing I think of is archival. Real longevity: is flm going to last, yes? Film will last if it is properly stored and taken care of, we know that. Especially if you do YCM1 separation masters, we know that we are talking about more than a century at least. If flm negative is improperly stored, especially color flm, it is subject to all kinds of problems, none of which I think are anywhere near as inevitable as the problems that will be facing us in the near future with

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the degradation and instability of digital materials. The studios, the producers, directors and I’m sorry to say a lot of my colleagues have got their heads in the sand regarding the problems that are facing us. The motion picture academy “Sci-Tech” committee did a 74-page paper called “The Digital Dilemma.” It’s all about the problems of archiving digital materials, especially digital intermediates as being the frontline version of the fnished flm. If they decide to go back in and cut that negative, how few flms will there be that have made enough box offce revenue that somebody would be willing to rescan the original negative when they discover the problems of lack of stability and degradation of digital masters? The Academy Committee has said that digital intermediate materials should be “migrated” to new formats every fve years. Because formats are changing all the time as we know from the history of video that within the last forty years many different formats have become obsolete. In audio, there were 8 track or open reel cassettes. But it’s worse on video materials because there have been so many different formats and the machines that can play them back have been lost, so the materials get lost, and if these are not migrated to the new formats every fve to seven years, they are going to be lost. But even more crucial as this report indicates is that they tend to start to get corrupted and disappear, like if you are watching a HDTV image and it starts to break up, you don’t get snow, it just breaks up in clumps. That is going to be happening to digital Intermediate masters very soon. Then you’ve lost what is your negative. Okay so if you’ve done a flm out negative, that’s fne because it becomes your new master, it’s like a dupe in a way, but most of the flms that have been done on DIs have been done at 2k resolution which means that your flm negative made from your digital intermediate has the resolution of 2k from the DI, when we know that original negative motion picture flm that has been properly shot with good lenses has at least 6k resolution. So now what you’ve done is created a flm negative that has less than half the resolution of your original principal photography and that’s the best thing you are going to have in the archive. I think it’s a huge problem. A lot of people have buried their heads in the sand about it because it’s so much fun to go into the digital suite and play around with the machines. Do a power window on the wall, brings face up that’s a little dark, or lighten the whole scene, change the color of the sky, intensify the clouds, all this stuff that we’ve been doing for a long time for home video mastering. It’s great, I love it, but a couple of things happen. One is that the price you are paying is that you don’t have a real flm negative anymore at full resolution. The other thing that’s happening and I notice it more and more is that people are falling in love with re-lighting and re-balancing their flm in the digital suite. The parallel I like to make is to certain actors who either can’t or have a hard time doing automated dialog replacement (ADR); they’ve created a performance that’s organic and in the moment when they were doing the scene and you ask them to go back six months later and loop and redo it. You can

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get away with lines on somebody’s back, but it is very hard to get the lighting to strike a second time. My own feeling is that this is happening to cinematography too. Cinematographers are going back, and they are overworking the images they have created, so they are all starting to look alike. I look at some of these skies, I look at the walls, and I see the same thing happening in scene after scene or sometimes in flm after flm. There is starting to be a cookie cutter look to these flms that are being done with DIs and also with all due respect to the great colorists who are working in these digital suites, they did not create the images, they are working in kind of a scientifc technical basis. With respect to whatever artist impulses they have, they didn’t create those images in a context, so the cinematographer is working in collaboration or trying to mediate with a person who is reworking their work supposedly under their infuence or guidelines, but it’s not the same thing. Every time I have been in a digital suite, and I have been with some very gifted people, I somehow feel that much more removed from having control of my work in a way that I don’t have when I’m doing a flm answer print with a color timer. Now maybe it’s because that’s the way I’ve done it for forty years, but I don’t think so, and people say, “oh that’s just because that’s the way you used to do it and you can’t get used to it.” I consider myself to be an open person who has no preconceived notion of any technology that comes into the business, but I am also very worried and wary that every piece of equipment and technology that I’ve seen since I was an assistant camera (AC) has a disproportionate effect for a short period of time. The problem with DIs is that they are not going to go away. All these people who have done this excessive work and created these 2k DIs and are doing all their flms on DIs are hoisting themselves on their own petard without even realizing the long-term consequences of it. It became very clear to me when Ken (Kwapis) and I started to answer print He’s Just Not That Into You how blind and oblivious the studios are. New Line promised, after extensive discussions with several of the executives about why we should do He’s Just Not That Into You anamorphic, it’s an ensemble piece, blah, blah, blah and since we’re shooting anamorphic and we’ll have a negative that has the capability of an 8–10k resolution in digital terms. Ken and I wanted to fnish the flm on flm (photochemically). They gave us permission. Cut to eight months later, we’re getting ready to cut the negative and the person who was head of post-production refused to let us do it and gave all kinds of reasons regarding some bogus lawsuit saying, “you have to have a DI it is now our policy.” I said, “But you promised” and the reply was “I don’t care that’s just not the way it is now.” Ken tried to prevail and talked to other people but essentially what happened on that is a flm that did not need it and for which we had not prepared for it at all, a flm whose only visual effect was a little green screen insert of a cell phone screen had to have a DI. This is an anamorphic flm, so we pleaded to at least be able to do a 4k DI but got nowhere. I

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shot an anamorphic flm with 8k of resolution and it was answer printed and released as a 2k DI. Executives in the DI suites have no inkling of the long-term consequences of this. Almost all of the movies now being released by the Hollywood studios and international flms are doing it now too. They are all being released off of digital intermediates. If those flms don’t earn a lot of money at the time of their release or if they are not stored properly or change hands as one studio sells its library to another, what will happen to the original camera negative? These DIs have to be stored under the most rigid temperature and humidity conditions or they start to fall apart very quickly. To properly archive, store and migrate the digital intermediate for maximum protection costs about $175,000.00 per year for a 4k DI. Now how long do you think they are going to pay for this stuff? The DIs are going to start to de-stabilize and then you are going to be left with a 2k negative from a video master and that is going to be the history of American flm from 2000 to whenever they decide to wake up.

That is completely frightening especially in the light of the proven stability of archiving flm negatives. This has become my mission, talking to young flmmakers and students. To tell them they don’t have to do a DI. I was very happy to go to Sundance with both The Greatest and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men which were both done for under $3 million and we did flm capture and flm fnishing, no DI. They had a budget of $250k on The Greatest for the DI and I said we’re not going to have a single digital effect or green screen shot in this movie, it’s like Ordinary People, why do you want to do a DI? And they said, “oh well isn’t that what everybody does now?” I told them you don’t need to do it, take that $250,000. And put it into the movie.

If the cost of a DI is about $250,000.00 what is the cost of completely photo chemically? About $60,000.00, ideally you would go through fewer answer prints with a DI, but if you have a really good photochemical timer, and they are disappearing, there are fewer and fewer of them, but with a really good photo chemical timer I have found that I can get an almost locked timed answer print on three or four prints at the max. I’ve also found that flms I’ve had to do from the DI, and the DIs are a lot more consistent now in terms of the look up tables (LUT) and everything and then do the flm out and have the flm out actually correspond to the DI, they are a lot better than they used to be but you still go through three or four prints. But you tweak the flm print anyway. I don’t know anybody that’s had a flm out negative from a DI and says that’s it lets go to release; that just doesn’t happen.

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Are you saying that the process isn’t saving any money? It’s not saving anything because you still answer print. Now of course the studios are looking forward to the days of D Cinema when they can eliminate flm prints completely and they can use hard drives or satellite transmission directly into the cinemas, because then they don’t have to pay the $2000.00 or whatever per print cost, no transportation costs, they think they won’t have piracy as bad, but of course that’s not going to be true. So, that’s my rant about digital intermediates. Sadly, it’s only a few years before flm prints for new releases disappear completely.

How early did you start shooting digitally? Many years ago, I ventured into the then still new area of digital flmmaking with The Anniversary Party. Digital HD was still recent enough that the only viable camera was the Sony 900, a re-confgured electronic news gathering (ENG) camera—and it was beyond our budget means to rent it, so we opted for Phase Alternating Line (PAL) format with the Sony 580. Since then, I have photographed movies in many digital formats, all the while maintaining my love for the ever-improving technology of 35mm motion picture flm. Recently, I photographed four consecutive features, all low budget and on short schedules, with the Arri Alexa HD digital camera at ProRes confguration, a lower resolving format than the Alexa is capable of achieving. I had concluded on the basis of tests that for intimate, character-driven stories without elaborate visual effects that ProRes compared favorably to the Alexa’s full resolution with a Codex. The Alexa is for me, and for many of my colleagues, the frst video camera that felt and looks like a flm camera. But it is still not a flm camera; it’s mode of capture and imaging characteristics are different from flm, regardless of how digital video evolves. I am eager next to shoot a movie using the full Alexa sensor with the new 1.3 anamorphic squeeze lenses. It will produce a 2.40 aspect ratio—which is for me the most desired format. I had felt somewhat constrained compositionally with the 1.78 native aspect ratio of the early Alexa. Most people feel we are in the twilight of the flm era and several of my distinguished peers have abandoned 35mm flm completely. I have spoken and written extensively about the continuing viability of flm even as many of us also adopt digital video. One system does not invalidate the other, just as oil or acrylic paints do not invalidate watercolors and pastels. But that apparently is not how the purely market-driven forces of the industry would seem to have it. So, it is up to the creative community to have the will to choose the medium they prefer for any given movie. I am not sure how passionate that will is, especially among younger cinematographers who may regard the oneday delay between camera exposure and flm development as an unacceptable gap.

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For me, that one day is a small price to pay so that the images we create will not be subject to digital decay and loss, what some have called “digital nitrate.” Film is by defnition self-archiving. I recently supervised a new 4K re-mastering of Groundhog Day at Sony Color works with colorist John Dunn. The scan from the original 35mm flm negative was so clean and crisp—and we both agreed that the negative still contains more than 4K information. Imagine the situation for the past decade’s movies that, regardless of flm or video capture are locked into a 2K digital intermediate—this at a time when the studios are proclaiming imminent 4K home video and television. How many of these movies that were not box offce smashes will be deemed proftable enough to rescan the original negative? And how many of them captured on digital video, including some I have photographed, will be forever locked into a rapidly obsolescing format? I think we will have some real disappointments in the coming years. Our lust for new technology at any price has marched us backward in image creation. But as Paul Schrader wrote a few years back, “Cinema is dead.” The idea of movies as an art form exists mainly and still forcefully, in foreign flms. We in the United States seem to regard our movies as an ever more disposable product. The large number of movies in this past year’s foreign flms Oscar consideration proved that 35mm flm is still a very desirable medium. And many of our most prestigious Hollywood flms are still electing for flm capture. Film or digital video, or both together, it is a fascinating time to be making motion pictures.

Note 1 YCM is a separation master where yellow, cyan and magenta elements are stored as B &W flm negative reels, then printed using RGB light where the red affects the cyan dye, the green affects the magenta dye and the blue affects the yellow dye.

Robert Elswit, ASC

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Robert Elswit, ASC

Robert was born in Los Angeles and fell in love with classic black and white movies at a young age. With the studios just a stone’s throw from where he grew up, it was only natural that he would fnd himself a part of the motion picture industry in his hometown. He went to USC Film School after a stint in the theater department at UCLA and found his calling behind the camera. He is best known for his long-time collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson. The two worked on six flms together starting with Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch Drunk Love (2002), There Will Be Blood (2007) and Inherent Vice (2014). Robert won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on There Will Be Blood. Robert has also worked with George Clooney on Suburbicon (2017) and was nominated for an Oscar for his work on Good Night and Good Luck in (2005), also directed by Clooney. Other frequent collaborations include his work with Tony Gilroy on Michael Clayton (2007), Duplicity (2009) and Bourne Legacy (2012). His collaboration with Dan Gilroy includes Velvet Buzzsaw (2019), Roman J. Israel (2017) and Nightcrawler (2014). Robert worked with Stephan Gaghan on Gold (2016) and Syrianna (2005). His work on big budget action flms such as Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015) directed by Christopher McQuarrie and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) directed by Brad Bird are notable contributions to the action genre series. His body of work reveals that he is drawn to a theme of action, suspense and thrillers, which require more dramatic, high contrast lighting with opportunities to explore darker color palettes. Working in the genre of drama or thriller, Robert photographed both The Town for Ben Affeck and Salt for Phillip Noyce in 2010. Going back to the 1990s, Robert worked with Curtis Hanson on The Hand Rocks the Cradle (1992) and The River Wild (1994). He was Joel Schumacher’s cinematographer on Bad Infuence (1990) and 8mm (1999). Robert also shot three flms for Stephen Gyllenhaal including Paris Trout (1991), Waterland (1992) and A Dangerous Woman (1993).

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One of Robert’s earlier collaborations was the classic The Sure Thing with Rob Reiner in 1985. That same year, he also shot the iconic Desert Hearts directed by Donna Dietch; both are the only two flms he shot that fall into romantic comedy. During the 1980s, Robert photographed several television movies before he began his work with feature flms in 1982. Showing no signs of slowing down, he recently worked with Judd Apatow on The King of Staten Island (2020).

How did you know you wanted to be a cinematographer? I wanted to be a cinematographer since I was a kid. I grew up watching old black and white movies from the 1930s and 1940s on television. It was astonishing to me that movies that were supposed to take place all over the world, were actually all made within fve to ten miles from where I lived. I grew up halfway between MGM and 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles. Even as a kid, I was struck by the compelling style of black and white cinematography of that era. The monochromatic high key black and white lighting had a striking, graphic style that I found engaging. The frst time I went to a movie theater, I ended up seeing movies that were in comedies or movies for kids shot in Technicolor. But those black and white movies on television were far more interesting to me. I remember one extraordinary flm called Black Magic with Orson Wells. He didn’t direct it. It was actually made in Italy. But it was so visually stimulating that it piqued my interest in learning more about flm. The days before the Internet, DVDs or VHS, the only place you saw old movies was on television. So, I would stay up late and watch them with my family. Luckily for me, I came from a family that saw show business as a legitimate way of making a living. I found myself interested in theater in high school and ended up going into the theater program at UCLA. The production and lighting design wasn’t as extraordinary as it is now and I saw no future in it for me. I ended up transferring to USC and went into their undergraduate flm program. At USC, they were less concerned about personal expression and more interested in creating a production experience, where at the end of it, you might not end up with a movie that worked but you learned what the process was. It was so much more process oriented, which drove people crazy, but it was all about learning the collaborative process of working in crews, which actually made me happy. It made writers and directors a little nuts because it tended to create content that was well intentioned but pedantic, academic and uninspired. Anybody who is truly a creative director or writer would have a very diffcult time at USC going through the flm program in my day, because it tended to stife anything out of the ordinary.

So, your interest in lighting came partially from theater and partially from old movies. But were you interested in still photography? I never did any still photography. I became fascinated by theater in high school because I had a great theater teacher. What was a revelation to me was the

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idea of an ensemble theater and theatrical storytelling, and the way the light and scenery play such a signifcant part of it all. I loved the sense of family and camaraderie in the theater. It was a very romantic way to make a living and I was quite obsessed with that for a while. But I soon discovered there were people far more capable, talented and skilled than I was at building sets and doing lighting design. There was no regional theater at the time, and I found that there was a way I could actually earn a living in the movie business. Photography and lighting were something I was drawn to at a young age, but not really set design. I felt more connected to photography and lighting for movies.

What attracts you to a project creatively? I’m intrigued by scripts that are about something I fnd personally compelling. If I fnd the story intriguing and I can imagine creating a world that’s unique and unusual, or an extraordinary event takes place or remarkable human beings move through it, then I’ll do it. Reading a script is not always easy, because oftentimes, they don’t read as well. It’s much better if you could actually sit down with the person who wrote it or sit down with the director who wants to make it. But it always starts with the script. I’ve taken things I probably shouldn’t have taken, and I’ve made some mistakes, not because they weren’t good flms, but because they just weren’t something I understood as well as I should have. I’ve been on flms where I really haven’t helped. Where I’ve made it worse and I think I have a better sense of that now.

Is there any specifc genre you are attracted to? I can’t imagine doing something terribly silly. What’s always fun for cinematographers to do and I put the word in quotation marks is “dramatic lighting.” It’s always about contrast. In those kinds of movies, you are usually asked to create an environment that you fnd visually compelling, and the secret is not to call attention to itself at the same time. It’s all about lighting and creating an environment that feels dramatic without being theatrical.

Do you have any particular infuences in your work, either through paintings or photography? I’m infuenced by the work of the people that I admired when I was in flm school. Primarily, the edgy on-location New York-based movies from the 1970s that changed the flm industry. At that time, the studios weren’t sitting there looking over their shoulders when Owen Roizman shot The French Connection or The Taking of Pelham 123. It was that ffteen-year period of time when those great Woody Allen movies, like Annie Hall and Manhattan, or Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and of course Coppola’s The Godfather flms were made. It seemed like American cinema was being re-invented. The visual style in color movies was fnally becoming as expressive and as interesting as it had

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been in black and white flms of the 30s, 40s and 50s, and that was exciting. I don’t think color flms up to that point worked as well. They tended to be overlit, theatrical looking, self-conscious, although they were glossy and wonderful in their own way. But there was this remarkable time period “when flms became adult.” It coincided with the lifting of censorship, so the content in movies suddenly changed and started to deal with adult themes in very graphic ways. There were strong language and sexuality and much more violence. Those flmmakers had found a visual language that was fresh, exciting and marketable and they found it in New York way before they did in LA. I just thought that was amazing. The other part of New York flmmaking which is so unique is that the city becomes a strong character. Woody Allen movies were very much this way, you have the actors, and you have the city. They take you to a place that really does feel unique; I don’t think that any other place in the states does the same thing. It just has a character all of its own. Filmmakers from this time period really exploited New York in a way that was just marvelous. I grew up in Santa Monica at the beach, maybe that’s why I fnd it so captivating. For me, a movie like Michael Clayton is a real homage to the movies that haven’t been made in twenty or thirty years. It’s not appropriate for every flm but it was right for this one. Tony Gilroy and I both looked at a bunch of those New York flms from the 1970s as a reference for Michael Clayton.

What attributes do you like when you are working with a director? Everybody’s different and cinematographers have to be able to work with a variety of personalities. Ideally, you hope to work with someone who really knows what they want, so you can work with a director without imposing something on them that they don’t understand or might be unhappy with later. As I’ve gotten older something I’ve realized more clearly is that what directors do is much harder than I used to think it was. Often, with a director’s frst or second movie, their career is on the line. There is a very short window of time where you can fail as a flm director. Every day on set the director is faced with endless decisions about everything and making the right ones or even coming close can be really diffcult. (Tony) Gilroy said to me once that one of the most diffcult things a director has to know is when to say, “that’s all I need from this setup, let’s go on to the next.” That is the scariest moment for him, because he knows he’s never going to get back there again. We all work for directors and you have to make that commitment; if you can’t, you’re on the wrong movie. I had to learn that. It wasn’t about protecting my work or doing things to make my peers impressed. All those things just have to go away at some point.

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When you’re preparing for a movie what kind of notes do you make for yourself on the script? My notes are actually a bunch of questions. When I interview for a movie and I’ve read the script a few times, I write down a lot of questions for the director, mostly basic ideas about storytelling. I get to more specifc questions later, but initially I ask whose point of view are we experiencing? Later, if I got the job, I will narrow it down to very specifc questions about each scene, moment by moment throughout the whole movie, so I can understand the purpose of every single scene. What is the dramatic representation and how is it supposed to feel? I try to understand what the director’s intent is before anything else. Sometimes I don’t have time, but on most flms, I like to go through the whole script and talk about what’s going on in each scene. Some directors don’t have the patience for that. But Tony Gilroy and Paul Thomas Anderson enjoy the process because they really wanted me to understand their intentions. They know that when I get on set, I’m going to end up making a decision that is best for the flm because I really understand it. As Paul (Thomas Anderson) would say or Tony (Gilroy) might say, they want “life to break out at some point.” You have to understand what the real intent is, especially if it is a director who has also written the script. They understand the story in a way that’s different than a director who is interpreting a screenplay. A writer/director might be more wedded to certain things, so story structure or ideas about the purpose of scenes takes on a different meaning when the director is also the writer. But all directors at some point have to make a decision in every scene, what is the purpose of that scene and how to tell it. Once we go through the script in a careful way, then I can present ideas about “what if it felt like this or what if it felt like that?” Then there is getting into the specifcs of creating a visual style. Pulling pictures out of magazines, references to art works, you look at other people’s movies. It’s a great way to start a dialog and depending on how experienced or sophisticated the director’s ideas are about pictorial style, you can end up fashioning an approach that works for them. Tony Gilroy and Paul Thomas Anderson are very sophisticated, they have hundreds of movies and all sorts of references. Tony Gilroy might have a story idea and say, “I think it should look like this even though it doesn’t look very good.” Whereas Paul Anderson says, “I just want it to look good.”

Why would you pass on a project? Why would you pass after meeting a director? The only way I am going to meet with somebody is if I really thought I was going to do the flm. I would never go into a meeting with a director thinking, “I’m probably not going to do this, I’m just going to meet with them.” I’ve never passed on something where I’ve met with somebody, but they have

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passed on me (laughs). If somehow what you were hearing from a director made no sense then maybe, but it hasn’t happened yet. I get scripts all the time that I don’t want to meet on because I know I probably wouldn’t do them. But if I’m going to take somebody’s time and sit down in a room with them and have a discussion about the movie, it means I’m very interested.

Have you had a situation where there is a director you really want to work with, but you don’t really like the script? If I had never worked with this amazing director before and knew their work, and thought it was extraordinary, I’d probably jump in anyway. I’d learn something, on some level, even if the flm turned out not to be a total success either fnancially or creatively. I want to work with people where it’s a challenge for me. I like directors who know more than I do, and I get to go along with them for this ride because it’s really about the process. One thing they did get right at USC is to get across that making a movie is ultimately about the process. It’s not that way as much as it probably used to be when more movies got made and there wasn’t as much pressure that they all be a success. But it is a process and it’s what we do every day. It can be exciting, inspiring, fun and challenging, doing something you’ve never done before, that’s what keeps it so interesting. People have compared Paul Thomas Anderson to Stanley Kubrick; it’s a strange comparison, but the real similarity is that Paul will never ever make the same movie again. He will do things that are thematically similar. He will always make movies about relationships within families, groups, human beings, the nature of parents and children and he will always create a family world. But they will never look the same, never feel the same, they will always be on some level unique. He will always take us somewhere else because he doesn’t want to repeat himself, he wants to go outside his comfort zone every time. He wants to explore something he’s never quite seen before. Lots of people want to make the same movie over and over again. That’s an old tradition in American cinema as well. Sometimes, people do it quite poetically. John Ford probably made the same movie three times, but he did it better than anybody could ever imagine. Kurosawa, Bergman, John Ford, Godard, there’s a poetic element to their flms that’s unique. It’s just such a tiny little group of people, and everyone else is shooting a script and hopefully telling a story well and sometimes wonderful things happen because of the casting, because of a brilliant decision got made or something fell into place magically. That kind of magic is very unique, and I think Paul (Thomas Anderson) has that ability to make it happen.

Is that what drives you to working with Paul? Yes, but even if it doesn’t happen, he always pushes. He’s twenty years younger than I am but I’ve learned more from Paul than probably anybody because his

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approach is so untraditional and unprofessional. I mean that in the best sense of the word. He isn’t interested in impressing anybody or making a flm that upholds some sort of standard of flmmaking quality or technical achievement. He just wants it to come to life in a way that doesn’t ft into anybody’s categories of what proper flmmaking is. Most people can’t do that, because it’s very hard to do, be that self-confdent and believe in your own kind of vision that you could go anywhere and not worry about it. He also loves actors, which is his great gift and because they sense that, they trust him and because they trust him, they do things that they wouldn’t do with anybody else. That doesn’t happen with very many directors, he’s very lucky. Actors know that with Paul, they can try things and he is going to be there in the most non-judgmental and supportive way. That’s why things happen in Paul’s movies that don’t happen in anyone else’s.

When you’re working with directors who you frequently collaborate with, how do you come up with the blocking? It’s always different, I think with Paul’s movies, in particular, Magnolia, because it was so complicated technically, it had to be thought through carefully ahead of time, because of the actors’ schedules, because of the cast, overlapping stories and the fact that there were so many different times of day and weather considerations that had to appear in the movie that had to be consistent. To go from a sunny morning to an overcast afternoon to light rain to heavy rain, to magic hour rain, to heavy night rain, to falling frogs, to light rain, to sunny morning with frogs. All the scenes in the movie take place in overlapping ways in all of those weather conditions and times of day; they are all a crucial part of the scenes of the flm. But there were multiple cast members scheduled in such a way that we couldn’t sit down and plan every setup in that flm every time. Whereas in Punch Drunk Love or There Will Be Blood, it was more of coming on the set and working through the blocking. One of the very unique things that Paul (Thomas Anderson) does, that is quite different from other directors and makes it very diffcult for the crew, is that the rehearsal process is about fnding the movie and there’s a very loose transition from rehearsing to shooting. There’s a certain amount of lighting that goes on, a certain amount of work during a rehearsal process but at some point, the camera just gets turned on. There’s no announcement, there aren’t fve PAs screaming rolling all over the set. Paul works with a very limited number of people and everybody’s leaning forward because at any time you might start shooting. It’s not this big moment where in most movies a bell rings, the curtain goes up, four people walk up to the actors and start playing with their costumes and their face and their hair, and then an announcement is made over a loud speaker, and a big fapper board comes in and then bang. He loathes that, and he threw it away as soon as he could. There are a just few key crew people and the assistant director on the set. No one speaks with, touches or screws with the actors in any

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way. Performances just grow out of this weirdly organic method of working that he’s discovered. For me, it’s a diffcult transition to go on to another movie after working with Paul and to have to adjust to the more traditional way of working. If I was an actor, the last thing I’d want right before a take is to have somebody fuck with my face and play with my hair and get lint off my lapel, but they’re used to it. Some people don’t mind, but Paul has thrown all that away. It’s different, and there are some actors and crew people that can’t deal with it. So, that makes it a more complicated way of working. When we were starting prep on Michael Clayton, it was very rushed, I think I only had fve weeks. It’s a pretty complicated movie on a short shooting schedule all on location. Two or three weeks before we started, there was a lot of Academy heat over Good Night and Good Luck and Clooney decided he wanted to push the start of Michael Clayton so he could campaign for Academy votes for the movie. Every time you start a movie there’s a moment where you go, god if we just had another week. You’re always starting a week too soon. Well, in this case we got two weeks of pre-prep and Tony (Gilroy) and I were able to go through the whole movie again on all the locations and actually shoot video, which was a huge help. All of the stuff in the car and with the horses on the side of the hill, that magic hour sequence that opens and closes the movie with Clooney, the bar exploding and a number of other set pieces in the movie. We revisited all the locations, to take stills and get storyboards.

Do the directors you work with show you storyboards? A lot of directors hate storyboards because they end up looking like cartoons that can’t be photographed because they’re all done with the perspective of a wide-angle lens. It’s very hard to fnd a storyboard artist that can create images that aren’t just information. Tony wanted specifc graphic information. He wanted the stills to tell him a much more specifc idea of what lenses do; what lighting does and all the things that don’t occur in storyboards. So, we did that, we went to almost every location, again, and spent the fnal two weeks doing what we almost never do, and it allowed us to get through that movie. It was a huge beneft because we had a much clearer idea of where he wanted things to take place. It’s really a movie about people talking to each other in rooms. Once the actors felt comfortable with Tony’s ideas about staging and blocking, then I was free to concentrate on lighting which allowed us to get started sooner and made working on the flm much more effcient. Then there’s the movie where you come in and kind of go “Gosh, maybe let’s go over here” or “what about this?” Where you don’t make any decisions until you start rehearsing with the actors. That’s okay if you have enough time and enough money, or it’s relatively simple, or if you’re outdoors. You can go from working with a director that goes from having completely imaginable prep to somebody who just walks in and says “hey you know what, let’s just

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see where this goes” which I do fnd fascinating too. But I’d say the biggest learning curve for myself, as a director of photography (DP) was to be able to anticipate what a director is going to do and prepare the people who work with me. Learning how to do that better has been a big difference for me.

Other than screening movies what other references have you used? I’ve used all the usual stuff that everybody falls in love with, Northern European paintings from the Renaissance. Those painters were really trying to re-create photo-realistic images, creating what light really looked like in a room. The Flemish and Dutch painters, Vermeer, Rembrandt, all of the stuff cinematographers generally like, when you look at those paintings, you realize they were the ones who frst used the expressive use of light. Those paintings told a story, they were like movies in a way. That era is so different from the Italians. The Italians were all about color and shadow, but the Northern Europeans, maybe because it was always overcast and raining, were more about the softer qualities of light. You look at the work of Sven Nykvist and the flms he shot for Ingmar Bergman, he distills everything down to the simplest, most aesthetically clear light through the window, or the light from the lamp; it’s just so simple and precise. I think in a way that’s what infuenced New York cinematographers as well, the quality of light in that city and the way the city looks in the winter and how low and soft the sun is. I mean, you come out to California and there’s three months out of the year you don’t ever want to go outdoors and shoot anything. Everybody’s nose shadow is touching his or her chins, you just want everyone to put a hat on, and it’s hideous. But somehow, we’ve adjusted. I think we fgured out how to shoot color movies in Hollywood with the era of cinematographers like Vilmos Zigsmond, Laszlo Kovacs, Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler, that time period from the late sixties to early seventies. I read a Gordon Willis interview where he was making fun of Haskell Wexler actually; he said Bound for Glory looked like a beer commercial, and I know what he meant. It’s not completely fair but the interviewer said something like, “what do you mean by beer commercial” and Gordon said, “everybody has twinkling eyes and sparkly backlighting.” There’s nobody less articulate about it than Gordon Willis. He found an aesthetic that he grabbed onto. Gordon created his own genre with the Woody Allen flms, he shot with Annie Hall and Manhattan and put those movies into their own unique world. One of the best adult comedies of the early eighties was Tootsie and it was photographed by Owen Roizman who shot The French Connection and The Exorcist; you want to be able to be that versatile. Those guys did it with slower flm stock and bigger cameras and somehow, they did it better than we do, and they did it thirty years ago, isn’t that amazing? The Scott version of Pelham 123 is visually astounding, but Owen Roizman (ASC), went down into a real subway tunnel and fgured out a lighting scheme when the flm stock was

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ASA-100, using slower lenses and he had to create a lucrative style that was probably shot on a third of the number of days. Then Owen came to LA and he does True Confessions, which was one of the great Hollywood period flms in Los Angeles. Then of course a flm that nobody remembers called Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman, which is essentially a crime thriller that was all shot in sunny Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. So, you could certainly say I also use previous cinematographers work as visual references.

A lot of cinematographers have strong opinions about whether they like to work with prime lenses or zoom lenses. Do you have a preference? You know, I did all of Good Night and Good Luck with zoom lenses, two cameras all the way through, two 11mm–100mms. It’s a matter of taste. But on Paul’s (Thomas Anderson) movies I don’t think we ever used a zoom lens once.

Is the lens choice somewhat the director’s decision? It usually is, but you don’t want to impose that. You want to have that conversation before you start shooting. You could build a temple around an idea and drive yourself crazy. But along the way you could forget where it takes you and it ends up being less than your fabulous temple idea and you lose sight of what’s really important. I would never make up a rule like that. I know that people have done it, where it has worked well. For example, The Last Picture Show, I’m trying to remember if it was a 27mm or 29mm, it might have been the old Panavision 29mm, but Bob Donavan shot the whole movie with one lens. He just said to Robert Surtees, “I want to shoot the whole movie with the 29mm,” and they did. Every single shot in that movie is on that one lens. It gives you a certain discipline, because it’s all about perspective, so camera perspective becomes the frst thought; it’s not about image size, not in terms of lighting, but in terms of where you are with the camera, how far away it is. How you stage and block that scene becomes a very different thought process because you’re not just saying, “I’ll stand over here and zoom in or I’ll put a 50mm on from this place.” You shoot the whole movie with the 27mm and then you are not doing goofball standard coverage. You’re not going, medium, close-up, close-up, close-up. You’re not shooting cowboy size, because you can’t, it doesn’t work. You have to think about your movie the way movies haven’t been thought about probably since the thirties. It’s the way lots of great flmmakers were before refex cameras. Everything was done with prime lenses and you were looking through a side-fnder and so, you didn’t shoot with a lens longer than 75mm because you really weren’t sure what was in the frame on it and you couldn’t be really confdent about focus. All these movies are staged with 25mm to 35mm lenses and maybe a 50mm or 75mm for a closeup, and that’s it.

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Curtis Hanson was a really good friend of mine and we went to see a new color print of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon the John Ford flm, they made color sets from the original black and white, color negatives. We sat there watching the movie and it looked astonishing. At some point, John Wayne goes to an Indian camp to try to talk them out of going to war. All of the sudden in the scene there’s a close-up of John Wayne; it’s like a medium close-up, like 50mm. Curtis and I both turned to each other and we realized that there had not been a close-up in the entire flm up to that point. The whole movie had been played in full fgure or cowboy-sized shots all the way up to that. You’re looking at it on the big screen and you go, wow, and realize how much all this has changed. Paul is one of the few directors I’ve worked with where that’s his world. He would love to use body language, the way people move, the way they sit, all that is lost and part of it is because the style of flmmaking has changed, everybody has their own theory about it. But it really has changed, all the coverage that we do now and the use of long lenses, and the way things are staged in kind of disembodied ways and the fnal version of that are the last Ford movies, where you don’t know where anybody is. It’s a whole world created within an editing room. There’s no identifable geographic space that the movie takes place in. It’s all editing room construction of disembodied shots with multiple cameras, and its great because it’s visual and exciting and aesthetic, but it’s a thousand miles away from where movies started. There’s nothing wrong with that if it’s appropriate for that movie. I’m not criticizing it, but it just doesn’t interest me. Yet, in Slumdog Millionaire, they were able to do it in a way that I found wonderful and compelling and exciting, so I don’t know. I felt like those images added up to more, I felt like I was in a real place.

In terms of different looks flms have, what do you think about the pervasive use of shaky hand-held camera? It’s a little self-conscious. There’s energy to that style that grew out of documentary flmmaking. In a funny way, people think it somehow makes images more authentic. I think we’re just used to it, everything that is multiple becomes a cliché. Audiences don’t notice it anymore and I think as flmmakers we feel somehow self-conscious about it. I saw an extraordinary movie that was shot on Super 16, the Austrian flm, The Counterfeiters. It won the Academy Award for best foreign flm and the whole movie is hand-held. After a while, you just don’t pay attention to it, it somehow comes to life. Super 16 was absolutely perfectly the appropriate format for that movie. At the end of that flm, nobody pays attention to that shit except cinematographers looking at a movie, but if you get drawn into the flm and it doesn’t take you out of the movie, it can work. It’s a taste, they found the right tone and the right way to approach that material and it worked brilliantly.

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What about color palette? I like less saturated, more. You end up dealing with production designers to help design your palette. The hardest thing to do, especially in modern flms, is to create a world that feels authentic and at the same time doesn’t distract or call attention to itself like a self-conscious manipulation of color. It’s easy in New York, you could just say, I want to create a monochromatic world where I’m just going to look at certain colors, stay away from saturated anything, and really look at yellows, browns and dark reds. When it works, it’s just the best. In The Verdict, Sidney Lumet decided, “let’s not have any color in this movie except the browns and grays and dark wood.” Maybe on occasion they’ll have saturated leather, but in every single scene, we will have one deep dark burgundy red. Maybe someone’s tie, or a rug, it’ll be some set piece but that’s it. We’ll do the whole movie that way and they did. If you sit through that flm, you think, well I don’t feel manipulated or horrible. It worked because you really believe that there’s this place in Boston, a world that exists where people wear three piece suits, even if they go to jury boxes and there’s no color except for burgundy and everything’s yellow. It’s brilliant when it works. It’s always content specifc.

When you’re prepping for a flm, do you do much testing? I love to test a lot and it’s always a budget constraint. The great thing about working with Paul is that there’s a lot of testing. He wants to see it on flm. That’s the other big difference between now and the good old days. Paul insists he doesn’t want to shoot and then imagine that a year from now he’ll be in a digital intermediate (DI) suite trying to fgure out how it’s going to look. He wants to see it right now. He wants to shoot different stocks, different times of day, on the actual locations, with the real actors and the real costumes. We did six weeks of tests on There Will Be Blood. We were in one location building that environment, the town, the church, the oil well, the Sunday home. The production designer, Jack Fisk, was building all of that, and while he was doing it, we were wandering around, learning that location. What it looked like all day long. The time of day, what it looked like overcast, how it felt on every place on that lot, everyplace on that ranch. We shot flm every day and we watched from the projector with the real actors, we looked at the characters in their costumes. We looked at it in every environment and in every time of day you could imagine. Paul wanted to see this movie while he was making it. He wanted to make concrete decisions and look at flm, projected every day. He did not look at digital dailies or DVDs, there wasn’t any of that. We had two projectors on location, printed the movie, and looked at the work print the entire time. We actually re-printed the work print so it would fall in line with the way we wanted it to be, so that at the end of his editing process he was able to conform the work print to his fnal digital edit and screen it at the

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lab for the timed print and essentially say, this is what we want the movie to look like, and boy does that simplify things. What you have to do in two to three weeks in a digital suite happens in fve days at a lab. To fnish the flm photo chemically is just where Paul’s head is. I actually took six minutes out of There Will Be Blood in a sequence that I kind of screwed up; it was in Daniel’s offce at the old gray stone in that mansion in Beverly Hills. I screwed up the balances through the window, it was supposed to be magic hour and the sun came out, the quality of light through the windows is wrong, the color is wrong. I just begged him, let me take that out, let me correct it all digitally and we’ll make a print. We projected the original negative and the DI negative side by side and you could see a little bit of digital artifacting, especially in Daniel’s close-ups. It’s very small and very subtle and if you saw it within the whole movie, you’d never see it. But if you look at it side by side, its subtle, but it’s there, and he turned to me and he goes, “I just can’t do this to Daniel’s performance.” It’s the whole idea of having something artifcial that would drive him crazy. Instead, it all had to go, it was my tough luck, we threw it away and went back to the original negative, so that’s what’s in the movie. I kind of knew it, but it was fun to go in and see what he gave me. I don’t miss it and there are all sorts of things I screwed up in that movie.

There’s all kinds of things you screwed up in There Will Be Blood? And you won the Oscar for that one? Yeah, but don’t tell anyone. There are all sorts of things I wish I could have done different. I’m not playing humble; I think it happens to everybody, unless you’re completely crazy. I know what I would do differently. But at the same time because Paul is relatively speaking, technically savvy, he knows just enough to screw me up sometimes. It’s sort of the magic of flm, he’s into alchemy, method folklore, it’s all kind of magic and he likes that aspect of it. He makes up for his lack of real technical knowledge with myth and folklore. I deal with that, but at least I’m not dealing with other people’s myth and folklore. I’m very lucky that I get to work with him.

Are you ever involved with the producer interfering in any of your creative decisions? With Paul, there is no producer because Paul’s the producer.

What about with your other flms? I’ve never had producer issues. On a studio flm the producers have more of a say because the director is a director for hire. That’s the difference. If you do a lot of movies where the director is for hire, it’s not the producer’s interference, it’s just that the director is simply involved in a creative relationship and sometimes it’s

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the actor too. In many ways Angelina Jolie, on Salt, was more powerful than any of us. Because her taste was what drove the movie in terms of making creative decisions about what happens storywise, how it feels, how it looks and what the action sequences were. I would say that she and Phil Noyce were on the same wavelength though. It’s an interesting dynamic, very different. I know on Syriana, there was a great deal of confict at the end between what Soderberg and Clooney wanted the movie to be and on the other hand what Steve directed it to be. There was a huge clash, but it was after the flm was made. There was a certain amount of tension while the flm was being made but it wasn’t crazy. In that kind of confict what often results are better decisions being made and opening things up to discussion and coming up with ideas that normally wouldn’t be thought of. There’s nobody alive with the exception of a few true geniuses that come to work every day and are absolutely right about everything they do. They seem to get on fne, but most people need input, most directors I’ve worked with want other people to contribute, even producers. Especially in casting.

Is there a particular format that you are particularly drawn to? I haven’t done a 1:85 movie in a long time, 2:40 seems more like a movie to me. Sometimes, it seems appropriate to me and sometimes not. Paul always wants to shoot not just 2:40; he wants to shoot anamorphic as well. Tony is the same way. It’s always project specifc.

What are your thoughts on camera movement? Do you prefer a dolly to a Steadicam? I don’t, it really becomes specifc to the movie. Michael Clayton was a very static flm. It’s in a lot of ways very 1970s New York, there’s not a lot of running around, a few steady cam shots, a few dolly moves. But for the most part it’s about stillness. There’s one wonderful steady cam shot that takes you into Arthur Eden’s apartment in New York and murders him and comes out. It’s all one long steady cam shot. In one moment in the movie, you follow two men into the room, in one shot, watch them commit a murder. Everything in that flm seemed appropriate.

Is that something that excited the director? Tony always wanted to do the shot that way. He didn’t know how to do it, fguring out the space and all that, but he always wanted to kill Arthur in one shot. From the beginning to the end, to when they walk into that room, to when they leave, that’s one shot and it happens in real time.

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How we turned it into that shot was something that we had to fgure out once we had the set, the location and we actually practiced part of pre-production with digital flm with two or three actors, rehearsed that in a rehearsal space where we put lines on the foor to mimic the space where they walk. Once we got to the location, we shot it again for practice. Then we did the actual shot from beginning to end so that when we got the Steadicam, we already knew the shot, so we didn’t make it up on set. That was a very carefully planned moment. It was always in Tony’s head, one shot to do that entire scene. Everything else grew out of fnding the location and thinking about what the space would be. We did change things on that flm along the way, we had talked about doing it more in wider shots and making it feel more like things could play in medium close-ups but what ultimately happened was that we fell in love with George Clooney’s close-ups. Everybody knows what a great actor he is but what he’s wonderful at is listening. Look at his face when other people are talking in that movie and it’s one of the greatest mysteries of him as an actor is how little it seems he’s doing and how incredibly expressive it is. It started with the frst scene we did. We’re sitting in that kitchen with Dennis O’Hare, who’s the unhappy angry CEO who seems to have run over a bus boy on a rainy night some place in New Jersey, screaming at Clooney. Clooney hated that performance. He hated what Tony was asking Dennis to do. To Clooney, he calls it “Just deliver the pizza,” you are not there to cause a stir, you knock on the door and say here’s your pizza and here’s your change, thanks, see ya later. To him, Dennis was making the pizza, then throwing it up in the air and force-feeding the audience. That pushed Clooney even more and because he’s a stage actor, so when Dennis was off camera, he was doing even more. Looking at Clooney reacting to Dennis, we thought, this can’t play with a full shot of him from across the room. So, we ended up making four more close-ups in that scene; then we ended up doing the entire movie that way. Tony always knew that he wanted to fnd a movie star. There’s a moment where you meet all the characters at the beginning of the movie. You hear Arthur reading his voice, you see Tilda Swinton, you meet Sydney Pollack and you have to meet George Clooney, he’s the last person you meet. You fnd Sydney Pollack with a long steady cam shot, you see Tilda sitting on a john, sweating for reasons you don’t quite understand, just a nervous wreck, but you have to fnd George Clooney. Finding that shot and seeing him sitting there while other people at the card table are parading him, that’s a movie star shot. That’s how you introduce a movie star in a movie. Shooting from slightly behind, not fat footing him all the time, you are never dead on with Clooney, it’s always off to the side, way around in a way you don’t expect, and you are watching him think. You are watching him react, you’re not watching him act. Working with another actor brings out the best in the moment, so we shot with two cameras just for that reason. We had two cameras going at opposing angles, which is always a nightmare to light. When we were outdoors, I was able to do it pretty easily. We shot

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them both at the same time, so that they could overlap, so they could do all those things and not worry about what was going on in that scene and so that they could get through four or fve pages of dialog and do it over and over again in a way that brings that scene to life. It’s called Michael Clayton; it’s about Michael Clayton, so there you are. The shots in the car, everything is really watching him watch everyone else in that movie. It just grew out of watching George Clooney. It really did become something that grew out of the process of making the flm. Let’s watch George Clooney watch everything that happens in this movie, and you’ll experience one of flm’s great performances. I just can’t imagine him more perfect. Tony tried to make that movie two to three years before with other actors and it almost came together; then, fortunately in the long run, never did.

Why didn’t you shoot the plus-x stocks? Too slow, the high-speed black and white stock is 200 ISO, which is very grainy. It’s what Gordon Willis used to shoot Broadway Danny Rose and Manhattan. The only reason why black and white is still processed is because it is used to make optical tracks in labs. They don’t process it every day and they don’t process it at the same gamma. Optical tracks have a certain specifc time and temperature for black and white processing. The digital negative allows you to go in there and do gray reduction or gray enhancement or climb the contrast that you like or that imitates the stock you like and that’s what we opted for just because of flm speed. I could shoot with a stock that was rated at EI 500 and it allowed us to use zoom lenses, so I could shoot the whole movie on one zoom. If I’d used traditional black and white flm stock, I could never have used the zooms, I could never have had pre-lit sets, and it would have been very confning to George. We really wanted to shoot the movie with two cameras. Two cameras at 90 degrees from each other. Almost the whole movie is a set lit for almost 360 degrees. With two cameras at 90 degrees to one another on long lenses following the activity, with the exception of a few steady cam shots and some very designed moments in the movie. Colin Anderson was on one camera, with two great focus pullers, and that’s how that movie got shot so quickly, because we were able to create a 1950s offce forescent environment. In those days, so much light was needed to get an exposure, so in early television they used large forescent units that created an enormous amount of light without heat. What we did on set was a very theatrical stylized version of the show that was completely wrong from this accurate historical standpoint. Instead we did a very stylized version that had a very old-fashioned movie look to this television show that seemed appropriate and interesting. Whereas the rest of the movie took place in this naturalistic, photojournalist offce environment that wanted to feel like available light. So, these two strong contrasts would work in movement. You’d go on stage at a show and one of the things about the script was that it allowed lighting changes where all of the sudden the

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lights would come up and you’d see the set, the way it really looked, before the show was being aired. All of the sudden, this key light would come up and the whole nature of this environment would turn into the show. That’s not the way it really happened at all. Those things actually really grew out of Clooney and his ideas for how to stage that movie and how that movie should feel. He actually thought it through really well. Without changing the script very much he essentially made a movie out of what originally was going to be a live television show. And that’s why it all took place in this one environment, for the most part.

Therefore, he really had to trust in you… We made it on the fy. George is watching it, he’s acting, but has a monitor in his lap and he’s watching one of the two cameras, when he’s off camera. He’s in it but he’s always got a monitor there. His head is in there, he’s watching the movie and we do a lot of playback.

How did it feel to win the Academy Award for There Will Be Blood? I still feel to this day that Roger should have won for No Country for Old Men. But I was in such shock. I went up there and there was a light shining in my face and I couldn’t see anybody. It’s kind of wonderful, at the Academy Awards they light the audience, because they’re all on television and they’re really famous and you’re not. It’s an out of body experience. As I walked backstage I thought, I just got an Academy Award, how is that possible? And what did I just say? I forgot everybody’s name and I forgot half of what I was going to say. I just couldn’t do it. Then I wandered off. Clooney asked me did it change you? It’s not that it changes you, but now you are part of some vast thing that you just thought you’d never enter. Then you remember all the other people who never won the award, who are so much better than you, and it’s just embarrassing. You remember that Owen Roizman has been nominated fve times but never won. You remember that Gordon Willis not only never won but he wasn’t nominated for flms that should have won fve Oscars. You remember that Roger Deakins has been nominated 25 times. When I won the ACE award and Roger was nominated for two, I said, I’m just very lucky. This was my speech; sometimes you win this award because there’s a year where it’s clear that somebody deserves it. Like this year, it’s just lucky. Clearly, from next year on there should be a category that’s called “Best Cinematography in a motion picture photographed by Roger Deakins” because that would solve all these problems. It is like all of the sudden, you’re part of the institution, you’re not just some other guy, and yet there are so many other people who are not just some other guy. It just becomes another line in your obituary.

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Kirsten Johnson, ASC

Raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist in Washington State, Kirsten’s exposure to movies was very limited throughout her youth by religious prohibitions. She fell in love with the cinema from Senegal while attending Brown University as an undergraduate. Her interest in fne arts and photography combined with politics and postcolonial history inspired her to want to see and explore a world that existed outside of her perspective. With a youthful naiveté and a curiosity to learn what racial injustice was, she bravely bought a one-way ticket to Dakar, Senegal where she spent two years living within the culture while exploring the flmmaking of West Africa. She went on to Paris to study flmmaking at the French National flm school, where she learned the craft of cinematography. Her love of capturing reality led her into a career as a documentary flmmaker. She has photographed, directed and produced documentaries over the past two decades working on numerous powerful flms. Kirsten has collaborated with many directors and has a comprehensive body of notable work, including photographing Derrida (2002), This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006) and The Invisible War (2012) with Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick. Her collaboration with Laura Poitras resulted in The Oath (2010), Citizen Four (2014) and Risk (2016). She photographed Slacker Uprising (2007) and Fahrenheit 9/11 with Michael Moore. Other feature length titles she has photographed include American Standoff (2002), Deadline (2004), Election Day (2007), Darfur Now (2007), Lioness (2008), Throw Down Your Heart (2008), Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008), No Woman, No Cry (2010), A Place at the Table (2012), Virgin Tales (2012), Here One Day (2012), Born to Fly (2014), 1971 (2014), The Wound and the Gift (2014), A Woman Like Me (2015), Very Semi-Serious (2015), Trapped (2016), A Thousand Thoughts (2018) and the upcoming Oscar’s Comeback and A Thousand Mothers. As a director, Kirsten recently created a portrait of her father’s dementia in Dick Johnson is Dead (2020) which premiered at Sundance. The award-winning, captivating Cameraperson (2016) was created with a collection of unused footage from previous flms she had photographed that conveys the emotional connection of the presence of the cinematographer behind the lens. Cameraperson was nominated for a Golden Frog at Camerimage in 2016. Her directing credits also include The Above (2015), Deadline (2014) where she shares directing credit with Katy Chevigny, Innocent Until Proven Guilty (1999) and the short

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documentary Bintou in Paris (1995). Kirsten is a passionate, warm and intelligent flmmaker that works outside of the traditional Hollywood flmmaking formulas. As a cinematographer, she captures the intensity of moments with a compassion that defes potential ethical implications. She is a fearless flmmaker at the peak of her career. She is also a mother and a wife and is another trailblazing woman proving that you can do whatever you heart and mind aspire to achieve.

What is the path that led you to documentary flmmaking? It’s funny. I’ve been thinking a lot about my mother lately, about how she would always say, “You’re a visual person and you’re a color person.” My mother was interested in painting and in my photography and my father was a psychiatrist. So really early on, my mother was affrming the way I saw the world and my father was affrming my interest in other people so, of course I became a documentary cinematographer! I got turned on by flm in college. I was studying painting, politics and postcolonial history, but I’m one of those interested in everything kind of people and for the frst time in my life I started to see movies from other places. A couple of the things I saw were from Senegal. I saw work by Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty and it just really marked me. Visually, it was just the depiction of a world I didn’t know but also since my early childhood, I was trying to fgure out what racism was. I could see it in the world and feel it in the school that I went to. I couldn’t make sense of it because I was raised in this Seventh-Day Adventist context and was being told repeatedly that everyone was equal, and that God loved everyone equally. Yet, I kept seeing all of this evidence of racism. I was born in 1965 and grew up in the early 1970s, and the world was exploding in terms of the way that we were talking about racism. My exposure to those West African flms just felt like, “Oh. This is some other world where… maybe racism doesn’t exist.” What I didn’t realize at the time is that of course racism is everywhere in the world, but it felt like a window into a world where racism didn’t exist. Or that it was existing on different terms. That was very interesting to me. So, I tried to get this scholarship coming out of college and got close enough to think I was going to get it, and then didn’t get it. What I had hoped to do was go to Brazil, France, England and West Africa and look at what Black flmmakers were doing in all those places. What was their relationship to the constructs of race? Since I didn’t get the fellowship, I decided to buy a one-way ticket to Dakar, Senegal in 1987. I was incredibly naïve. I didn’t speak French, I didn’t speak Wolof, I didn’t know it was a Muslim country. I didn’t know that the wave of West African cinema had moved to Burkina Faso by then. I went and met all of these flmmakers who had made flms, but who weren’t currently making flms. I discovered this whole world of flmmaking. While there, I met someone who told me that there was a free flm school in France. So, after two years of living in Senegal and meeting many flmmakers and working as a production assistant on a flm

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that Ousmane Sembène wrote called Niiwam, directed by his frst assistant Clarence Delgado, I went to Paris.

Two years in Africa and then off to Paris? Yes. I tried to apply to the French National flm school and they basically said, “Applications are only open for students from the Global South and the French.” I said, “Well, can I apply in the French section?” They said, “Not sure you understand. It’s the crème de la crème of France that goes to this school.” I said, “Well, can I try?” A great piece of advice I got from someone was, “There’s no way they’re going to let you into the directing department. But they might let you into one of the technical departments.” So, I decided to apply for the cinematography department and through a series of hilarious escapades and a miracle, I got into the French National flm school called La Fémis, where I did three years of training in cinematography and worked with incredible 35 millimeter cameras. I got an education in world cinema and fell in love with holding the camera. I got very technical training that wasn’t an easy ft for me at frst. I was very intimidated by the precision and delicacy of cameras and I didn’t easily understand optics or lighting. I think what I was really interested in was the composition of the frame. What was very immediately comfortable for me was how to be with other people. Holding a camera in relation to another person suddenly melded my psychological relationship to people with my interest in the visual. I found that the psychological subtleties of human interaction were readable in the visual. I could see on people’s faces the complexity of what they were feeling. I was immediately like, “Oh, this is my world.” It was always about how can I understand just enough to be able to use this precious camera to do what I want to do with people? I was immediately at ease with composition, framing and searching compositionally within the frame. It took me a lot longer, I would say, to understand what a camera was actually doing. To understand what was happening with the difference in lenses was something I was not intuitive about at all, but I was so compelled by the interactions with people that it was always like, “Okay. I’ll deal with my basic level of understanding of what this camera can do.” I learned cinematography on 35mm and 16mm, which is an incredible opportunity. I was seeing beautiful cinema projected in theaters at the French flm school.

You were shooting documentaries on flm? I do remember the terror of flming an interview with someone and realizing the magazine of flm was about to run out. Understanding that there wouldn’t be enough time, I would stop flming when the interviewer was talking too long or when the person wasn’t ready to get to the heart of the matter. I was the one who was trying to manage this impossible relationship to time which was incredibly upsetting and stressful working in flm. You’re very aware of

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how precious each inch of flm is. I just remember feeling ill a lot of the time when using flm in documentary due to the length of time that people talk. When video came, it was, in many ways a great relief to me because it meant that I didn’t have to try to control time in the same way. I shot what would become the flm Derrida, about Jacques Derrida. I started shooting that when I was still in flm school working with Amy Ziering, and that was shot in video. I just remember feeling so relieved that we’re shooting in video because of the way in which he spoke. Knowing that I wouldn’t have to be in that position of trying to turn on and turn off the camera as the reel disappeared. Yet, the materiality of flm has always been deeply compelling to me.

I understand exactly what you’re talking about with the stress of shooting interviews on flm. These people, they’re not actors. So, they’re about to say something amazing, or just said something right as you roll off, how do you get it back? You don’t. But there’s the archival issue of flm, having something that is so much more beautiful than video because the video does deteriorate more rapidly than flm. Yeah, absolutely, one of my earliest experiences was flming with a Senegalese First World War veteran, a man in his nineties, and I let him speak for two hours and I hadn’t pushed record! It was one of those times, you don’t get back, it’s just gone. So, I’ve had many early experiences like that of realizing, “Oh. This is high stakes, and it can slip right through your fngers.” I defnitely feel gratitude to video. I think in many ways, for the bulk of my career, I’ve worked through the ugliest technical period of cinema history. I’ve shot on S-VHS and Betacam and DVX100 and DVX200. Through standard defnition, DVCAM all of those formats. What’s really moving to me is that I now have a perspective on it because of making Cameraperson. The materiality of whatever format you are able to work on in your moment in history grounds you in that moment in history. So, when I look at the footage that I shot in the 1990s and the early 2000s, it looks like footage from that time period and I think all of us are like, “Ugh. The video footage of the 1980s, could there be anything more horrifc?” Yet, I think there’s a lot of people who look at it and fnd it incredibly beautiful because it refects a different time.

Yes, it captures that time period. The super high resolution of 4K video is a different way of seeing the world. I am accepting of the fact that I worked through eras in which the lenses were not great, and the video format was not great, and the archival capacity to keep things is challenging, but for all those reasons it’s also precious. People recognize it and feel an emotional relationship to the quality of it, so Cameraperson helped me accept standard defnition.

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On its own terms. Yes, exactly.

Was there a particular flm, or you may have mentioned this, but I’ll reiterate it, or director’s work that was an inspiration for you? I feel like it is a nonstop food of flms that inspire me. My world was rocked by Claire Denis’ Beau Travail and I think it is so visually beautiful, but so bold in what she allowed herself to do, I think that was what was speaking to me the most. That it’s really on her own terms, that flm and just the permission that is embedded in that, you can pay attention to what you want to pay attention to and construct a story in the order that you wish to. How palpable everything was in that flm. People’s bodies, the landscape, the jealousy, the pleasure, all of the things are just, you can feel them. Another flm that I love a great deal is All These Sleepless Nights, which is a documentary of emotion. It documents these two young Polish men as they are foating through this series of parties over the course of a summer and it’s made in a way that is both constructed and observed. I took a bunch of students to see it and they were like, “This isn’t a documentary.” I said, “I don’t know. It’s documenting a lot of feeling.” I think that’s the way I feel about Beau Travail, is that it’s visceral. It’s palpable. It’s pleasurable and you just want to eat the screen or go into the screen. Those are the kind of flms that really inspired me initially to just feel it.

So, did you want to be a documentary flmmaker? How did you start working with documentary directors? I wanted to be in flmmaking. Initially, I wanted to be a fction director and I was doing that in flm school. I made short flms. I made a feature length flm coming out of flm school, but it didn’t feel real yet. I felt like I was still practicing making things, whereas with documentary, there was no question it was real. I was in Jacque Derrida’s house and I better frame him well because he was an extraordinary philosopher and a very intimidating man. It was on, even before I felt I was ready to be a flmmaker, let alone a director or a cameraperson, there I was holding the camera in Jacque Derrida’s house, and I had to make choices. So, the high stakes of documentary and the intensity and thrill of that was super compelling to me. I really do credit Jacques Derrida with opening the way for me, because I was a very talkative person and I was trying to talk to him all the time while I was flming and trying to communicate to him that I had a brain. At a certain point, he really needed to get some work done and he didn’t want the crew in the house and was kicking us out and the director, Amy, was begging him to let us stay. He agreed, but said, “Only Kirsten can stay with the camera if she doesn’t ever speak again.” I was completely

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terrifed and I didn’t speak for a whole day. I flmed him in his house just working and talking to his wife, reading and packing and underlining things in books, and he let me. Amy and I had talked so much about how we wanted the flm to be full of ideas. Suddenly, through that day of shooting with him I realized, “Oh. I can convey my intelligence through images. I don’t have to speak.” It felt like such permission. I think I use the word permission a lot, because I didn’t feel like I was allowed to do many things in my early life. So, little by little, camerawork became this place where I was like, “Oh, you can walk around in this space that you’re not supposed to? You can sit next to this person that no one said you could sit next to?” So, it was always about learning little by little that I could physically move into places that I wasn’t supposed to be in. So, there is a real experience of transgression in my work – this giddy person who’s like, “I get to go here?” I felt like, “I’m amazed that I’m being allowed to do this.” There’s a lot of pleasure in camerawork for me because it’s like my physical person is being allowed to be places that I never imagined I could be. It’s interesting, right?

Yes, it is. It really is. So, what’s the one flm that you shot that gained attention, that really got you on the radar? I would say that my work with Laura Poitras on The Oath is probably the flm that put me on the map in many ways. That had to do with the political climate post 9/11, we were making one of the frst independent documentaries to flm in Guantanamo as well as Yemen. Laura had made a portrait of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard that was very complex and was formally different than many political documentaries at that moment in time. It was expressing a complexity of approach as well as investigative energy, but also this aesthetic that was very intentional. All of those things together really made people sit up and take notice of both Laura’s flmmaking and my cinematography. From there, we continued our collaboration into what became Citizenfour and also Risk was a product of that body of work together, but it really was and continues to be one of the most important collaborations I’ve had with a director. She gave me an incredible amount of confdence and freedom and she was deeply interested in my visual aesthetic in ways that allowed me to be bolder than I had ever been before.

Which is a perfect segue into, what’s your working relationship like with the directors you’ve worked with? How collaborative is it? What kind of environment is it that you like to work in? Permission would be one of my words, pleasure is also one of my words. I really believe in the flmmaking process as one in which people aspire together to make the most interesting work possible. I think because flm school had been intimidating to me because rental houses treated me as a young woman who

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didn’t quite know what she was doing, that the world of cinematography had been intimidating to me. I became very determined to be the person whom the director could rely on to not be intimidating. To not make it hard for them to engage with the camera. So, I thought of my role as the go between what the camera could do, and what the director hoped to get from it. I just didn’t like the way it seemed like cinematographers were trained to be arrogant and obscure -- to hide what they knew. At least that was what I had encountered and I didn’t want to perpetuate it. So, I became the camera person who was easy to work with, who made people feel confdent about what they were asking for. I did work with a lot of women directors who had worked with camera people who had given them the impression that they didn’t know what they were doing. So, I would always say, “What do you want to do? Here’s how we’re going to do it.” I thought of my role as empowering the director. I do think that comes from the experience I had had as a woman being trained in cinematography. Also, I was less interested in hoarding my knowledge about the camera, because I didn’t really have it. What I had was curiosity about the world and a love of image making.

What is your process for prepping with a director when you get a project? I get really excited about talking about what a director hopes to do. I’m just full of questions and wonderings about what is this thing that we’re trying to make together? I’m really interested in the psychological subterranean qualities of projects.The mystery of why the director is making the project in ways that they don’t understand yet? What is unknown about the material? So, it always feels like some sort of excavation into this unconscious territory for me. I’m also really interested in systems. I’m particularly interested in how violence has been systemic, or racism has been systemic, or gender violence has been systemic. I’m looking for patterns and I’m trying to understand how individuals sit in a context, but then become themselves, or how a situation emerges out of systems that are familiar, but then how does an individual disrupt what happens in a perpetual way? I think I’m both engaged in a strong belief in the very particular individuality of each human and then I’m interested in the patterns that have existed through all of human history. I like the mash up of those things together, so I will get excited talking to a director and be throwing out questions, references to flms, photographs or whatever. It’ll be a very engaged conversation, because in some ways I feel like I know I would never make that movie, but I would love to help someone else make that movie and let me throw all of these questions at it. I’m always trying to understand why the director wishes to make the flm they’re trying to make. One of the things that helps me, particularly as a documentary cinematographer, is to start thinking about all of the themes that are resonant with the project. I fnd that themes become embodied in the world and you can see them visually, or you can emphasize them visually. I will often ask a director to tell me what are the

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multiple themes that they are interested in, then I just run those in my head as I am in the physical setting of flming. If one of their themes is how people have diffculties connecting, then I will think of that in a physical way and I will start to shoot the negative space between people’s bodies, or I will shoot with really wide lenses and isolate people in space. I’ll do a conversion between intellectual ideas and visual ideas. In my head, usually I don’t do too much ahead of time. I’ll just start discovering it, and then I’m free to see the thing that’s happening as it’s happening. Because it might be like, “Oh, I’m in the middle of doing a theme around isolation and disconnection, but they also said to me that what mattered to them was the way in which people have power relationships in relation to age.” Suddenly I’ll see that concept and with the same lens, fnd a different way to express that theme. So, in one day of shooting, I may have gleaned material that could be edited 100 different ways, but it’s starting to talk to each other. I’m gathering footage that relates to one theme, gathering other footage that relates to another theme. It’s all out of order, but I’m accumulating these bodies of resonances, and I love that. I love not knowing what’s coming, I love not understanding how complex the relationships are, but then having it be revealed how complex they are. So, I’m always trying to fgure things out knowing that there’s going to be another big reveal, and it’s going to be much more complex than I thought it was. I love that, not being able to get it.

I love that you mention theme, because when I’m teaching I always say, “To understand what the visual style of the flm is, you have to understand the theme.” So, it’s the same in documentary? One thing that was really interesting about making Cameraperson is that I thought I was flming with a different style for every flm I was working on, and I have to say that’s not true at all looking back at the footage. I think in many ways, I was simply embodying my subjective way of seeing the world in relation to another director’s set of obsessions, but that in fact there’s huge evidence of the way I see in all of my footage. That’s a constantly evolving way of seeing, but I found that pretty profound that in some ways there’s not a style that remains consistent with each flm, but there’s a quality of questions being asked. Or a quality of human interaction happening and sometimes that translates into stylistic consistency, but mostly I think it translates into evidence of the way a flm is being approached by a director. So, maybe that is visual style. I’m not so sure.

What you’re saying is the way you see the world is combined with the director’s vision, and your thematic interpretation of what they’re trying to say still has your eye. Exactly. Yeah, and I guess I thought I was less present than I actually am when I look back at the footage I’ve shot.

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So, you were present. That was surprising. Which is my whole take on what this work is, that we are present as a body when we flm and although the audience doesn’t necessarily see us, they are seeing the evidence of our body’s presence in that place. In that particular situation. So, I think it does matter that I’m female. It does matter that I’m White. It does matter that I’m very tall. It does matter that I laugh a lot. It does matter the way I look in people’s eyes. It does matter that I touch people. All those things do matter, and they are present in the footage. In many ways, I want to affrm that the deeper we go into the specifcity of our presence and what it can add, or disrupt, or question, or catalyze in a situation, the more interesting the work is. Because what we’re embodying is our subjective way of seeing the world. That’s the evidence people are looking for, I think. People are looking for the evidence that says there were people here who engaged with each other.

So, what sort of projects are you attracted to, and are there projects that you would actually not be interested in? I’m attracted to any project that feels vital, that feels urgent and necessary because it pushes the form, or because it speaks about something that’s never been spoken about before, or that it attempts to grapple with what is our most diffcult challenges as humans. So, I am interested in pleasure. I want to work on flms that spread pleasure, but I would say for the most part I worked on flms that are flms that engage with human challenges. I think earlier in my career, I believed that flms could directly create change in very clear ways. I think flms do make changes, but in much more complicated and less clear ways than I imagined early in my career. So now, I want to work on projects that push harder into complexity. Things that seem too easy don’t interest me.

How is your role as a cinematographer different than someone who’s doing a narrative flm? I think what’s terribly exciting about being a documentary cinematographer is that the world is your palette. You don’t really know the shape the flm will take in any given moment while flming, you don’t know what impact your being there will have upon the situation. I think of it as a super active relationship and there’s not just one person in control of it, the people who are being flmed have power, the person with the camera has power and the director has power. Those are not equal power relationships, but they’re all active and shifting. So, it’s a very live, hot situation and it requires incredible patience. With a fction feature flm, you’ve got the pressure of time and money saying, “Something has to happen now. We have to get these shots done in this ten-hour day, and we’re going to make this number of pages, we have to do it because these people are only here this day. It’s the only day we can flm

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them.” Whereas in documentary, it might be, “Yeah, it’s the only day you can flm this person. You just met them and now you have to go to the deepest place in their lives in the next half an hour. That’s it, and that’s the only chance you’ll ever get to flm this person.” So, it’s a total different energy around what’s possible and impossible. No one is being paid. In some ways, that’s the fundamental difference. Hopefully, an actor is being paid to be flmed. A person in a documentary is not being paid to be flmed, so they are there for reasons of their own that are different from being paid. What they will allow, what they won’t allow, where they will go, all of those are very different questions and are managed on a very different psychological level than they are managed on a fction shoot.

Are there specifc skills that a documentary cinematographer should have that varies from a fction flm cinematographer? I would say frst of all they should have love of other people. This along with a strange mixture of aspiration to do the most interesting work, but also a kindness to oneself. Particularly with documentary cinematography, you’re constantly experiencing that feeling of failing. You don’t know what you’re about to flm, you don’t know the conditions under which you’re going to flm, you don’t know whether your equipment can handle it, you don’t know whether you can handle it, and it just keeps happening. So, you’re constantly missing the focus, maybe you are there with the wrong lens, your battery is running out at the wrong moment, and you’re walking backward when you should be walking frontward. It seems that you’re always in the wrong place because you’re not controlling any of it, and it’s happening in front of you. So, managing those feelings at the same time that you are attempting to make something cinematographically powerful, how do you do that? So, you have to be pushing yourself, but relaxed and patient and moving all at the same time. It’s super contradictory. You’re managing mental and emotional contradiction at all times, as well as physical contradiction. For many years, I just felt like, “Well, I’m not very good at this. I’m failing. It’s not working,” and yet I learned to live with those feelings. I think that is what allowed me to do my most interesting work; it lowers your sense of shame, which is one of the deep things that prevents most of us from being able to make interesting work. It’s that we are ashamed of our own failures, whereas in cinematography, it’s just hourly. Minute by minute failure. It’s daily failure. It’s years of failure. It’s just, you’re constantly messing up, but you have to keep going. You wish you weren’t, but you are and you’ve got to live with it. But then, out of material you think is imperfect and inadequate, an editor will create a scene where you’re like, “Wow. There’s real feeling in that.” You’re like, “I shot that? I didn’t even realize I shot that!” Because you’re so caught up in your own internal story of how it’s not working, but in fact, you’re emotionally present and you have communicated that in the footage. I’m so grateful for cinematography giving me a way to practice my way of seeing. I think that’s all

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any of us are looking for, this evidence of people trying to do things. I have a friend, Laurie Rosenwald, who does this wonderful workshop called “Making Mistakes on Purpose.” I think that’s what cinematography is.

Have you ever felt threatened while shooting a project due to the content or the location you were shooting in or have you ever feared for your safety? Yes. I absolutely have felt afraid. I’m not as interested in that as a question because I think it’s part of some of our history of flmmaking that assumes that we, with the cameras, are the ones who deserve to be safe. When in fact, we’re also being allowed into places where people have to stay and live in a state of danger. I think we with the cameras, we have a choice to come and to go. We’ve made a choice to go into what is a diffcult place to live for people who have to live there. In some ways part of the credibility of being a cinematographer is attached to this glamor around working in confict zones, or taking risks, or having had a near miss, or that kind of thing. I do associate that with the history of the military, of colonial invasion, which camerawork has been a part of. Camerawork has built its credibility on the risks that we, the camera people, have taken without enough respect for the lives of the people we’re documenting who live in danger. I’m interested in poking back at that one in the same way I named my flm Cameraperson. I want new language for some of these things. I think we need to stop “shooting” people. Why are we shooting people? Why are we capturing their images? Why are we using metaphors of violence? It’s because the history of cinematography comes from a history of violence and we’ve been a part of it. We’ve made misrepresentations of other humans. Those misrepresentations have been used against them very actively and often with great violence. People have been degraded and made less by our images. I feel a responsibility at this moment in history to acknowledge the ways in which the history of cinematography needs not to only be held up, but to be questioned. New vocabulary needs to be created, we need to think about how we glamorize ourselves. All of those things I’m really interested in problematizing. So, sure I’ve been in danger, but we all are in many ways in life, and some of us are in a lot more danger because of where we happen to be born, or the mental illness of our parent. People live in danger and fear. I’m interested in glamorizing love and human connection as the values of cinematography as opposed to risk-taking.

Is there a difference between journalistic photography and documentary photography? I think many people now rely on documentary flmmaking for what they used to rely on investigative journalism for. There are crossovers and documentary does not necessarily follow the same set of rules that journalism has created for itself. In some ways, documentarians understood earlier that objectivity is not a possible goal within the documentary life. That subjectivity is revealing the nature of

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what makes documentary so remarkable. I think journalistic standards and ethics need to inform every documentarian. We need to have as much integrity as we possibly can in terms of what we represent. But I think ethics are deeply complicated. Objectivity, like truth, are concepts that are incredibly rich and complicated. Documentary is a territory where we can investigate the nature of that complication. I teach at the journalism school at NYU, and I’ve certainly taught journalism students, as well as documentary students, as well as flm students. I like that there’s fuidity between all of these different domains and I especially appreciate flms that give you the clues to understand what you’re watching.

What I really enjoyed about Cameraperson is your presence in the way that you interact with your subjects. It is so personal in the way you make a connection with them, that it goes beyond the objectivity of the camera that you’re talking about. The camera is just a part of you. I didn’t used to think this way, but I do try to think of the camera as a part of my body and I do realize now how much my body’s presence matters in the camerawork. I think I learned all of this from Cameraperson. I didn’t know how much it mattered before. I think of camerawork as a relationship and it is a different kind of human relationship because the camera is present and changes the nature of the relationship in ways that the people present do not fully understand, nor can they. Because as the subject, you don’t know how you are being framed. As the cameraperson, you don’t know how what you are flming will be used. None of the people present, including the director, understand what the future will hold. So, I think of it as an ongoing relationship in time because unlike a human relationship without a camera, time is made manifest by cinema. So, we’re in the present when we’re flming, but we are actively creating the future by the ways in which we flm, yet we don’t know what the future will be, but the act of flming is shifting the future. That I have flmed someone whose life goes on to be changed by the flm that they are present in means our trajectory together goes forward into the future in ways that neither of us can imagine at the time of us flming. Yet, we know something is at stake. The person who is being flmed is making choices about what they say, what they do, what they allow to be flmed. I am making choices knowing that there will be evidence of our relationship in the future that may impact all of us in ways that are unknowable. So, I’m really interested in how cinema changes human relationships, particularly in relationship to time.

Do you think that subjects, just because of the presence of the camera have a tendency to self-censor? I think that it’s not necessarily self-censorship, but I think when people are being flmed, they become aware of themselves in new ways. They become

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aware of the future in new ways. So, just you and me sitting here talking, we are actually speaking and constructing our sentences differently than we were when we weren’t recording. We are aware that these words will be preserved for the future when we will not be alive. So, we are making certain things clear that were implicit between us. We were speaking in a shorthand before, and trusting each other, and swearing. We were saying things that we’re not saying now. It’s not that we’re censoring ourselves, but we’re making choices about the language we use which will represent us in the future.

That is so interesting. I didn’t even think about it. Yeah, and in some ways a great interviewer helps me forget that I’m being recorded, and yet we’re here for a reason. We’re getting to know each other really fast because there are stakes. Because in this hour or two, you are going to make a portrait of me that will last in a book. That’s a different kind of relationship than we would have if we were just sitting here having coffee, talking about our parents.

What was one of your most memorable experiences while shooting a documentary? I think there’s evidence of it in Cameraperson. I’m flming with a grandmother in Bosnia who does not wish to talk about the violence her children experienced during the war and the director and translator were pressing her to speak about the suffering that she had experienced. Because I worked for many years on flms dealing with human rights violations, I’ve flmed a lot of people who had been victimized by violence and I hit a breaking point inside of myself around resisting creating a portrait of a person as only a victim. This woman had a fabulous outft that she was wearing, so I interrupted the conversation about violence to ask her whether she’d always had such a great sense of style and she immediately broke into a huge smile and said, “Yes.” In some ways I have a role, a mission. I’m supposed to keep quiet and keep flming in the seriousness of what we’re doing. I wish to say how much respect I have for directors, how much respect I have for process, for subjects when we are speaking of serious things. Yet, there’s also this deep wish in me to fnd ways for flms to allow more of our humanness into even the most serious subject matter. In that moment, in some ways I did something, “I wasn’t supposed to do,” in quotes. What it freed up was this human who was suffering, who was just like, I don't want to think about that violence I experienced in the past right now. I want to think about the ways in which I have owned my own life, that I’ve had agency in my life, and that agency that I have is dressing this way. Even in the midst of a place where we’re surrounded by all these people who hate us, where we’ve lived through this awful history, where

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you could say my life is only suffering and despair. I get up every morning and I put this on because I’m alive. I like living. So, that moment for me has changed the way I dress. I dress the way I dress out of homage to that woman and out of homage to her love of life, in spite of how hard it is, and her love for her sense of humor and her sense of empowerment. So, that’s the moment that comes to me.

That’s beautiful. Now what you were saying about bringing some humanness into serious situations, that’s what you’re doing with the flms that you’re directing, correct? Yes, I think more of what I’m doing is bringing my deepest, most impossible questions about what it is to be human. So, with the flm of my Dad, how do I face the demise his dementia creates, after having lived through my mother’s dementia, while maintaining respect for the funny man that he was, for the funny man that he is? Embodying my love of him and my incredible grief that this is happening. I don’t want this to be happening. I understand that we’re human, yet I don’t want this to be happening. So, how can cinema help me cope? How can cinema not just help me cope in a psychological way, but how can the form of cinema make my father immortal? Can cinema bring my mother back to life?

You did. I did, right? Can cinema help my children understand who I was?

It will. It will. Does Buster Keaton on screen make me want to make better movies? Yes. He makes me want to make better movies every day. So, what is that? What is this across time and space? We don’t know each other, but we know each other through movies. That’s what I’m interested in.

It’s also the timeless and time travel quality of flmmaking. Films are the only way we can time travel. I teach flm history. I say to students, here’s Buster Keaton. I’m turning you on to somebody that you don’t know but he lived almost 100 years ago and they leave class loving him after seeing his flms. Yeah, and my kids, we take them to see movies and we were watching Laurel and Hardy, and Felix as a 5-year-old says, “First, I think this movie no good. This movie black and white. Now I think this movie best movie I ever seen in my life.” Oh, the world that was black and white, is it accessible to children in 2020?

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It’s novel, but yes. It can be. It’s just not what they’re used to seeing. No, but then boom. Time travel across time and space, we connect with each other. So, it’s back to what you were saying about connection, I think of cinema, it is this ongoing, ever opening family that helps me be human.

People have said that we’re in the golden age of documentary. You just returned from Sundance. Do you think that documentaries are still being really well received? Absolutely. I think this idea of a “golden age” -- when we try to name things in such essentialist ways is foolish, but I do think there are many more people in many more places around the world who have access to seeing more flms than ever before in history. So, inevitably what that means is that there are more people from more perspectives aspiring to make flms that they have been inspired by, inspired to express their own voices, which have been absent from the history of cinema. It’s an explosion of that aspirational hope. I think simultaneously, we are also all suffering under pressure from governments and corporations who wish to have us homogenized and not troublesome. So, there’s an incredible pushback on this explosion of subjectivity. Yet, we fnd our ways. People fnd their ways to express themselves, they fnd their ways to resist and to fght back against the perpetual injustices that are a part of this world. The struggle to discover our own voices, to express our own voices or to understand what those are. It’s a beautiful struggle and the evidence of that is cinema.

What was it like working with Michael Moore and what do you think about his approach to documentary flm? I love working with Michael Moore. I fnd Michael to be brilliant in his approach to taking on powers that would crush people and he’s really up against it in many ways, because he went from being a person who wasn’t seen, or known, or regarded, to becoming a very visible person. So, people see him coming and they protect against him. One of my most vivid moments with Michael is when we were flming Fahrenheit 9/11, and we were flming with Abdul Henderson, who is the soldier who basically says on camera, “I don’t want to go back to Iraq and kill more brown people.” Immediately after he said that, Michael said to him, “Do you want to say that on camera? You’re still in the military. You’re still on active duty. You’re going to be redeployed,” and Abdul said, “Yes.” Years later, when I put that footage in Cameraperson, I made the connection again with Abdul. I had been haunted by the way he bit his lip when he was talking. He said, “I made the decision in that moment of being flmed to say that, knowing full well the implications it might have for my family, for my career.” He said, “I sort of had this visitation

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from Muhammad Ali, saying to me ‘This is your moment. If you don’t stand up for what you believe in now, you’re never going to do it.’” After flming, Michael immediately reached out to Abdul and said, “We can get legal support for you.” Michael realized that Abdul had just leapt off a cliff by saying what he did. He had really endangered himself in terms of his legal obligation to the military. Michael reached back out to him after flming and said, “Hey. Are you sure you want to jump off that cliff?” Michael was incredibly aware of what it meant to be responsible for the person on camera taking a real risk with their own life. Happily, the flm got so much attention that the military actually reached out to Abdul’s unit and said, “You have a choice of whether you deploy or not on this next mission.” Now, that never happens. Michael didn’t expect that, Abdul didn’t expect that, but Abdul was able to make that statement publicly and not get in trouble with the military. Michael would have been there for him had he been in a critical situation. I have huge respect for Michael, he’s really serious if he’s asking people to go up against power with him and if they do so, he’ll back them up.

How has being a flmmaker affected your personal life? Filmmaking has created my personal life. Filmmaking has allowed me to feel like a person who could connect with people all over the world. Filmmaking has helped me understand historical context, the ways in which social constructs have allowed me to be, and in some ways prevented me from being. So, cinema has helped me make sense of what it is to be the person who I am at this moment in history. I would say if you went to me as a child, what did I hope or imagine I would do in life, I wouldn’t have known, but I wanted to travel the world and discover the world, and I feel like cinema has allowed me to do that. I imagined I would have children, and never imagined I would have children in the way that I have had children, which is to have children at age 46, using an egg donor, co-parenting with a gay couple. That’s not how I imagined I would have children, and yet it has been the most extraordinary way to have children in terms of my capacity to continue to be both a flmmaker and to parent them in a way in which I feel like they are consistently nurtured, loved and paid attention to. They also see models of parents who take creative risks and attempt to do meaningful work in the world. So, all of those things are happening simultaneously because of this extraordinary situation that is not possible in most countries in the world and was not possible in this country until very recently. My children and my co-parents and I beneft from a lot of suffering that a lot of people have done in the world to make our situation possible. I do feel a pride in sharing our story with the world, because I think it’s an enabling story. It’s that you can create ways of loving and you can fnd solidarity and camaraderie in doing things in new ways. So, I’m probably the most fulflled I’ve been as a flmmaker at this point in my life, and that’s grown out of trying to bring more love into my life.

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That’s so great. What advice do you have for aspiring cinematographers who want to work in documentary? I would say trust yourself that you’re right. If you do want to work in documentary, allow yourself as much kindness as you possibly can, so that you understand that you’re searching in a very complicated world and that despite having these aspirations to do work that other people have done, what you are searching for is your own way of seeing. It takes time to understand what that actually is.

Kira Kelly, ASC, Director of Photography

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Kira Kelly, ASC

Growing up in Brooklyn and Miami, Kira had no idea that she would become a cinematographer. But her love of photography, movies and flm theory was nurtured at Northwestern University, where she frst looked through the viewfnder of a motion picture camera. Her determination to learn more about production led her to getting on to as many sets as possible where she gravitated towards the gaffers and best boys/girls (electricians). While on set, she networked and learned about lighting and numerous lighting fxtures. Her interest in electrical continued and she began freelancing in New York as an electrician before moving up as a gaffer. After a successful career as a gaffer working on numerous music videos, shorts, commercials, feature flms and television shows, she decided to take the leap to move towards becoming a director of photography (DP). Relocating to Los Angeles, she left gaffng behind and began working as a DP on the feature flm Mariachi Gringo (2012) directed by Tom Gustafson for whom she had photographed the short Fairies (2003). Kira was the DP on the documentary Back on Board: Greg Louganis (2014). She returned to television where she photographed, ten episodes of Sing It! (2016) and 61 episodes of East Los High between 2013 and 2016. Her career break occurred by shooting the acclaimed documentary 13th directed by Ava DuVernay, which among many other awards, was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. Kira photographed Skin in the Game (2019), directed by Adisa and returned to working as a DP in television shooting six episodes of The Red Line (2019), and shooting thirteen episodes of Queen Sugar between 2017 and 2019. She was the cinematographer behind the lens of the Primetime Emmynominated mini-series, Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker (2020). She photographed an episode of Home, two episodes of Dream Team: Birth of the Modern Athlete and Y: The Last Man (2020). She was the DP on an episode of Insecure that has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy for her cinematography. Kira is part of the generation of women cinematographers that prove that you can have your career, your marriage and your children. She is climbing towards the peak of her career with many more flms to come.

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How did you become interested in cinematography? In high school I became really interested in photography. But I couldn’t really tell you what a director did versus what a producer did at that point, I just knew that I loved watching movies. I went to college at Northwestern University. They had an excellent flm program. But when I was there, it was defnitely more theory oriented than practice. I did have some excellent professors, Thomas Gunning and Zeinabu Davis stand out. It was great to watch movies and really study them. I took a course on Fritz Lang from silent flm days to when he came to Hollywood and I found the study of flm really inspiring. We learned production by working on Graduate students’ projects. I worked in all different departments, there was one shoot where I ended up working in the lighting department. We were doing this setup, which in hindsight was probably a pretty standard medium shot, but there were lights around and C-stands holding nets and fags, it was the biggest setup I had worked on before. The cinematographer, who was a woman, let me look through the viewfnder. I remember having this moment of being so excited about this world outside of this frame, something that the audience never ever sees, they just see the effects of it. I was inspired by that moment of creating something that doesn’t get seen but is necessary to tell the story. That’s when I was like, boom, yes this is what I want to do. But I defnitely didn’t have cinematography in mind at frst.

How did you begin working as a gaffer? How did you learn all the electrical stuff? Where did that come from? My work study job was in the equipment cage. I was always so nervous. Even though I was studying cinematography, I was really afraid of dropping a lens and my mom having to pay for it. I thought, I’m going to stay with the lights. If I drop one of those, it’s fairly cheap. I began to feel more comfortable with lighting. During the summers in Chicago, I worked at a commercial lighting company. I would clean out their trucks at the end of the shoot. That’s where I learned about their equipment. Sometimes, I would go out on shoots with them. When I moved back to New York, I worked as a PA (production assistant) for a few months. But every job I was on, I would observe and talk with the gaffer, offering to work for free. I worked my way up from being an electrician and then I started gaffng. It was a great place to learn because when I was an electrician, I was working on larger music videos and commercials. That’s how I got experience with bigger lighting units and saw how DPs used them. For me, it was a really great way to learn how to be on set, see how the set works and how to light.

How did you get into working on music videos and all of that? Is that how your career got started? It was at a time in New York when we were able to do a lot of non-union music videos and commercials. That’s where I met a lot of gaffers while I was

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just starting out as an electrician doing some big budget music videos. I was also able to do some commercials as well. There was a really great group of gaffers that hired me. It was wonderful. There was also a lot of women working. There was one woman, Nicorre, who was considered the best, Best Boy in New York at that time, she took me under her wing and taught me so much about how to be a good technician and about electricity. She was always being hired and brought me on to work with other crews. I met these two other women who are also shooting now, Kristy Tully and Kate Phelan, who were both women gaffers. That’s where I was able to see that being a gaffer was an option. Luckily, there was a lot of diversity when I was coming up in New York and I count myself very thankful for that, because there were some shoots where I was the only woman in the lighting and camera department, but I was surrounded by other Black people, or people of color. Or if I was maybe the only Black person there, I was surrounded by women.

Which time period are you talking about? This is probably between 1998 and 2008. I moved to LA in 2009.

What inspired you to make the move to LA? While I was working as an electrician, I was always trying to shoot as much as possible on the side. I did a lot of documentary work. I would also get narrative stuff for music videos, things like that. But a friend of mine, Tom Gustafson, was also from Northwestern and I had shot his short flm called Fairies. He got funding together for his frst feature, and he asked me to shoot it. It’s a musical, Were the World Mine. This was my frst feature as a DP. We shot on Super 16 mm in Chicago. I just remember having such a great experience. It was just so wonderful to be able to be prepping and only doing cinematography. At that point, I was a successful gaffer. I was getting paid well and consistently. So, it was hard to make that decision to step away from the work and probably be hungry for a while. In New York, I found that every time I was getting a call, it was for gaffng work, so it was always too tempting. At the same time, I was doing a long-distance relationship with my then-boyfriend, now husband. He was in LA, so it just seemed like a good chance to introduce myself, in a new town as a cinematographer.

It does seem to be that people reach a point in their career where they have to either decide to continue on one path or make a radical decision to shift into something else that ultimately leads to your goal. It’s not easy. It’s diffcult. You can make good money as a gaffer or an assistant camera (AC) or whatever, but if you want to take it to the next level up, then you have to make a choice. I was very fortunate that I did the transition while

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I was still single, and I didn’t have my daughter yet. A lot of people can’t make that choice.

A lot of people in your position made the choice to go to the American Film Institute (AFI) to take it to the next step, did you ever consider that? I was so close. I think it would have been great because I know so many AFI people, and they seem to all know each other. They get all these recommendations. But when I moved, I had just gotten out of my college debt, and the idea of getting back in debt, I was just like, “Forget it.”

Was there a particular cinematographer whose work you admired? I was in high school when Godfather 3 came out, I went to see it with my mom. Of course, it’s the worst of all of them, but I still got hooked. With my interest in flms and my love of photography, I became inspired to be a flmmaker. I ended up watching Godfather 1 and 2, on repeat, just loving them. At that point I couldn’t have told you what a director of photography did exactly, and I don't even know if I even registered the name Gordon Willis at the time. But it was about watching those flms and seeing this incredible story unfold. So, I would have to say that Gordon Willis was defnitely a huge inspiration. I don’t understand how he could work so well in so many different genres. His work with Woody Allen is just amazing. I think most people, still to this day, have this idea of what a comedy should look like and I love that it’s not the case with any of Gordon Willis’s movies. He defed conventions. When at Northwestern, I discovered Wong Kar-Wai and Chunking Express and his work with Chris Doyle. It was just the two of them and it seemed like they took chances constantly. The flms were super lyrical, and they mixed things up like going off frame and really showing the emotion of the story. That was really inspirational. Also, Conrad Hall and Harris Savides. I just loved Harris’s work, I had a friend who had worked with him and said how kind he was. It’s just so tragic that he’s not still doing work.

You were talking about your interest in still photography, which is a common bond that a lot of cinematographers share. Was there a particular photographer or a style of photography that you like to do? Do you like photojournalism? Do you like fne art photography? I love both photojournalism and fne art photography, I think my photography is a hybrid of the two. I was talking to a friend about this yesterday because of all the protests in LA. When I was still in New York, there were protests with

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the Bush administration and during those protests, I loved running out with my camera and shooting as much as I could. I also tried to get into doing some portrait stuff. But it never felt casual enough. It always felt like I was trying to force it. Even today with my photography, I take a lot of pictures of my daughter. Sometimes, she lets me, most of the time she says “no.”

I still like to take pictures and look at photography. It seems to be a common bond with a lot of cinematographers. I used to develop my own images. I was developing color photos at this lab on 17th Street. It was a fun time. Todd Hido is one of my favorite photographers. He does beautiful landscape images and portraiture. We have so many different references, but sometimes there’s too much research on the computer, with google images and looking for stuff, instead of sitting down with books.

When you moved to LA, how did you get started working in the industry? Did somebody mentor you, or did you just fall into it? At the beginning, it was very quiet, I went around to a bunch of different agents and I showed them my reel. I fnally ended up working with this one agency called Radiant Artists, with Lana Wilson, who is amazing. So, I got an agent, but it was still very slow at frst. Carlos Portugal had seen a flm I shot at a festival, so we did this really, really low budget movie that also had musical elements to it, shot mainly in east LA. It was great working with Carlos and meeting LA crews. After that, Carlos had this idea that he was producing with this other company, that they were going to do this show called East Los High. That frst year, we didn’t have distribution, but the second year, we ended up going to Hulu, and that’s how I was able to get into the union.

Was working on the documentary, 13th what catapulted your career? What was the experience of that like? 100%. Well, it’s still incredibly timely today, which I think is a testament to how great the documentary is and what a beautiful job Ava DuVernay did with it. I didn’t know Ava at frst, I knew of her and we followed each other on social media. Then one day, I got an email from her assistant saying, “Ava is interested in meeting with you. Would you like that?” I said, “Of course.” Initially we were meeting for a different project which didn’t end up happening, but then she said, “I’ve got this documentary. Would you be interested?” And I’m like, “Of course.” It was not only incredible to be working with her and seeing how she worked, but also the subject matter is just incredible. I remember when we fnished all the interviews, I kept expecting to hear back

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that we had to shoot more “B” roll, but they had so much archival footage. She wanted the interviews to be able to stand on their own. In documentary, there is this idea of a “talking head,” just saying that minimizes it. But really, if you can shoot somebody and give them some level of dignity, not that everybody has to look regal, but to make everybody have their own bit of pride in their setups, show the gravity of who this person is. For example, when we did Angela Davis, I was trying to frame her to show her as this historical fgure who’s in the present.

So, that collaboration with Ava led to your involvement with Queen Sugar? Yes, my collaboration on 13th led to three seasons on Queen Sugar, which was for me, even though I had done television before, it opened up even more doors. It’s just a great story. I loved shooting in New Orleans because one location was right out by the river and you’d look right over and see slave shacks; you could really feel the history in that place. Sometimes, that’s scary and other times, it’s very heavy, but it’s beautiful too. It’s a really gorgeous spot.

Do you have a preference between shooting documentary, television or narrative features? I love documentary, I think it’s very important for learning how to improvize and that’s a good muscle to have as a DP. I’m lucky right now with some of the television I work on, because there’s a rigging crew, I can ask for something and it’s there when I walk into the room. There’s all this support and that’s incredible. But with documentary, maybe it’s you and maybe you have a focus puller and one person doing lighting. There’s so much more of just saying, “Okay. What’s the best angle in this room?” A lot of times, maybe you haven’t even done a location scout. You look for the best angle in the room where the sun will be good for the next two or three hours without having to interrupt or change anything. It’s really a nice process for how to do things minimally. I take that into my jobs with a bigger budget and more support, because no matter how much you’ve planned, you get to the day and everything might change. You always have to be ready and thinking. I love prep on every job. You plan for everything knowing that at any second, you can shake it all up and it goes away. But at least you had an idea of what you wanted to happen. TV has been great too, there’s so much wonderful TV happening now. I can’t even keep up with all the amazing, gorgeous shows that are on. But TV can be rough because even if you’re alternating with another DP and you’re doing ten episodes, you’re gone for six or eight months out of a year. That has been a bit of a strain for me and my family. So, I’m trying to make the transition into doing more commercials and more movies. I love the idea of two hours to tell a story. Right now, it’s the golden age of TV and we’ve gotten used to watching episodic stories. But I think we’ve lost the idea of a more

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compact format, which is funny to call two hours a compact format. I like the idea of having a story begin and end. So, I’m looking forward to doing more features.

What attracts you to a project creatively? What themes do you think speak to you? I like things that are story driven. This sounds so basic, but it has to be a good story. With Queen Sugar, I like being able to tell this beautiful story of this family, which isn’t always wrapped up neatly. The idea that there are still Black people who are farming and trying to make a living today. Every time I talk to somebody about the project, they’re like, “Oh, is it a period piece?” and I say, “No, this is happening right now.” Self Made of course is a great story, with Madam C.J. Walker and what she did in that time period still boggles my mind. She wasn’t just the frst Black woman to be a self made millionaire. She was the frst woman in America, Black or White, to be a self made millionaire. The fact that she came from nothing, her parents were share-croppers, and she was just driven to succeed. It was her own driving force that willed all of that into action. It would be hard for any woman, especially a Black woman not to be inspired by that. So, I look for stories with strong characters. What I loved so much about Self Made and working with Octavia was that you would see this actor, at the top of her craft, putting everything into it. I would think to myself, “How can I have it better?” The idea of bringing your A-game to these projects, it’s inspiring.

In terms of genres, is there something that you would actually absolutely pass on? It’s funny, a friend of mine is also a DP, she does do a lot of horror and she’s excellent at it. But I’m so wimpy, even if I know where all the cuts are and where I’m supposed to be scared, it still works on me. I’m not trying to be highbrow about it, it’s just I’m a little wimpy. Even with Hereditary, which is supposed to be a really incredible horror movie that I wish I could see. I tried to watch it while I was on an airplane because I thought it would be less scary because I was surrounded by people. But within the frst fve minutes, I screamed out loud. I was so freaked out. I still haven’t seen it, I’d love to see it. But yeah, no horror for me.

How do you like to collaborate with a director? And what attributes do you like in a director? The director–DP relationship is so director driven because we have to fgure out how they like to work. Some want to have you right there for the shot listing, others like to do their own thing, then show you what they’ve thought of. It just totally depends. I love the time and soft prep before you’re actually even

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in the offce. The time of really just sending images back and forth or picking up a sequence and trying to fgure out what the language of the piece is going to be. What’s the language of that story? For me, it’s the most exciting time. Whenever I fnd a director who equally likes that time of exchange of images, it’s really an exciting for me.

Do you like to storyboard? Or would you like to just have the kind of exchange of images with visual references? I like both. I like to storyboard, and if storyboarding is happening, I defnitely like to be there. It’s important. I really like if I can get the time standing in the locations with the director, really fguring out the shots that way. I love sitting and talking about a scene like, “Whose scene is this? Does that shift at some point? Does it become somebody else’s scene?” I do believe flm is a visual language. I feel like sometimes with TV, even though there is so much more creativity now, depending on who the showrunner is, you still have to shoot it in a way where you have so much extra coverage that it devolves into that shot, reverse shot pattern. On projects where you do get more freedom in coverage and are able to show how the frame says something, if somebody was watching it on mute, they would still understand what’s happening in the story. But if you have two people sitting across from each other with dialog the whole time, no matter how emotional they are, you don’t really know what’s happening in the story. If somebody can watch something that I shot on mute and know what’s happening, then I’ve spoken the language of cinema. I try to push myself with, “What is this shot saying? Is it saying something in service of the story, or is it just a really cool angle that I want to have on my reel?”

If you had a choice of a format, if you could choose anything, what makes you decide format? And what choice would you prefer, if you could choose anything? I love shooting flm. I think it’s gorgeous, but then there are times when I wonder if I’m just being nostalgic for flm? I think it’s a mistake to go into a project and say we have to shoot flm. Sometimes, it’s the right choice and other times, you’ve got to fgure out a different way. I think it’s one of those things where it’s a lot about testing and fguring out what is right for the story. I do have a romantic idea of getting a movie that’s single camera so I can get to operate and there’s no big village, no digital imaging technician chief (DIT), just me and my meter. It sounds very romantic and old school, doesn’t it? But also, I feel like digital has in many ways made the process simpler while also making it super complicated. It’s one of those things where you give up a little bit of being the only person on set who knows how it’s going to come out. Now, everybody can see the monitor and add their comments.

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Have you faced any challenges in pursuing your craft, that you’d like to speak of? When I went to New Orleans for the frst time for Queen Sugar, since it was my frst year, I hadn’t met much of the crew yet. I was in the offce with the other DP, Antonio and I had told the gaffer and the key grip how we wanted the lighting rigged.We were all still in prep and the stages were being rigged.Antonio had to be out on a scout, so I decided to walk through the set, just to see how everything was going. I walk on and they were hanging the lights and I said to the crew,“Oh, hey. I’m Kira. I’m one of the DPs and this isn’t how we talked about having these rigged.”The response I got was,“Okay.Well, talk to him over there.” I went over and introduced myself, and said, “I just wanted to talk to you about how this is rigged. I don’t think it’s how we asked for it.” He was like,“Well, who are you?” I tell him again, “I’m the DP, Kira.” He says, “Well, we talked to the main DP and he said that this is how it should be.” I was just like, “There is no main DP, we are both the DPs. I am the DP of this episode and I am telling you this is not how we talked about it.” He was very confrontational.That was rough because then suddenly, I thought, I’m not going to stand here and get into this back and forth altercation with this guy. So, I left him right away and called the key grip, he was wonderful about it. So, eventually, the guy came and apologized to me. But I think it was a function of both sexism and racism that really disturbed me. Every time I go into a new city or I have a new job come up and I’m working with a new crew, I always have to tell myself, “Just give it till lunch,” because the whole frst part of the day is spent with everybody doubting that I actually know what I’m doing. But by lunch, they see that I do. They either come on board and accept me and if they don’t, then it’s their issue. Maybe it’s changing. I really do hope it’s changing. I’m in my 40s and I feel like there’s such an incredible younger generation of women, Black women, women of color, shooting now that I hope maybe they don’t have to deal with the same sorts of things. I feel like slowly but surely, people are getting more used to the idea of women shooting.

Are you seeing the doors opening now for women cinematographers? I see the doors opening for women 100%. However, there is a part of me that is always a little afraid that it’s just a trend and at some point, something is going to happen and it’s going to be like, “Oh, yeah. We tried that in 2019 and that didn’t go so well. Let’s just hire who we know now.” For me, it’s become one of those things where it’s suddenly talked about so much, which is great, but we need to realize that there are really qualifed women shooters. I always get hesitant when people come out and say, “We really want a woman for this.” Because a lot of times on the jobs that say that they want an all women crew, nine times out of ten, that means that they’re not paying you or the crew what a normal rate is.

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But the other thing is, and I speak for myself, where they wanted a woman shooter, I have to appreciate it, because I’ve gotten so many jobs because people decided,“This is a story where I feel like a woman should be on set,” or,“I want the idea of a woman shooter.” However, I also want to be like,“But did you look at my work?” I don’t want the job just because you’re looking for a woman to shoot the job, I want the job because my work is something that you can see for the job. It’s this fne line. I still question myself. Is it mutually exclusive? If somebody is coming and saying,“We really want a woman for this job,” part of me is just like,“Well, you should be getting the best DP for this job.” I want to be the best. I hope that with this climate where so many more women are coming into it, I don’t want to get a job just because I’m a woman. I want to be put in that job pool for my work. When you’re at the hiring stage, look for more candidates that are women. Have the candidates that you have for this job refect the world around you. Have some Black people there, have some Latinx people there, have some women, have some men. And then, from there, pick the best one. I don’t think any of us are saying we want jobs just because we’re women. We want to be in the pool for those jobs to compete with men and women. Yes, because we’re women, because we’re talented, but pick the best person for the job. I don’t know. Maybe this is my own thing, but sometimes I feel like it minimizes the talent of all these incredible female DPs to just say, “Yeah. We only want women shooters.”

Have you been on any shoots where it has been a women’s crew? There have been shoots where they want to only work with women and the budgets have been less. But with great content and supporting women’s issues, and it’s actually pretty great. But at the end where everybody gets together to take a picture, it commodifes it a little bit. When I’m hiring my crew, I’m looking for incredible technicians. Sometimes it isn’t found if you look just on a resume because you may have an incredible utility who hasn’t really gotten a chance before, but she’s eager, she wants to learn. She might have the resume that the guy does but because he’s known all these guys that you’ve been working with, he can easily get hired from job to job. She might not have the exact same resume, but she’s got the drive, she’s eager and wants to learn. It’s one of those things, whenever I see an electrician, anybody who is watching and eager to learn, that’s the person I want to know. That’s how it happened for me when I was coming up as an electrician, I was always ready to learn, I was paying attention. Whenever I see that on set, it’s just really exciting.

You are also one of several cinematographers who has appeared on set pregnant. Is it becoming more accepted as something that is not atypical anymore? For me, that was at the beginning of East Los High for Hulu, and I’d already done the movie with Carlos when he asked me to shoot East Los High. I was

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like, “Carlos, I would love to do it but just so you know, I’m pregnant.” My daughter was due at the end of July and the beginning of July was right in the middle of it. So, there was no way I could do it. But he said, “That’s not a problem, would you still want to shoot it? Maybe you’ll just shoot the frst half, and then we’ll fnd somebody else for the second half?” In my brain at that moment, I thought, “Okay. Sure, yes.” I guess we get in our heads that pregnancy is a disability or something. The fact that he was so easy to make it work is a testament to him and the direction that the industry is going in. I think that it’s pretty great. We have such a weird job and it’s such a minimal sense of support that you would need. I usually camera operated. I miss it now. But I had an operator because I was very pregnant. But it was still one of those things where the crew was super careful around me, they see that a pregnant woman is there working. So, there’s nothing we can’t handle.

Have you found a way to balance it with your personal life? Once my daughter started school was when it started to get rough, because before then I could just take her with me. I started Queen Sugar when she was about four and I had to travel more. For the frst year of Queen Sugar, I went alone. She came down for prep with me, then she came back to LA with my husband. I would come home on the weekends. For the second year, we brought her and did kindergarten in New Orleans, which was wonderful. That’s been the best experience we had. My husband was able to work one week in LA, one week in New Orleans. He was going back and forth, so the three of us were able to be together in New Orleans. But as they get older, they start to have social lives, so you feel, “I don’t want to drag her out of school every time I get a job someplace else,” so I’ve started to come home on the weekends. We shot Self Made in Toronto. I would shoot and then be on the 8:00 AM fight on Saturday back to LA. I’d be home for 36 hours and then come back for Monday morning. But I feel that was just part of the deal that I had made with myself. The only way I could stomach being able to do this was if I see them often and they see me often. This time of being home for COVID has made me rethink a lot. Working in television is a long time to be away, even if you are coming back and forth and it’s really easy to get run down. You’re on set over twelve hours a day, fve days a week, you’re seeing crew more than you’re seeing your family. It’s hard, for any family unit. It’s not healthy to be working on set for over twelve hours a day, maybe the shooting day should be ten hours to keep people going. That would be a signifcant change for families. It means you can actually get home when your kid is still awake. I’m hoping that maybe during this time of trying to reassess, we can fgure out a way to get the same amount of work done faster, so that this life can be a little kinder to the people who live it? I have a friend of mine who’s also a DP, and he’s a dad with two kids. We talk about this a lot, and he said, “Why do they always ask the women about this? Why do they never ask us?” Why don’t they ask the men about it? I see

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he’s always heartbroken to get home. Maybe now it can be okay for somebody, even if it’s a guy to be like, “I miss my family.” I know that my daughter thinks what I do is cool, she’s like, “Wow, my mommy is a cinematographer.” She asks questions about lights and she’s really smart when we’re watching shows about what’s happening with plot. I just want to make sure that she’s okay when I do have to be away. It’s not easy for either of us.

What essential skills do you think an aspiring cinematographer should possess? What would you say about flm school or going up through the ranks? Do you have any thoughts about that? Film school is great for context. With my flm school experience, it’s having this chance to make a lot of mistakes where the stakes aren’t high. With AFI, as we discussed earlier, you also get a lot of contacts. But working your way up through the ranks, you get contacts there too. If you’re going to do it that way though, there’s going to be some point, if you’re an electrician or you start to gaff, you’re making over $500 a day on a shoot and it’s easy, especially when you’re really young, to see that money and be like, “Yes. I can stay here for a bit.” But you have to try to live below your means because there is going to be a point when either work dries up because of crazy world events and pandemics. Or you might want to take that next step. It’s easier to make that next step if you’ve got a little bit of a cushion, maybe three months or six months that you can fall back on. I feel like such an auntie saying that. But it helps that transition, so that you can focus on your craft. Also, just shooting as much as possible in the beginning, but then there’s the fne line of not having to take a job just for the money of it. But shoot as much as you can but hopefully on projects that at least speak to you. Really try to push yourself in ways that get you out of your comfort level. When you can do it, experiment on your own. Try to fgure out what you enjoy. If you’re not going to flm school, there’s so many resources on YouTube, flm books, photo books. Really teach yourself. Get the Criterion Collection app on your smart television, watch those movies. Again, it’s a visual language. Really educate yourself in how to convey a story visually.

Well, you know you’re an inspiration to cinematographers, like young women, especially women of color. And we talked about the doors opening wider for cinematography, but what about women to direct? I think that there’s a lot of options for women directors. I feel like there might be more than for cinematographers. Maybe it’s just that I just work with so many women directors. That’s why I feel that it might be easier for them.

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Again, I’m hoping that it’s not a trend. This is the time where people are trying to hire more women. For Queen Sugar, that was what Ava wanted, a show from the point of view of women. So, every episode is directed by a woman and it’s her frst television experience. I know a lot of women directors who are working and doing amazing work. Portrait of a Woman on Fire, that movie, it’s incredible. It has a woman director, a woman DP and I’m convinced that there’s a scene in that movie that only a woman could direct. Okay, spoiler alert, the overhead shot where the girl is having the abortion and there’s a baby right next to her and she’s playing with the baby’s fngers while that baby’s mother is giving her an abortion. That detail is something that happens when you let a woman tell a story about other women. I think it’s a very exciting time.

Do you have any interest in directing, yourself, at this point? Not really. I think that’s part of why I always feel like there’s more women directors than women DPs because people ask me more often, “Do you want to direct?” So, I feel like they just need more women directors. But I like what I do, and I see the level of questions a director gets. As a DP, the number of questions I get sometimes is pretty mind-boggling too. But then a director has to answer 100% more questions. Maybe at some point, it might be interesting just to try directing and see how it goes, but I’m pretty happy with being a DP right now. I feel like I’ve fnally started hitting my stride and it would seem strange to stop that right now.

Where do you see yourself headed in the next ten, twenty years? What do you want to be doing? I would like to be doing more features. I’m not even talking about huge blockbuster things. I’m still a sucker for just small movies that tell a really good story. Again, maybe I’m romanticizing flm, but this chance to really work within a timeframe and not have to be beholden to getting coverage of everything like, maybe this shot, maybe this whole scene or maybe this whole three and a halfpage scene could play out in one angle? The idea that you could try that is a fun challenge. And again, always some level of documentary in there because I think that’s important.

So, you think you’d go back and forth between narrative features and documentary? That would be pretty perfect.

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Ellen came to cinematography from a theoretical perspective, studying ancient history and social anthropology at Brown, photography at Rhode Island School of Design and the theory of cinema and propaganda in Paris. She received a grant from the National Endowment of Humanities and, for a Masters thesis project, began making a documentary that became The Betrayal/ Nerakhoon, where she realized the storytelling power of the camera by directing and ultimately shooting the flm. With her eclectic photographic and theory background she did not enter the flm industry traditionally through the camera department hierarchy. Living in New York City, she was exposed to a world of artists, dancers, experimental and documentary flmmakers who saw the stunning stylized sensitivity of her early work and asked her to shoot for them. On her frst documentary as a cinematographer, Ellen won a Student Academy Award for her work on the short flm Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia (1990) which was also given Special Jury Recognition at Sundance. Her work caught the eye of producer Christine Vachon, beginning a successful collaboration with Killer Films (formerly Apparatus Films) in the early 1990s when Christine introduced her to director Tom Kalin. Kalin invited her to be the cinematographer on Swoon, which was her frst foray into narrative flm and into black and white cinematography. For her work on Swoon she won the Sundance Award for Best Dramatic Cinematography and became known to Hollywood. She then photographed Postcards from America (1994) and I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) which Vachon also produced. In 1995, she photographed Angela, her frst flm with Rebecca Miller, for which she won her second Sundance Award for Best Dramatic Cinematography. Their collaboration was a symbiotic one as they reteamed for Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002). Not only did Personal Velocity win the grand prize at Sundance, but Ellen also won an unprecedented third time for the Sundance Award for Best Dramatic Cinematography. She collaborated with Rebecca again on The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005). Ellen began working with Spike Lee on his documentary 4 Little Girls (1997) which garnered her a Primetime Emmy nomination. Her collaboration with

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Spike continued with He Got Game (1998), Summer of Sam (1999), Bamboozled (2000) and Jim Brown: All American (2002) and the documentary American Utopia (2020) along with many commercials and special projects. Moving easily between the studio and independent worlds, Ellen photographed Just the Ticket (1999) directed by Richard Wenk, The Mod Squad (1999) by Scott Silver and the infamous flm Blow (2001) starring Johnny Depp and directed by Ted Demme. One of the frst women to shoot a major Hollywood flm, Ellen was Director of Photography on the comedy Analyze That directed by Harold Rami and starring Robert de Niro and Billy Crystal. In 2004, she collaborated with Michel Gondry on the memorable Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a flm which made a huge visual impact in the world of cinema, but which was before its time; the flm received an Academy Award only for its script. She and Gondry then worked on Block Party (2005) and Be Kind Rewind (2008). In 2009, Sam Mendes asked her to join him in shooting Away We Go (2009) and then, after already having moved into directing commercials, Ellen collaborated with Alan Rickman on his second feature as a director A Little Chaos (2014). Returning to her unfnished thesis project, she completed her own directorial debut, The Betrayal – Nerakhoon, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary feature as well as an Independent Spirit Award in 2009. The flm then won the Primetime Emmy for best documentary in 2010. After the release of The Betrayal – Nerakhoon, Ellen has continued to successfully balance a career as a director and cinematographer for independent flms, Hollywood flms, television and documentary. Though a director in her own right, she continues her longtime artistic collaborations with certain directors. She and Martin Scorsese have come together over the years to work on special projects like No Direction Home which featured the life and work of Bob Dylan, Shine a Light (2008), Public Speaking (2010), George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011), The 50 Year Argument (2014) and Rolling Thunder Review (2019) and are currently working on an untitled project about the NY Dolls. With Jonathan Demme, she photographed Neil Young Heart of Gold (2006) with Julian Schnabel as well as Berlin: Lou Reed (2007) and Trouble No More (2017) with Bob Dylan.With Brett Morgan, she traveled to Tanzania and won a Primetime Emmy for her work on the documentary Jane (2018). Though cinematography will always be part of her creative process, she has come full circle, having turned her primary attentions towards directing drama. When she was unavailable to shoot the pilot for Falling Water, the showrunner then asked her to direct two episodes, her frst foray into television. She has also shot episodes of Ozark, Legion, Catch-22, The Son, Brave New World and The Umbrella Academy. With a feature flm on the horizon, Ellen will continue forging ahead on her untraditional path of flmmaking, seamlessly moving from being a cinematographer on narrative features and documentaries to directing commercials, television and feature flms.

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What made you want to be a cinematographer? The path to cinematography began as part of my journey as a flmmaker; my desire to be a cinematographer evolved out of a desire to create meaning with imagery, to create visual metaphors with imagery that could tell their own story in concert with the words and the actions. My cinematic journey started when I was a young teenager living in a small town where the same flm would play for two months at the local cinema. Luckily, the flm 2001: A Space Odyssey screened, and I saw it many times, the ideas and images embedded in my mind. Then I saw a flm called Billy Jack and suddenly I realized that it was the frst time a Cowboy and Indian flm had been made from the point of view of the Native Americans. It struck me that fction flms could entertain and educate and bring light to the human condition through empathy and identifcation with characters and their situations. Those two flms subconsciously lit a spark in me in the ways flm could visually communicate and affect people on emotional and intellectual levels. I was also fascinated with ancient history, so I went to Brown University thinking that I would be an Egyptologist but soon realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a library. I had always dreamed of being an artist, so when I learned that I could take classes at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), I took a photography class. As fate took me in her hands, that class opened up a whole world of visual language to me. I looked at light and shadow for the frst time. Stumbling upon a unique program at the Centre Americain des Etudes du Film, which explored meaning and signs/symbols as they relate to flm, I went to Paris to study for a year. I read a lot of Freud and Lacan in French and became interested in the idea of propaganda. Propaganda as part of the construct of flm, as all flms are a form of propaganda. That brought me round again to the idea of how meaning is created. In the language of cinematography, that translates to type of camera, format, lighting, lens choice, blocking, composition, flm stock, and color timing/grading as well as the numerous other elements of flmmaking. Since I was very politicized at the time, I gravitated towards dramas and documentaries that had political subtexts – flms like Z, Missing, The Battle of Algiers, Hearts and Minds. But I was also drawn to the world of experimental flmmaking as well. As a young photographer, I knew that I wanted to go beyond the still image and to say something more with flm and visual metaphor.

The question was how? I somehow knew that craft was not all about making a flm, so I graduated with a degree both in semiotics and social anthropology to understand the people and the human condition that I wanted to make flms about. While in France, I had studied the theoretical aspects of flm and was so imbued with theory that I just wanted to get my hands on a camera. I wanted to learn

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about the technique of the camera, flm stock, light and color theory. I had received a Fulbright scholarship and was going to go to the Lodz School of Film in Poland to study cinematography, but martial law fell so I moved to New York. There I had heard that the dancer/flmmaker Yvonne Rainer was making a flm, so I convinced her to take me on as a camera assistant. Of course, the camera she was using was a 16mm Frezzolini, whose movement was complex to thread – so on my frst camera, I was in the hot seat and had to learn fast.

How did you transition into becoming a cinematographer? After graduating from Brown University, I decided to take independent study classes at NYU towards a master’s degree. As part of my thesis project, I started making a documentary about the Southeast Asian refugees I had met in Rochester. I did about a year of research living with a family and learning all about Southeast Asian culture. I decided to learn the language, and this is when I met Thavi who is the protagonist of my flm The Betrayal – Nerakhoon. Based on photographs that I had taken during my time at RISD and Brown University, I got a small grant through the National Endowment for Humanities to make a flm. I hired a cinematographer who had been recommended and we went out to shoot for four days, but when the dailies came back, I was struck by my reaction.The images were well shot but I felt that they were missing something, something essential. I couldn’t put my fnger on it at that time. What was it about these images that didn’t work? Somehow, they didn’t mean anything to me. I picked up the camera myself to discover what that was.This was the start of my journey in the search for meaning – in the image and in every aspect of a flm.This was a really critical moment in my career, which has infuenced everything I have done since. “How can I create meaning in the ways to tell a story?” It’s about metaphor. The idea of creating meaning through context, through the use of metaphors; I realized this was something that I had to try to discover myself. For The Betrayal – Nerakhoon, I wanted to tell the story from a frst-person perspective, to be able to bring the viewer vicariously into the experience of being in the situation. I wanted the flm to be a poetic interpretation of the worldview of the Laotians so that people could not only understand what their world was like, but they could experience it.Though documentary was very narrow in its defnition at the time, I was interested in exploring the intersection of reality and fction in the spirit of the truth. I wanted to convey the idea of dramatizing reality, making it metaphorical instead of literal.When thinking about images, I wanted to understand what is it that makes a shot? I discovered that every shot has a story to tell, that every shot has a beginning, middle and end. Even now, shooting thirty years later, when I move the camera or if something is moving in front of the camera, I think about what is this shot saying? If I’m panning from right to left, what am I looking at and what does it mean? There has to be some sort of logic motivated by the latent

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meaning for me. One could have shots that are beautifully executed but don’t say anything about the story being told. So, therein was the challenge for me: the exploration to discover what it actually means to create meaning, a metaphor for the story. Every cinematographer who considers a look for a flm goes through the same questioning, how is the light going to impart a certain feeling in a scene? Do I use smoke? Is it high- or low-key lighting? How much fll do I put in? Is it hard light or soft light? All of those questions and decisions bear upon how one perceives the story.

It’s interesting because you’re saying that you were aware of the theoretical aspects working while you were behind the lens, which is not something that happens all the time with cinematographers. I came from a much more intellectual point of view because I was very much a scholar and was thinking about meaning before I even got behind a camera. And I was reading a lot of poetry and looking at a lot of paintings and sculpture. It’s a different approach than perhaps the one that most more traditional cinematographers have taken. I always think of what it is I’m trying to say with the images even in commercials or music videos. That’s the most exciting part of it for me, otherwise shooting just becomes an exercise. I’m looking for more depth in the lighting and in moving the camera around. It’s one thing to make a beautiful, stunning image and it’s a whole other thing to create an image that tells a story and can stand on its own having meaning and telling its own story.

What attracts you to a project creatively? First, it would be the script. Obviously, the work of a director is also something that I look at. If Terrence Malik was to call me up and say, “hey do you want to work with me?” I would be keen to work with him even before reading the script because I know Terrence Malik is very selective about his material. What is fascinating about his work is that it is replete with metaphors. It’s about human nature, the human condition, the universe, about time and space, along with his philosophical point of view and that’s very exciting to me. I have steered clear of doing flms that don’t scratch beneath the surface. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind distinguishes itself from a typical romantic comedy because imbedded in the script there were so many questions such as what are our life and relationships and what is memory? The questions were much greater than what appeared on the surface. To me, that was very important because it stimulated me intellectually and enabled me to think about how to shoot in a way that people would understand as an experience and comprehend the metaphors and concepts as well. That’s something that I think about a lot when I work with Rebecca Miller. We work so well together because we both think in terms of metaphors and in

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terms of trying to fnd those dramatic moments that carry the weight of meaning for the story.

Are there certain genres that you are not as interested in shooting? Pure slapstick literal comedy is really diffcult to shoot. I fnd that it is a much greater challenge for me than the most complex intellectual script. The placement of the camera and the timing is so important in comedy and it’s not something I gravitate to intuitively. To do comedy really well is challenging, it’s an art and I truly enjoy a flm that breaks the barriers. The Cohen brothers tend to do that, and I really like their kind of comedy, it’s ironic and tongue in cheek in great ways, certainly dark. I can defnitely appreciate their dark comedy. Look at Raising Arizona, it did not look like your typical comedy, it didn’t have a lot of fll light, and it looked more like a dramatic flm. The Cohen Brothers and Roger Deakins, together they have really tried to fip around the notion of what comedy is and how it looks. Eternal Sunshine is called a romantic comedy, but I did not approach the lighting at all like a romantic comedy, in fact I wanted to defy that.

How did you transition from the New York independent scene to working in Hollywood on studio flms? Swoon and Angela didn’t have wide releases, but they got critical acclaim. But my frst step towards the Hollywood studio system was because of Andy Garcia, who was the flm heartthrob at the time. One day I got a call, and the guy on the other end said that he was Andy Garcia. I laughed and said, “Yeah, that’s funny, who is this?” and he said, “I’m Andy Garcia – for real – I’m producing and I’m starring in a movie and I’d be interested in you shooting it.” The flm was called Just the Ticket. That was my frst union picture in New York and the frst time that I had any kind of connection with Hollywood other than Swoon, which then afterwards led to The Mod Squad, which was my frst studio flm and the frst time that I was shooting a flm in Los Angeles. Then, along came the late amazing Ted Demme, who had also come from the independent scene. A lot of my work had been critically reviewed and had been seen all over the country, so people knew about me. Ted called me up and he said, “Hey, I’ve been following your career and I’m working on a flm and want to know if you wanna work on Blow.” Had to laugh at that one! Blow was probably the biggest flm at the time for a woman cinematographer, because there weren’t that many women working in the industry back then. Though I continued to work on bigger studio flms, I consciously kept one foot in the independent world because there the directors had more creative autonomy and because I had relationships working with the same directors.

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Also, I was and still am very picky about the kinds of flms that I choose to be a part of. That’s really what led my decisions.

And what is it that speaks to you thematically? Have you been able to pinpoint a theme you’re consistently drawn to? I’ve always been drawn to more psychological, dramatic flms that have dark sides and irony. As I mentioned, I found comedy challenging for me, because comedy is more literal and I’m much more about metaphor. I would fnd myself naturally gravitating towards European flms with a more emotional core and with insight into the human condition than action flms, which were mostly about camera placement and stunts.

What attributes do you like in a director? I could list a number of different things, from how unique their perspective is to what they want to say and how they want to say it. But being prepared is key for me, because when a director is not prepared it means they haven’t really thought about what they want to do or say with the flm, so it’s essential for me that the director be prepared. I also think it’s really important for me that they be a decent, ethical human being with a moral compass and hopefully are a good person. I am not into working with people with huge egos who think they are superior. This is a business that can easily allow someone to fall into the ego trip of thinking they are better than everyone else just because they are the designated leader of the group. I don’t allow that on my set, not as a director and not as a director of photography (DP) in the camera/grip/electric departments. I like to think that everyone works together for a common goal with respect for everyone, no matter the title. Of course, there is a hierarchy involved and people have to be leaders, but ideally everyone treats everyone else with respect, whether you are a PA or a driver or the producer. So, that’s important for me and if that doesn’t exist, then I’m not happy at all and I’m vocal about it too, you can imagine (laughs). But I don’t yell on set. I’ve worked as an electrician and as a camera assistant on documentaries, I know what it’s like to see people yell, and it’s clear that it’s just not effective; the person being yelled at immediately steps out of their mind’s eye and is watching themselves being yelled at, so you lose that person. There are other ways to stimulate people to do better work and to be responsible.

Have you had a negative experience on a flm? When I was an electrician a long time ago, I was trying to learn how to light and this guy made me do stupid things all day just to assert that he was the person more in charge. I called him out on it; I pulled him aside and said what’s this about?

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When you frst read a script for a feature flm, how do you prepare for it? The frst reading of the script is very important, even before I meet the director. I usually take a lot of notes because that’s the frst impression I have of stepping inside of that world. How I see it in my mind’s eye usually comes to bear at that moment. I like to read on paper and take lots of notes in the margins. Then I’m pretty adamant about making sure that I have time with the director, to sit down by ourselves to get to know and trust each other. It’s my time to have a quiet conversation with the director and to get inside of his/her/their mind to understand what he/she/they are thinking. I like to take them away someplace if I can, so we spend four days together just thinking and living the material. I like to go through the script frst in a very general way to understand the arc and the characters and get a general idea of what the director wants to say. Then we do a very detailed perusal of the script scene by scene, that’s my opportunity to ask the director questions in confdence: what do you want to say with this? What is the essence of this scene? Why are we here at this location and what is the meaning of it? Because all of that tells me how to shoot it. Part of the time spent together is also to get into their mind’s eye to understand where they were when they wrote the script or how they want to interpret it if they were not the writer. It’s my job at that point to focus on the director’s vision and to expand it to capture the heart of the story. Each director works very differently of course. For example, Rebecca Miller and I will spend two months preparing, sitting down for three hours a day just going through the script so that we fully understand it. Then we make a very detailed shot list. That’s why when I shoot with Rebecca, most times we don’t even have to talk during the course of the day because we are on the same page, so it’s a short hand, and that’s great because then you are working with one mind. There are times when Rebecca will be looking in the monitor and I’m shooting in a room down the hall and she’s thinking push in and I just intuitively start to push in, so we have that kind of symbiotic relationship that is so special. When I was doing Summer of Sam with Spike (Lee), we didn’t have any time to prep together because I was on a movie which wrapped three weeks before we were supposed to start actual shooting. In order to prep in time, I would commute back and forth to New York on the weekends during the last four weeks of the previous flm. It was an insane schedule but both Spike and I wanted to work together. I really only had about two and a half weeks of prep on Summer of Sam, so we didn’t have time to sit down and shot list, which is not the way Spike works anyway; he’s much more extemporaneous. Sam was a period flm but Spike at the time didn’t want to commit to looking in one direction or another, so we had to be prepared for everything. What we would do is meet in the Bronx at 5:15 am the day of the shoot and he and I would sit down and talk about the day’s work and I would write out a shot

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list right there about what coverage we wanted to get. Then at 6:00 am, when the frst assistant director (AD) arrived, I would download all that information to the AD who would run the set. It’s a very different way of working. It is essential for me to know what the day’s work is, because if the director is not prepared, then there’s chaos. You cannot run a movie by the seat of your pants, you just can’t, and it’s too big of a machine. There are so many things that go into making a flm, as the Director of Photography I have to manage the crew and the time, and most importantly, it’s my job to make sure that we make the day.

You shot about four flms with Spike Lee; does he still work in the same manner? Yes, he’s very extemporaneous. I don’t know how he is with Matty (Libatique) but thinking in the moment is exciting for me because it changes every day. I was prepared well by my experience on documentaries where very little can be predicted. There were times when I’d say we have to commit to an idea because I have to pre-light this scene. In terms of technical preparation, I would press him on some things, I would say, “let’s fgure this out, you can shoot this however you want but I just need to know where we are going to be in that room to pre-light.” That helped me enormously when I was working with Michel (Gondry) because it became evident to me that what I needed to do to be prepared was to light the room so the actors could be ready to move anywhere. I knew that I would have to be creative with the lighting, because Michel was determined to do the opposite of what he did on Human Nature and wanted to use available light. I was game for this idea with the proviso that I could augment the light and create non-flmic sources which could work as part of the story – hence the memory light – the single-source, non-motivated light which represented the recesses of the mind.

Could you talk a bit about how you like to work with a director? As a DP, it’s important for me to have time with the director so that I can be prepared and know what the vision is. The worst thing is to get on set and the director is still trying to work out ideas; you have no private time to discuss it with them because everybody is waiting around for us to fgure out what we’re going to do. I certainly don’t want to challenge the director in front of the entire crew, nor do I want the director to challenge me. But it’s best if we have established a relationship as confdantes in advance. You can’t have the company wait for you, sometimes you have to send everybody away for an hour just to get your feet back on the ground and fgure it all out. If that’s what you have to do, that’s what you have to do. Which is why it’s really important

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for the actors to be on time in the morning and for the entire machine to work smoothly. When you get on bigger and bigger movies, it’s such a big machine that you can’t afford to be fguring things out on the fy.

You did several rock documentaries? That was my music period which comes and goes. Which is really fun. I love music.

You shot with Scorsese? Though I’m working primarily as a director now, as a cinematographer, I continue to work with directors that I love and with whom I have long working relationships. Marty is one director and a much-loved one that I will always work with. We tend to get together to work with favorite subjects such as Bob Dylan and Fran Lebowitz and just recently, David Johansen, known as Buster Poindexter. I’ve also had the amazing experience of shooting Lou Reed with Julian Schnabel, Neil Young with Jonathan Demme and Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones with Marty, but I wasn’t the DP on that one, Bob Richardson was the DP; I was one of the ‘star’ operators of 17 operators, four of whom had Academy Awards for Cinematography. I was honored to be there and was the only woman.

What kind of visual references have you shared with directors? I recall Matty (Libatique) saying that Spike would get prints of flms and set up screenings together. Did he do that with you as well? When we had time, we would do that. So much of Spike’s work actually cross-references. With Summer of Sam, Spike said, “Ellen, I just want it to look hot, I want to feel the heat like in Do The Right Thing.” Not wanting to copy the legendary Ernest Dickerson, I would present ideas that I had about how to make it look and feel hot. I had this whole idea that I wanted to investigate about the humidity. I’m a New Yorker, so I know what it feels like in the middle of August; it’s really humid and the air is thick with hazy sticky humidity. I wanted to create that sensibility, so we put sweat on people which is an obvious example, but then I started experimenting with fogging the flm in front of the lens using a device called the Varicon, which you put in front of the lens and dial in as much fog or low contrast you want. We were shooting so much at night and the headlights were making double refections on the apparatus that I ended up pre-fashing the flm in all the night scenes in Summer of Sam. It’s always a risk to prefash flm but Spike was game on trying different things, and always encouraged me to take risks and push the envelope. I always love taking risks to discover new ways of seeing the world.

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I was also able to do that with Michel (Gondry) to explore the recesses of the mind in the flm Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. During the course of our frst meetings sequestered at my house for four days, Michel and I spent three days talking mostly about the technical aspects of the flm such as what technique we would use to make the transitions happen. At the end of the third day, I said to him, “you know we really do have to start talking about the script because we’re on page three and we have to start talking about the story.” To me, it is always important to know how to keep the story alive. The cinematographer and the director balance each other, where friendships are forged, looking out for each other and protecting each other throughout the production process to create the story of the flm and to make the experience of making the flm a shared good experience for all.

Have you ever used paintings or photography, music or other flms as visual references to communicate with the director? Yes, many times. It’s very important to me to have those references because it enables me to create a common language with the director. Books, flms, paintings, snippets of TV footage, poetry, news – whatever it takes to learn to speak each other’s language. I’m also inspired by music. During the course of making my flm The Betrayal, Thavi, who became the main character, was also editing, so I started giving him music to inspire him and one piece in particular was one of my favorite pieces of British composer Gavin Bryars. The music infuenced the tone for certain parts of the flm, and we ended up using it at the end of the flm, superimposed upon a traditional piece of Laotian oral storytelling in song. To me, it was one of the most powerful moments in the flm. I think the arts reference and inspire each other. What better way to talk about a visual idea than to use the visuals? It’s important to take those ideas, combine them and create your own original idea. It’s not about plagiarizing someone else’s idea but combining all the references into your own personal vision. Perspective is perspective, everybody deals with perspective, but how do you deal with perspective to make the vision unique?

In terms of technical aspects, do you like when a director knows more technical aspects of focal length? Do you like working with a more technical director? I do like a technical director, but some directors are very non-technical, so it’s not essential. But shorthand is the language in production, so if I say what if I put a 27mm on and they know exactly what a 27mm looks like, it’s helpful of course. But that comes with experience. Some directors don’t have that, but that’s certainly not a strike against them. Sven Nykvist was originally supposed to shoot Angela with Rebecca Miller, but it turned out he couldn’t shoot the flm, so she looked at reels and I was

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recommended to her. She arranged a lunch with Sven and me and it was an invaluable moment because Sven was a very open, reasonable personality. Of course I was in awe of him, but I mustered up enough courage to say, “Sven, I’m a little confused about something, I shot this flm called Swoon with zoom lenses, and I like using the zoom, because I could push in sometimes and it gives me much more feeling within the camera. But there’s this common knowledge that when you go on big movies that you use prime lenses and stay away from zooms.” I said, “I also feel that way about fuid heads I love using them because I can get my body into it and I can feel it as it moves around. I can do the wheels, but I don’t like the way they feel mechanical.” He told me; you don’t have to use the wheels; you can use the fuid head if it feels right that’s what you should use. It doesn’t matter you use whatever you want, whatever works, you don’t have to follow the convention. Just do what you feel is the right thing. That became my guideline, and it still is – you have to follow your gut and listen to your inner voice about what feels right. So much of what goes into the lighting and the camerawork has to do with the feeling of something that’s non-tangible. It’s not taught, it comes with experience, learning and intuition. But the fact that Sven said not to worry about conventions, but to just follow what is in your intuition, just opened up the gates for me and I thought okay all bets are off. I used to laugh when somebody would say to me “don’t you want to use prime lenses?” and I’d say no because Sven Nykvist said I don’t have to! And that would shut them up (laughs).

What about with the selection of flm stock or format, is that something you get the director involved as well? I always get the director involved in the process. I think it’s important because I want them to know and understand where we are going with it. They need to; it’s ultimately their movie. In the case of Ted Demme, when we shot Blow, we had fve different periods that we were covering in the course of the story. I made a book for him of visual references from the all the time periods, the ffties, sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. It was a very complex shoot for me because for the ffties I was using reversal with older uncoated lenses. For the sixties, I was using uncoated lenses with tungsten flm and tungsten lights, which I then put gels on, so the backlight was very yellow but it was tungsten light, so it had that quality to it that you found in the sixties because they didn’t have HMI lights back then, no daylight balanced lights. I tried to keep true to the period. In the seventies, I timed it much more magenta, used uncoated lenses and in the eighties, I brought in the HMIs and used primo lenses, which were coated, and it changed the whole look. But it was hard to say that to Teddy, he didn’t understand, so I put together the book for him. Then I conducted a test

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from each time period so I could show him how it would look. When I was showing him the test, for example when I got to the seventies section, I said to him, “I’m going to bring in two more points of magenta” and he said “I have no idea what that means,” so I retimed it so he could see exactly what I was doing. Each director has their own personal needs and I want to make them feel like they are comfortable with the technical aspects but not expected to know everything, I certainly don’t know everything there is to know about cinematography either. Sometimes I have to call up my peers and ask “have you used this? Or what happens with this?” After Summer of Sam, I got calls about cross process reversal and how to use it and how to process it. That’s the thing I can say about cinematographers, we defnitely feel a kinship and a confdance where we share information with each other.

What do you feel about working with a color palette, do you get into this conversation with directors or do you wait for them to bring it up? Color palette today is much more talked about because there are so many different ways of creating it with the digital intermediate (DI) in post-production. We’ve ventured into a whole new world within the digital realm, so color correction has become tantamount. It’s also led to us (cinematographers) having less control with those processes. Now cinematographers have it written into their contracts that they will be in on the color correction grading process to decide what the look of the flm is. Lenses are important in creating the visual look as well. I did a whole series of lens tests for Sam Mendes so I could show him how each set of lenses has a different personality. Lenses are like families, these are like that Napolitano family and these other lenses are like the Murphy family. They are very different, but many directors don’t understand that because some DPs use the same lenses all the time, like using the same anamorphic lenses and what varies is the flm stock or the lighting. I like to be able to create the look for the story. That’s why people say to me why do your flms have such an eclectic feel to them? It’s because the look is always changing because the stories are always changing. I create the look for the story. The technology has provided greater options, more freedom and more or less control depending on who is looking at it. Interestingly, different fads come and go, for example after Seven, everybody started talking about skip bleaching, which is something that greatly interests me, and I still love the skip bleach look. Soon after I saw Seven, I saw a flm called Jude with Kate Winslet as the star. It was shot by Eduardo Serra, a stunningly beautiful flm, where the look of the flm was a metaphor for what was going on with the character. He increased the skip bleach as the course of the movie went on so that by the time we came to the end of the flm, it was 100% skip bleach, which meant that she was really drained of color; that trapped her descent. To me, it was

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a brilliant display of using the technique to be a metaphor for whatever was going on, that’s a more interesting way of telling the story. Skip bleach is all about taking color out, draining the color which is done during the DI now. In the photochemical world, cinematographers never had the opportunities to manipulate the image as they do now. With Color timing in the photochemical world, you only had the option of taking away or adding color. There was red, green, blue, that was it. But now we have so many ways of color correcting the image, you can color correct within the image, change colors, darken select areas, replace certain areas with green screen or rotoscoping, all bets are off now!

What are your thoughts regarding working with the DI? I was one of the frst people to do a DI many years ago, frst trying it out on Blow for the ffties (ultimately, it wasn’t to my satisfaction at that point, so I remained all photochemical in post) on Jim Brown All American with Spike Lee, also with Bamboozled in the independent world. Hollywood was just starting to do flm to tape transfers, doing flm outs and color correcting as you as you would in the suite. That’s what made the big difference that they were able to fgure out how to replicate and translate the digital signal back on to flm; once they did that, it kind of revolutionized things. I really like the DI, in the beginning the producers and the studio thought the DI was used as a way to just fx things and I said not at all, I don’t want to use the DI to fx things but rather to create the look I want that can’t be done in photochemical. Meaning I want to change the shape and the look of the shadow areas, I want to put color into the shadows and put yellow in the highlights. You can’t do that in the photochemical process. I want to be able to create a look. That’s how I created the look for Eternal Sunshine, there are lots of little things I did in the DI that I wouldn’t have been able to do in the photochemical. Now there is so much work being done in replacement or in trying to create crowds of people without having to hire thousands of extras or do matt paintings, which is what they used to do; now they are able to create it in the digital realm. The biggest problem I’ve experienced being in the digital realm is archival. This issue is a question that has been raised from the Academy (of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) to the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers). When I fnished my flm, the Academy called me and we had a discussion about archival. Thank god, I had been making this flm for as long as I have because most of it is on flm. I have the negative and I also did a flm out, so I have an archival flm negative and print. But a lot of flms won’t have that, maybe they will flm out their fnal product but most of their dailies will still be in the digital realm. Therein lies the problem of staying in the digital world, it’s virtual and that it’s not permanent. The fact that we can go back and reprint from negatives that date back to the nineteenth century is a testament to having an actual tangible negative to work from.

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What do you think about the longevity of flm? For a long time now, the Kodak folks have tried to make motion picture flm to accommodate the cinematographers and I respect that and I wish that we could continue that relationship because everybody who used 93 still loves 93, we all loved it and remember it and it’s like a good friend who has passed away. I really hope that flm survives, because for me the digital realm still doesn’t cook it. The reason why has to do with the perception of depth. To me, digital still feels two dimensional, it’s a gut thing, even when you strike your frst print off the DI negative, you still have that feeling of it being fat, like you can’t push through it, it doesn’t have depth into the image. But the moment that you take that negative and make an (IP) interpositive, then you make an (IN) internegative and a dupe print off of that, the dupe print feels much more real than off of the original negative because you are doing photochemical to photochemical. To me, that’s the magic of flm, that sense of depth into the image itself, the shadow areas have more depth. I am very partial to flm. It is kind of antithetical to today’s “let’s get it out and get it out quick” kind of attitude. We’ve become part of the consumer world consuming these new ideas that are not necessarily better ideas.

You mentioned the fatness of the digital image, is it the lack of grain? It’s so sharp, too crisp if you are used to watching cinema? Kids who have grown up with what the digital image looks like now are going to remember that look as their reality, and that becomes the new reality. That becomes their lexicon, their language is the digital world. They don’t know any better, so they are going to naturally gravitate towards what they know which is the digital. It was kind of shocking to me when I was making my flm (The Betrayal – Nerakhoon), I hired a post-production supervisor and editor to help us because I needed to be able to put things together in a traditional way so we could generate an EDL (Edit Decision List) for when we did the transfers and we needed to cut our HDSRs1 together. I still had a Steenbeck in my basement, and both of them had never actually seen a Steenbeck, so I took them downstairs, they were both in their thirties, and I pulled off the cover and it was like I had uncovered a shrine. I turned the light on, and it still worked. That to me just said so much about how much the world has changed in terms of flmmaking. I still remember using upright Moviolas; they don’t exist anymore. One thing that I did do on my flm, I had the opportunity to scan my flm due to the graciousness of Deluxe. They scanned my negative and did my color correct from a scanned negative to go to HDSR and cut the HDSR, but I decided to transfer it on the Spirit. I didn’t want to scan it digitally. I wanted to transfer it and use the condenser light of the Spirit to go through the negative because it had a completely different feel to it.

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Because when I digitally scanned the negative, it took away all of the quality of the highlights and when I transferred it using a cold light condenser, it had a completely different feel to it. Everybody was like, really you don’t want to scan it? I said no I want to go for the look, I don’t need to go for what’s the latest.

Do you have a particular format that you prefer to work in, given your choice? I would love to shoot in anamorphic all the time. It’s so beautiful. It’s the most poetic. I think that’s why everyone likes it.

Has working with a DI changed the way you shoot a flm or just enhanced it? It has enhanced the way I shoot; I know now that I can take the image to a certain place. I don’t use it as a short cut, the studio’s now think “oh we can short cut.” I don’t do it. I use the DI to create the image. But I know that I can do certain things later that I couldn’t do in photochemical.

Has being a cinematographer made you sacrifce things in your personal life? This business demands so much time and energy that all of us give up so much of our personal lives. Not only me, but I also see it with everybody around me doing round the clock hours. When we are shooting, sometimes it’s a 17-hour a day commitment. Not to mention driving home, that’s the danger aspect of our jobs, we work more hours than most people are expected to do, so the commitment is huge. I’ve seen over the years how people have paid the personal price of not being able to explain to their signifcant others that they don’t know what time they are coming home. Which I of course have experienced, your time is not your own. Being in the business, everyone has that implicit understanding of that’s how it is. But it doesn’t mean that the business doesn’t need rules that should consider the human element, and that’s where we are severely lacking. The productivity level of the studios trying to get more out of us. I’m very much a crew-friendly person. I protect my crew. I am really adamant about safety, and fortunately I tend to work with producers who are also safety conscious. I’m very vocal when something doesn’t sit right with me, when it’s dangerous, or we’ve done too many hours. The human life is much more important than the movie, at the end of the day it’s just a movie! I think that’s where the business needs to self- examine, because it’s been a problem for years. I have personally experienced that. Fortunately, now I can pick and choose what movies I do.

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Women cinematographers have to give up something huge to pursue their craft. The men can still have a family and bring them along when they go to shoot. Do you have any thoughts on this? The times were very different back in the nineties when I was deciding about having children. Personally, I couldn’t have had children doing what I do without having an enormous guilt complex because of the many hours, sometimes months, away from home. Twenty years seems like an eternity when it comes to attitudes about sharing responsibilities at home and with children. Admittedly, my boyfriend at the time was not keen on having kids nor do I think he would have accepted the demands of my job and the responsibilities of raising a child alone. There are some producers I know who have families and I say, ”how do you do it?” Because the producers have to be as much involved as possible and they say they have husbands, or signifcant others who are willing to stay home, or they have nannies. Those who I’ve known who have managed, he/she/they have a very committed partner and a fexible, mutually understanding relationship. I actually made the decision not to have a child because I knew there would be very little time I could spend raising that child and I felt that wasn’t fair. I decided that being a cinematographer is what I wanted to do. I know the reality of the situation. Looking back, I consider myself very lucky to be able to work at something that I am passionate about. It’s incredibly refreshing, though, to see younger DPs having children and still operating their cameras up until they are eight months pregnant. Several young proteges have recently had kids with and without partners. Importantly, organizations like the unions are recognizing that women cinematographers should not be penalized if they become pregnant.

Since the success of The Betrayal – Nerakhoon, have you had more offers to direct? Once I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell, and fnish The Betrayal – Nerakhoon, that is when I really started to move back into directing, since that’s where I started before becoming a DP. I had started directing back then, and because I was shooting as well, and people asked me to shoot for them, I became a full-time DP. So now I’ve been directing about ten years, frst starting with commercials and then I started directing episodic television about four years ago. But I realize that I’ve always been a director behind the camera, albeit in a very respectful way. I was able to make the transition to directing smoothly, because I’d always been approaching the story visually with a director’s eye. The only thing I hadn’t done was work directly with actors. I’ve always worked closely with actors, but as a DP. Yes, it’s coming full circle, with me now directing.

Are you gearing up to do a feature? I’m going to do a feature with Kate Winslet called LEE, which is about the model and war photographer Lee Miller. Liz Hannah is writing the script. We

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are hoping that we can get all the fnancing together to begin shooting at the end of winter next year in Eastern Europe. With the Covid 19 pandemic still looming, we are continuing to move forward.

How would you go about selecting somebody to shoot the flm that you’re directing? The kind of person that I would want to work with is somebody who I connect with in terms of the ideas, someone who has a poetic sensibility with a daring edge, and someone I’m not going to have to micromanage! Looking at a cinematographer, I’m going to be looking at how they infuence blocking, how they shoot, is there an emotional component to it or is it just about surface and visual? It’s tricky fnding someone who can work quickly who can be thinking about the ideas that you’re going to establish a visual language with, a language that you share together. Obviously, I was always very engaged with my directors in talking about ideas and prepping and writing out the shots and that kind of thing. To me, that’s really important to do for any cinematographer and for them to be involved in that, because in a way you start blocking the flm while you’re on set. You’re going to wade in quicksand. In a way I like, the movie should get made in your mind’s eye before you even walk out onto set. Lastly, it’s always been very important to me to work with someone who respects other human beings and is kind!

Note 1 HDSR is a high defnition tape format.

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Edward Lachman, ASC

Ed Lachman’s cinematography applies an artists’ use of color and light with a skill for discovering the emotional impact of the image. His unique work, infuenced by art, photography and European cinema, has attracted directors such as Todd Haynes, Robert Altman, Steven Soderberg, Ulrich Seidl, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Jean-Luc Godard, Paul Schrader, Sofa Coppola, Todd Solondz, Susan Seidelman, Mira Nair and many others. He has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography twice, for his work on Far From Heaven and Carol. Ed received two Independent Spirit Awards for Best Cinematography. He has been honored at numerous flm festivals for Outstanding Cinematography. He was awarded two golden, one silver and one bronze awards at Camerimage. In 2017, he was honored with the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award and became the frst American to be honored at Cannes with the Angenieux Excel-Lens in Cinematography Award in 2018, along with other numerous awards and recognitions throughout his career. Growing up in Morristown, New Jersey in the 1950s and 1960s, Ed was exposed to flm at a very young age. His grandfather owned a number of vaudeville theaters in the 1920s, which later became movie houses. His father worked for his grandfather before owning his own theater in the small industrial town of Boonton, New Jersey. His father represented a French company, Lorraine Carbone that sold carbon arcs, which were the lighting sources in movie projectors. Ed wasn’t necessarily enamored or captivated with movies as a child but remembers flling popcorn bags at the concession stand and eating more than he could put in. His father was also an amateur painter and photographer. Initially, Ed abhorred photography, with the fear that somehow the photographic image could “steal your soul.” He now states, he knows it can…. Ed studied art and art history at a liberal arts school and was drawn to the Dadaists and their experimentation with the laws of chance and the use of everyday common objects. He also had an interest in color theory and its ability to create emotional response in viewers as implemented in the German Expressionistic movement. He took courses at Harvard and Columbia where he discovered a passion for learning about images and completed his education at Ohio University’s flm program.

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Ed met Werner Herzog at the Berlin Film Festival which began a lifelong friendship and collaboration on several flms including, Stroszek and La Soufriere. He was inspired by European cinema and flmmakers in the 1970s such as Wim Wenders, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard and Bernardo Bertolucci. Ultimately, Ed had the good fortune to work with master cinematographers Robby Müller, NSC, BVK on Wim Wenders’ The American Friend and Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed; Sven Nykvist, ASC on King of the Gypsies and Hurricane; and he shot second unit for Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC on Bernardo Bertolucci’s La Luna. He was later on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s One From the Heart with Vittorio Storaro. He worked on an experimental flm Anatomy of a Shot, with Jean-Luc Godard. Ed’s eclectic and diverse list of credits include his frequent collaborations with Todd Haynes on Dark Waters, Wonderstruck, Carol, Mildred Pierce, I’m Not There and Far From Heaven. He has worked with the Austrian director Ulrich Seidl on Import Export and The Paradise Trilogy: Love, Faith and Hope on which he collaborated with his Austrian cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler. He collaborated with Steven Soderberg on Erin Brockovich and The Limey. With Gregory Nava, he photographed Selena, Why Do Fools Fall in Love and My Family. Ed was the cinematographer on Sofa Coppola’s acclaimed debut feature The Virgin Suicides and Mississippi Masala for Mira Nair. He photographed Light Sleeper and Touch for Paul Schrader, Less Than Zero for Marek Kanievska, Backtrack for Dennis Hopper, True Stories for David Byrne and Desperately Seeking Susan and Making Mr. Right for Susan Seidleman. He photographed Robert Altman’s last flm, Prairie Home Companion. His frst narrative feature was The Lords of Flatbush in 1974. He has also photographed numerous documentaries including Christo’s Valley Curtain, Mother Teresa, Stripper, Tokyo-Ga, Ornette: Made in America and Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey. He also directed and photographed his own documentaries, A Family Affair, Report from Hollywood, In the Heart of Africa, Life for a Child and Cell Stories. He directed and photographed the narrative flm Ken Park with Larry Clark. Ed has never stopped creating images in different forms of art. He has video installations and photographs in galleries and museums throughout the world, and is in the permanent collection at the Whitney Museum of Art. I had the opportunity to spend a lovely Sunday afternoon at his loft in Manhattan having this conversation about cinematography, art and the subtext of images.

How did you become interested in cinematography? I didn’t know what I really wanted to pursue. My studies were primarily in liberal arts and psychology, and only later did I get involved in studying art history and painting that eventually lead me to cinematography. When I was studying painting, I felt how isolating it was to be in a room with a blank canvas and the years it would take me to learn technique but also develop my own content and style. In art history, I was primarily interested in the Dadaists

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and German Expressionism, with their critical interpretation of the world they were living in that had been changed socially, economically and politically between the World Wars. The artists were interpreting an emotional and visceral expose on their society’s corruption with a distorted and visual language in their paintings. When I was studying art history at Columbia and Harvard, they didn’t have an offcial flm curriculum. At Harvard, I took a survey course that was an appreciation of flm history taught by Dwight Macdonald. I also studied Italian cinema with Gideon Bachmann who was close to Fellini and wrote about Italian cinema. I saw an Italian Neo Realist flm by Vittorio De Sica, called Umberto D, that relied on images rather than words to convey the story and I realized that those images don’t just get up there on the screen, they are there for a reason. The idea of constructing images to tell stories resonated with me. I was always interested in the “found” image of the things we observe around us, and that was when I realized you could pick up a camera and construct a story with that. I began to fnd a direction that connected with me in what I wanted to do. One could create not just a representational view of the world, but a subjective and eidetic one. For me, photography or even flmic images became about fnding the visual metaphor for the storytelling. Images can be more than just representational or aesthetically pleasing. More importantly, they can be psychological and poetic.

What other infuences contribute to your work? At university, I discovered Robert Frank’s infuential photographic book, The Americans. His photos showed me that you can imbue realistic images with the experience and poetic subjectivity of the photographer. What I think of as a “poetic realism.” There was also William Eggleston who was an early proponent of color photography. His images uncover something not hidden, but something on the surface of things, working in the vernacular of the quotidian, like an intimate personal diary.

How did you transition from painting to cinematography? During school, I made little portrait flms of people I met. I thought about creating images in a flm the way painters approach their images. I understood that in different periods of schools of painting, they painted the way they did because of what grew out of their aesthetics that were affected by their social, economic and political milieu of the time. I thought, why couldn’t you do that in flm? I also realized that the form of aesthetics you use affects the content of the story. I guess people liked the way my flms looked and started to ask me to shoot their flms. It was a more expensive medium back then because of the cost of Super 8 and 16mm flm. But I learned how to make flms on other people’s projects, with their mistakes and mine. I understood the world more

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from my eyes than anything else, so I ended up being a cameraman. I’ve always continued to make my own flms along the way.

How did you get your frst break as a cinematographer? Werner Herzog gave me my frst real break. I was in school in France at the time and went to the Berlin Film festival on vacation where his frst feature Signs of Life was screened. I really liked the austere and spiritually poetic quality of the flm. I met him and we talked for a long time and without looking at a foot of flm of my work, he said to me, “We will work together some day.” That flm became La Soufriere, which was a documentary in Guadalupe about this small group of poor inhabitants who refused to evacuate, as Werner stated, “for even God or Country” even though the impending volcanic eruption could have destroyed their island and themselves. After a few days of flming, I asked Werner, “What should we do if the volcano erupts?” He looked at me very calmly and told me, “Don’t worry, we’ll be airborne.” Prior to this, I was making my own flm A Family Affair about a therapeutic community that dealt with drug addiction called the Odyssey House. I lived in the facility for three months and shot the flm in a cinema vérité style; it was my graduate thesis flm. I shot like 60,000 feet and I was editing and basically sleeping in the editing room, where I was so thrilled to be. I was editing at the Maysle’s brothers who were cinema vérité flmmakers who had made Salesman and Gimme Shelter. Their studio on 54th street and Broadway would rent out Steenbeck editing rooms to other flmmakers. They became curious about me, “Who is this kid? He’s his own editor and cameraman.” I became friends with Al, who was the cameraman on their documentaries, and one day he asked me if I did sound. I said, “Well no, I’m a cameraman.” But I ended up doing sound for him for over two years and was the second camera on Christo’s Valley Curtain and Grey Gardens. He liked me because I cared more about his shot than the sound and I would stay out of his frame. With the amount of time we spent together in the offce, working and traveling, we became close and he became like a father to me. Later, I never could admit to Al that I was shooting narrative flms, because he had always told me, “If you can fnd it in life, why do you need to recreate it in fction?” When I had my break shooting a studio feature, Desperately Seeking Susan, I felt like I had to tell him it was a documentary about this singer, called Madonna.

What directors and cinematographers have inspired you? Early in my career, I was fortunate to work with some of the directors I most respected, people like the Maysles Brothers, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Bernardo Bertolucci. Through Wim, I met his remarkable Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller and I worked with him on The American Friend and became his operator on the Peter Bogdonavich flm They All Laughed.

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Later I worked with Sven Nykvist, who was Ingmar Bergman’s cinematographer, another flmmaker whom I greatly admired. When Sven came to New York to work, he wasn’t in the union and had to have a standby director of photography (DP). I became the youngest DP that got accepted in the union because I had shot a non-union flm Lords of Flatbush, that became union when it was sold to the studio, so the union let me in on some technicality. Sven had shot Pretty Baby in New Orleans and the crew didn’t even know who he was or that he was Swedish. They thought he was some weird German. He was just happy that someone on the crew knew who he was. I would talk to him about Bergman flms and cinematography all day to the point that the director would joke with us to stop talking about Bergman flms, and do our shots. He had this incredible memory and could tell me everything about any shot I asked about. He was so generous and kind to me. I went on to be his operator for over a year on a terrible Hollywood flm called Hurricane, a remake of a 1937 John Ford flm which had better special effects than ours in 1979. It was a great experience working with Sven as his operator for over a year and letting him operate the camera on some of the more diffcult shots because he missed it so much. I also had the opportunity to meet Bernardo Bertolucci at the New York Film Festival to interview him for my thesis on his flm Before the Revolution before anybody in the States even knew who he was. He was there to present The Conformist and Spider Stratagem. He was amused that I was so into his work and I’ll never forget that he invited me to his box for the premiere screening of The Conformist. He always joked that I was his frst American friend. Later on, he invited me to work with Vitorrio Storaro on La Luna, in New York. To me, that was the greatest flm school I could have ever gone to, working with Robby Müller, Sven Nykvist and Vittorio Storaro. I was so fortunate to know enough to understand how they approached their images and observe their individual temperament on the set.

That was an amazing flm school. I know, it’s had a lasting infuence on me and my work.

Are there other European directors whose methods left an impression on you? I deeply respect Ulrich Seidl’s work, whom I met shortly after he had seen my flm Ken Park which he was supportive of. He’s an Austrian director that I worked with along with his talented Austrian cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler on Import/Export and The Paradise Trilogy (Hope, Love & Faith). His work is somewhere between documentary and fction. We all know the convention of flm is the illusion of reality, but I think Ulrich deals with what reality is in the illusion. Some fnd his flms to be very disturbing in that he reveals private behavior of people that you don’t want to necessarily see in yourself.

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I think that’s what makes his storytelling so effective. He’s a moral director, without being moralistic. He doesn’t have a script per se, but creates situations for scenes to play out in. In working with actors and non-actors, if they ask him “What do you want?” He says, “What would you do?” He develops his story with his ideas that evolve out of the performances that further the script. He does an immense amount of research to fnd non-actors and locations that become the inspiration for the characters’ journey. The strength of his cinema is how he’s able to tell stories allowing the audience to be the camera in its discovery and expressing visual metaphors in how the images convey ideas and compassion for what you are seeing in the frailty of our experience.

How did your study of color theory inspire the way you create images? Interestingly enough, even in 1810 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer, theorist and statesman, thought about the nature of colors and how they are perceived and interact psychologically. Josef Albers, painter, educator and theoretician of art who wrote Interaction of Color in 1963, understood how the relation between different colors could create a difference in depth and perception in that color. So, in the theories of both Goethe and Albers, one can understand how you can create an image with depth and form in the use of color and create a subconscious effect on the viewer with the use of colors in the set or how it’s implemented in the lighting you’re using. Studying painting and color theory, I became interested in the use of color as a subtext to create emotions in the story, rather than just decorative or aesthetically pleasing representations. Even in using various color temperature sources as in tungsten, fuorescent, sodium or mercury vapor separately or mixed, I realized you could create a mood in a flm. I looked at color photography of Saul Leiter, William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz and Alex Webb, to mention a few, that have embodied many of these ideas. I’ve always played with color gels and color temperature with mixed lighting sources as an expressionistic tool beginning with Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). In The Virgin Suicides, the idea was how to create different worlds, the feminine adolescent world that is mysterious to the male adolescent world. I created a color palette of the female world in magenta and blues to seem distant and elusive, imprisoned in their homes, literally and fguratively in their own childlike world. The boys are on the outside longingly looking in with warm summer tones, being voyeurs of what they don’t understand and in what’s unobtainable. I think that each flm can create its own methodology, its own flmic language and style. The Virgin Suicides ultimately becomes a meditative study of the loss of adolescent innocence, in the melancholy memory of the boys. In my most recent flm Dark Waters, there’s an overall coolness to the flm, be it weather, temperament or environment, but also refected in the emotions

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of the story that contrast warmth against coolness. I’ve always thought if you use one color, one palette, you lose the feeling of seeing that color. Colors are always seen in relation to each other, even in relation from one scene to the next.

In Far From Heaven, I’ve noticed, because I’ve seen it a million times. I teach that flm as an example of color saturation and the use of color. You have Julianne Moore’s character often with warm amber colors, but Dennis Quaid in cooler blues and violets which contrast her. I used colors for Raymond the gardener and for her that were in primary colors that you would fnd in nature, yellows, oranges, greens, blues. For the husband that was seen as acting out in an aberration because of his homosexuality, I used secondary colors, magentas and lime green as in the gay bar which was in contrast to the autumnal color scheme for her world and Raymond’s, who even wears a plaid jacket of warm fall colors. In the flm’s most romantic moments, nature’s primary colors of orange and green permeate the black bar that he takes Cathy to. In the scene where Cathy’s friends are outside of her suburban house, they’re wearing dresses that are in the same color scheme as the turning leaves on the trees, working with the brilliant costume designer Sandy Powell, she helps create the texture and colors that work in front of the camera’s story. It was particularly warm for the fall, and the trees held onto their leaves much longer than they usually do. So, I enhanced the fading richness of the foliage by lighting the background with 10K tungsten lights and Maxi Brutes as opposed to HMIs, to enrich the warmer color temperature for the leaves on the trees and in the background landscape. Another way we created an emotional arc for the story is that we explored different looks for night. Far From Heaven takes place over different seasons and that becomes a metaphor for what’s happening to the characters emotionally. We changed the color of ambient night light as the seasons changed. For the fall scenes in the beginning, the night is a lavender or periwinkle blue. As the story evolves and we approach winter, as Cathy and Frank’s relationship deteriorates, night becomes more aquamarine or acidic green-blue, less warm.

Could you compare the different stylistic approaches for Carol, which is a love story as a drama, versus Far From Heaven, which is a melodrama? Far From Heaven and Carol reference life in different time periods of the 1950s, which affected our stylistic approaches. Far From Heaven was referencing Douglas Sirk’s high-gloss studio melodramas, manneristic performances, in the artifce of studio lighting, color and camera movement. For Sirk, the Brechtian use of melodrama heightens our senses affecting an emotional response

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balancing ideas and emotions. He was using the popular form of melodrama to comment on middle-class bourgeoisie life and the trappings of security and stability against one’s own personal needs and desires. It’s a depiction of a picture-perfect world that could be but isn’t obtainable or allowed. The dramatic irony is that we’re seduced by what keeps us from our desire. In a director’s statement, Todd Haynes wrote to me: “In Sirk’s most beautiful and touching melodramas, the answer lies in what is missing.” Like Sirk, Todd used stylistic excesses with emotional music and color-coordinated mise-en-scene to create a claustrophobic story of disillusionment and resignation. In contrast, in Carol, which is situated in the early 1950s just after the war, we wanted to depict a soiled, naturalistic, lived-in world, rather than the picture postcard-manufactured cinematic world of Sirk’s melodramas. It was a time mirrored by emotional restraint and reservedness where one didn’t express their feelings. We approached it as a dramatic love story, situating and structuring the subjective viewpoint of falling in love where you read every sign and meaning of the amorous subjectivity. We attempted to achieve this by shooting the characters through framing devices of doorways, windows, cars, textures, refections, rain and weather, and the actual grain of Super 16mm flm to evoke the sense of something seen but hidden emotionally, as they’re entrapped behind their own views looking outward.

You’ve shot a lot of flms on flm, what are your thoughts on using digital versus flm? I’ve shot for Todd Solondz, Robert Altman and Toddy Haynes’ last flm Dark Waters digitally, so I’m not reactionary to the digital world. I grew up experiencing photographic images exposed on flm, which I relate to. Someone younger than myself who grew up on digital images may prefer seeing them digitally. For me, it’s another paintbrush for stories of how they can be told, but not all stories necessitate the same visual language. For me, flm emulsion creates depth in an image from exposure to development, much like an etching, creating the depth between the three colored layers (RGB) to create the look and texture of the image. The grain structure also creates movement in the frame by the exposure. Fine grain in the highlights and larger grain in shadow detail are always changing in the frame and between the frames, which creates for me an anthropomorphic quality of something living. The problem with a digital chip is that everything is pixel fxated on a single sensor plane, exposure in highlights and shadow, and colors, are all situated in this pixel-fxated electronic image. Similarly to the way one can merge colors in oil painting, celluloid allows a more fuid platform for colors to interact with each other, whereas digitally, like watercolors, the hues don’t coalesce. An example of this would be shooting an interior location with tungsten flm with tungsten lights, practical or fuorescent lighting and mixing with exterior daylight sources like a window; there would be the possibility of color temperatures mixing with each other.

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Whereas in digital, the daylight from the exterior source (e.g. window) would separate from the tungsten or fuorescent lighting and not create a tertiary or fusion of color. We flmed Dark Waters digitally, although Todd and I wanted to shoot on flm. It’s a story about contamination of chemicals originating from Dupont Chemical Co., who are guilty of the caustic destruction of the environment and our lives. The story begins in the 1970s, so the choice of flm also would’ve refected how the world would be seen at that time. Skeptical and fearful producers prevailed in having us shoot digitally even though I proved to them it wasn’t more costly or time-consuming to use flm. So of course, I wanted to try to implement image qualities that I would’ve affected the flm. I used older optics; Cooke Speed Panchros, Canon K-35s and vintage zooms from Cooke and Angenieux. I fnd that older glass made with lead, polished and coated differently than today helps to create the look. I rated the sensor at a higher ASA (the rating of flm speed) to 1280 and 1600 which holds better highlight detail, introduces some texture, and blocks up the curve on the low end which I feel helps to provide more of a feeling of flm. I also rated different color balance settings in the camera to affect the look. I was looking for ways to show how the images would feel toxic and contaminated as it is for the characters. There’s also an overall coolness to the flm, literally in the weather environment but also in the emotions and temperament of the story. I used a warmer, yellowishgreen hue that felt tainted, motivated by practicals inside the law frm, hospitals and various people’s homes, that would offer a contrast to that overarching coldness. I always try to use contrasting colors within the frame because I feel we as viewers lose the ability to see the subtleties within one color because your eyes adjust to that color.

Is the way you use color more for an emotional response? I feel the use of color is like music. It has the ability to affect our emotions. Color is more than representational or decorative. It has a psychological effect, and many studies have been done on its application. Cool colors like green and blue are used in hospitals. Why? Because it creates a sense of restfulness and is calming. Why do you think there’s use of warm colors in many restaurants? They found in studies that it helps induce appetite.

What is the challenge of cinematography? What will tell the poetic or psychological authenticity of an image in our stories. Images shouldn’t be only a pleasing pictorial aesthetic but a projection of the emotions in the characters. For me, the strength of images lies in their ability to communicate on a nonverbal level. In literature, you can enter the interior world of the character, but it’s much more diffcult in writing to show where you are, authors can spend multiple sentences and paragraphs describing location. In flm, you can show your exterior world in one shot, but it’s much

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more diffcult to enter the interior world of the character with your camera. That’s what I’m always trying to explore with the director, how you enter the interior world of the characters’ emotions. Images can be metaphors to uncover something hidden on the surface that create an emotional landscape for your characters and story.

How do you apply that theory to your work? In Carol, we externalize and visualize what’s inside the gestures of falling in love, an amorous subjectivity, the feeling of isolation of desire and romantic imagination is unsettling. We see the characters are partially hidden or entrapped behind their own views, outwardly seen through car windows, diners, apartments, doorway glass in winter weather and urban steam of nocturnal condensation, they become obstructed, obscured, hindered and inhibited for us the audience to view, which we used as the metaphor or description for their own emotional entrapment. Todd and I looked at a lot of women photographers of the time to be sensitive to the female perspective in opposition to the male objectifcation and gaze. We looked at Lisette Model, Berenice Abbott, Ruth Orkin, Esther Bubley and Helen Levitt, and researched Vivian Maier as a reference for Therese’s character who’s becoming a photographer. What we discovered was a lot of them were photojournalists, street photographers and artists experimenting with early color Ektachrome flm. That helped create the palette of the color, which didn’t have the full range of color that you would see today. The soft soiled look of a gritty reality documented by the street photographers rather than the romanticized use of warm glowing tones commonly found in period flms. We also looked at Saul Leiter who we had referenced for Mildred Pierce, by shooting through refections and obstructions, we hoped to create the characters’ isolation of desire in their romantic imagination.

Of course. It’s the ffties. It was repressed. Even after the success of Stranger on A Train, the publisher didn’t want author Patricia Highsmith to publish her second novel (The Price of Salt) without using an assumed name (Claire Morgan) because of their fear of her being known as a gay writer. Only much later did she have her name on the book, which became Carol. It was also her only work based on personal experience. She worked in a department store for Christmas at Bloomingdale’s. She had this experience of seeing this beautiful woman, and she actually went out and spied on her, but never had the courage to meet her. This work was seemingly a departure from her crime fction narratives, but as Todd points out that Stranger on A Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley deal with the subjectivity of the festering criminal mind, the crime in Carol is their love for each other. The success of the book over the years was in its portrayal of

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a lesbian relationship that possibly could succeed rather than the dime store novels of the time that either had relationships end in a sanitarium or suicide.

Why did you use Super 16mm for Carol and Mildred Pierce? The conceit of using Super 16mm rather than 35mm or working digitally was that we had experimented with Super 16 for Mildred Pierce for the smaller screen of television. We were not remaking the chiaroscuro black and white of the original Hollywood flm noir version of the James Cain novel that was adapted in 1945 by Michael Curtiz, but rather we wanted to create a look resembling early color photography that could’ve been in a family photo album from that time period. We also looked at the Farm Security Administration photographers, who were mostly known for documenting rural America and The Dust Bowl in black and white but were also shooting in urban environments and experimenting with early color flm. We screened a segment of Mildred Pierce at the Venice Film Festival and we thought the Super 16mm held up well through a digital intermediate. When we started to explore the look for Carol, again we chose not to reference melodrama or noir, but we looked towards the documentation of the times and the women photojournalists. I felt by using Super 16mm, I could equate the Ektachrome flm they were using in the texture, grain and color rendition which had a cool palette. We discovered the texture of the grain felt like it could possibly externalize something hidden under the surface of the characters, which reinforced them emotionally. We also thought about documenting the period of the story that takes place in the book. The urban environments after the war hadn’t been revitalized yet and had an austere gray quality that felt like it implemented the characters’ feelings of isolation in a wintery drained-colored world.

What techniques did you use to create the Sirkian world for Far From Heaven? Todd sent me a statement in pre-production that expressed his thoughts on how Sirk subverted the form of melodrama as a social and political critique of America’s middle-class values: “Beneath the lush and teeming surfaces that created a world of artifce, he told stories of disillusionment and resignation of women locked up in their picture-perfect worlds, who emerge in the end as lesser human beings for all they surrender.” In Far From Heaven, we shot in 35mm. The challenge was how to create a backlot studio Technicolor look of artifce on real locations, versus Mildred Pierce where I was in a studio for a major part of the flm and I tried to create the naturalism of being on location. We shot in New Jersey in the fall, and what was diffcult for me was recreating the kind of artifce that Sirk achieved by shooting on Universal Studios’ backlot soundstage. We also decided not

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to use any techniques that Sirk and his cinematographer, Russell Metty didn’t have. Using the Technicolor process wasn’t an option either since it didn’t exist anymore. We decided to create the saturated Technicolor look but without using digital methods. I did this by exposing the flm stocks one to two stops over the recommended exposure to create a denser negative for saturation and using gels to accentuate the hues of color on the set. We chose a photochemical completion over a digital intermediate (DI) even using flm opticals in titles, fades and dissolves to maintain the tools of their style. Douglas Sirk, and his cinematographer Russell Metty, often had their characters edged and separated from their world in darkness. It reinforced a kind of emotional loneliness for his characters, they weren’t afraid of using chiaroscuro lighting that would’ve been associated more with flm noir, more of a black and white style situating lights on a grid in a studio. I tried to create that on locations with harder Fresnel lighting overhead, even in smaller spaces. In exteriors, not having arcs that they may have used, I used tungsten lights like Big-Eye 10ks that they could have also used. Sirk came from Brechtian theater in Germany, where the goal was to subvert viewers into an analytical frame of mind connecting the audiences’ emotions to their intellect. He used artifce in a mannered stylization of performance, color, lighting and camera movement. Russell Metty lit Sirk’s characters in a type of portrait lighting rather than lighting the environment as we do more today with large soft sources. The studio lighting also didn’t have to be motivated from practical light sources as in lamps in the room. Sirk shot these melodramatic flms called “weepies” or what we consider soap operas today, in eighteen-day productions. I watched his flms very closely and realized he would use a moving master on an 18mm or 25mm, and punch in on a medium lens, a 40mm or 50mm, without moving the camera or being off axis for the eyeline. Even in his close-ups, he used nothing longer than a 40mm or a 50mm. It created a spatial relationship for the character that placed him or her in their environment. I used the same camera language and focal lengths on Far From Heaven. Sirk used the architecture of the environment as a visual means of oppression by using wider lenses framing his characters entrapped by railings, doorways, windows, imprisoning and diminishing the character in the frame. In Far From Heaven, Julianne Moore’s character even in her close-ups is framed in over the shoulder shots where she is never able to own her own frame.

You have worked with a lot of different directors, but you have collaborated with Todd Haynes over two decades. Why do some directors work with different cinematographers from flm to flm, while other directors work with one? Some directors prefer using a crew on a long-term basis as a family where you create a shorthand with each other and other directors might prefer working

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with different cinematographers for different stories and visual language. JeanLuc Godard once contacted me and asked me if I would be interested to be one of three cameramen to shoot his next flm for him. He told me, “I don’t work with one actor, why should I work with one cameraman?” I said to myself, fair enough, what an opportunity for me to work with Godard. I asked him who the other cinematographers might be, and he told me his Swiss cameraman at the time, Renato Berta and Vittorio Storaro. We never ended up doing that project together which was Passion, but I did actually work with him on two of his flm scenarios, which were more like flmic outlines and research for future projects. In my own mind, I always think the flm I’m working on will be my last, so I never expected to always work with Todd on his next flm, though we’ve had a positive relationship over the many years we have worked together. Our backgrounds are similar in that we studied art and semiology in college. I’m always inspired by Todd’s research and visual approach that’s different in each story he’s telling.

You’ve worked on such a diverse amount of flms and a lot of them have this European feel to them. Are you opposed to Hollywood flmmaking? Well, I’ve been fortunate to have worked in Hollywood with more independently minded directors like Steven Soderbergh on The Limey and Erin Brockovich. I’ve enjoyed the experience of some of the flms I’ve shot for Hollywood, but I’ve always seen flmmaking as an art form rather than just a product like amusement rides and video games. It hasn’t always worked out. I’ve been fred in Hollywood because of politics and defending the director’s vision, not because of the quality of my work. I enjoy going out there, but I’ve always kept my foot in Europe. I probably worked a third of my life in Europe. The size of the budget, crew or amount of lights isn’t what motivates me. I guess I have a sensibility towards a European approach or in independent flmmaking, where you can experiment with visual language in unconventional ways and deal with more personally driven stories.

You’re still involved in the art world as well. Could you talk about that? I’ve always been interested in exploring images in different forms. I’ve had photo exhibits, created books and installations in galleries and museums throughout Europe. I have work in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of Art in New York. Of recent, I did an installation in Madrid, Spain at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza where they were exhibiting the frst major Edward Hopper retrospective in Europe. Many flmmakers have been infuenced by Hopper’s work and have used his work as visual references in cinema to the point of recreating his actual

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paintings in a flm. Hopper had an active interest in movies and was an avid movie-goer and actually painted many scenes within theaters and movie palaces: New York Movie with the usher standing against the wall, Sheridan Theater with patrons waiting, Girlie Show with the stripper on the stage, and his last painting Two Comedians in their farewell bow against an ominous dark background, which felt like his own farewell. For me, he constructed a mood in his “sets” or “locations” that conveyed a feeling for the subject that he painted. It was generally a woman in her isolation and thoughts-- against a space or gazing out a window, which becomes like a screen for our own imagination as the viewer. I think that’s why flmmakers are so taken by his paintings as we all strive to create our own illusions in images. I proposed to the museum an idea I’ve always had about deconstructing a painting of Hopper’s, who’s been embraced by the schools of realism, abstract expressionists and minimalism over the years. They were supportive of my idea and gave me the funds to create it. My focus was to discover his approach to constructing the images in his paintings, specifcally with the help of his sketches, studies and renderings leading up to his fnal paintings, which were a similar process in how an art director, cinematographer and director creates a set, a scene and a mood. I realized through the process of dissecting his visual constructions that the elements of his images spoke to not one school of painting, but he (Edward Hopper) embraced these concepts simultaneously, making him truly his own voice and why he’s become so revered. His use of sun and natural light and shadows were constructed in his paintings, as were the objects and the use of perspective in a room or setting. I went about recreating it as a tableau-vivant to understand how he constructed his images. I created this where you left the last room of the exhibit with his painting Morning Sun of the woman sitting on the bed looking out the window; you would then walk into another room in the museum where you saw the image of the painting as a constructed set with motion picture lighting creating the sunlight, and with an actual woman who was sitting on the bed gazing out the window. What I discovered in recreating the painting was that the bed the woman was seated on was manipulated in a false perspective. Although naturalistic looking, the sunlight entering the room and its relation to the shadows was also manufactured; where the light and shadow was on the wall, it couldn’t exist and correlate with where the shadow of the woman was on the bed. This reinforced my idea that the way Hopper created a reality in his work was a creation of his own mind’s eye, like how we create our illusions in cinema.

What is the piece that you did for the Whitney Museum of American Art? I worked with an artist, Slater Bradley, who was interested in a story I had told on a BBC documentary about the last shot that I flmed of River Phoenix on the Hollywood flm Dark Blood in which he had an untimely death before we completed the flm. We had photographed the major part of the flm in southern Utah and we had come back to L.A. to photograph some interior scenes at

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night on a stage. We were flming in this large paper-mache cave that was lit by mounted candles. It was the last take of a long soliloquy between River and Judy Davis. The director said “cut,” and the lights overhead dimmed down as I turned the camera off, but inadvertently, the camera assistant had turned the camera back on. The flming took place earlier in the day on Saturday. That night, River died at the Viper Room club. We saw the footage from Saturday on Monday morning as we still watched flm dailies back then. Just before this last take, I kind of remembered that the camera hadn’t turned off after we cut. So, we were all in the screening room watching the last take of our dailies and we hear the director say “cut,” but the camera was still rolling. We saw the lights go down and then we saw River as a perfect silhouette, like a ghost. The most eerie part of it was when he walked up to the camera, his body covered the lens and the screen just went black. When we saw that, it was like an out-ofbody experience, almost prophetic. It just left everybody in shock and sadness. This artist Slater Bradley contacted me and asked if I would recreate the scene as he had done before with other past icons, who had died and that had been important to him growing up. He had worked with a doppelganger of his three previous iconic fgures, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain and Michael Jackson in photographs, painting and video. I was very reluctant to exploit River Phoenix and his death and I didn’t respond for almost a year, but when I fnally looked at his previous work, I thought there was a respect and merit to what he was trying to express in his connection to his subjects. It became too expensive and unruly to build and recreate the tunnel on the stage with the doppelganger and an actress, so I suggested we go back to the location where we flmed in the desert in southern Utah to recreate moments of when we were there flming and if we could fnd any remnants from 17 years ago. Our project “Shadow” became a way of revisiting Dark Blood in its own illusion through a new reality with a doppelganger to discover what was missing or still there. In a way, I also became the shadow or ghost of myself in recreating the images that existed with River’s doppelganger.

When you come to a set to light, where do you begin? What is your approach to lighting? How you interpret the script or the story affects how you tell the story with camera and light. Of course, the story informs the images, but the visual language used to tell the story also affects the emotional involvement with the audience. Even in naturalism, it’s a constructed or manufactured reality. Film is an illusion of reality, so we have the ability to create our own interpretation of it. Naturalism or a stylized world that we create in cinema still implements how we affect the duration of time and space with movement and light. When I scout locations with a director, I’ve always been interested in what the locations and spaces offer naturally. I might alter it, but I fnd all environments create their own relationship to light and how the camera’s frame uses the space, where the practicals are positioned, where the windows are, or where the door is or isn’t.

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Possibly working in independent flms or through my documentary background, I’m often inspired by the locations themselves. Even in a flm like Far From Heaven, that’s a mannered, stylized world of artifce in color and light. I’m able to create that by understanding what natural sources of light would be and how I can manipulate them to create the artifce with studio lighting. In addition to my background in independent flmmaking and working in Europe, where you can’t recreate everything because of budgetary constraints and shooting on location, you learn to work off of what’s around you. A night shot in Carol is a good example, where Therese is in a cab looking out the window at night in the rain and sees Carol. We could’ve shot that on a stage with moving lights, but Todd wanted to shoot that on a process trailer at night in the freezing cold in Cincinnati for its authenticity. My problem was not lighting Therese in the cab but being able to capture the existing lights in the background in the streets of where we were driving that I couldn’t control. That meant that I had to work at an extremely low light level for Therese to capture the exterior light around her. There was a scene in The Limey, where Terrance Stamp was also in a cab at night. We were shooting with light in the cab near the L.A. airport, but we lost the power for the lights from the generator late at night. Steven Soderbergh asked me what we could do, I thought about it and thought maybe the only option, and I didn’t know if it would work or not, was to drive in the streets near lit store windows, and I pushed the flm two stops, and shot wide open on the lens with my fngers crossed. The light level was so low, I could barely see Terrence Stamp in the backseat of the cab through the viewfnder. I went to the lab early the next morning to see if we had any images on the flm.To my amazement, the nuances of light from different color temperature sources created one of my favorite scenes in the flm. Today, it wouldn’t be such an event because the digital sensors are so sensitive that you could see it in the camera and know if there was an image or not. Today, people shoot digitally and know instantly if they have an image. It was much more diffcult in flm because you didn’t necessarily know what you were able to acquire in extremely low light situations except with your educated guess with your eye and meter. Now, I think the trend is making everything dark, because we have the confdence that they can see an image even in darkness. Gordon Willis was a proponent of using shadow and darkness and dramatically stated, “it isn’t just about darkness, but having a mid-light and a highlight placed somewhere in the frame to experience and create the effect of that darkness.” It’s about the contrast of the light that composes the image and not just using darkness, which can tire the eye and fatten the image.

Do you think flm is going to stay around as an option? I hope so, as an option. As long as people are supporting it like Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, P.T. Anderson and Wes Anderson.

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Many actors prefer the way they look on flm. Many younger people want to shoot on flm because they’re losing the experience of shooting with it. I think cinematographers and flmmakers can learn different aesthetics in flm than in digital, in approaching how you control the negative to create the look in your image.

How do you manipulate the look when you shoot digitally vs. flm? For me, the difference between camera manufacturers’ sensors are basically our flm stocks today, but the problem is that there isn’t much difference between them. In the past, we were able to control the image on a flm negative with exposure, pushing and pulling, and shifting the color balance, which doesn’t translate through digital means as our images have become more and more about perfection, almost a photorealistic representation of images. Directors and cinematographers aren’t always looking for that style and have been drawn to manipulate their images to counter the synthetic and specious digital look, to degrade the image for different texture and feelings. People are shooting with lenses that are 50 to 100 years old with their imperfections to resist the digital look. The thing with lenses today is the way they polish the glass and with their fare-resistant coatings and extreme corrected optical aberrations for optimum performance, they lack the characteristics of older lenses with their simpler designs which gave a sense of shape and dimension to the image. Even the attempt from lens manufacturers to produce the classic look of older lenses today falls short because of the restriction on manufacturing lead in the glass as older lenses had, due to environmental concerns. As we’re on the subject of discussing the difference in creating the look of a flm digitally, the other thing many cinematographers do is to shoot with very shallow depth of feld and focus. They think it creates a more textured look like flm, but I fnd it’s just another convention of digital imagery. Let’s say you’re using a wide angle lens like a 21mm in an exterior, which would create a greater depth of feld at a mid-range aperture, but you decide to use a wide-open aperture through the use of neutral density flters and everything becomes out of focus aside from the thing you’re focused on, behind and in front of the subject. Obviously, it’s an effect, but I fnd it disconcerting. Subconsciously, the characteristics of that lens would produce more depth of feld. Look, there are no rules, but when a technique is overused, it loses its effectiveness and becomes self-conscious.

How do you think about exposure, digitally to create a look as you would in flm? The way I learned how to create a look on flm was the way the landscape still photographer Ansel Adams used to work, using what he called the

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Zone System to control and interpret the values of contrast and exposure. Interestingly enough, I’ve been working with different camera manufacturers to develop a digital zone system, which would create a similar understanding of how to expose, control and recreate your image, digitally. It’s called the EL Digital Zone System, and it will map your exposure in camera, and you’ll have a relationship to the analog world if you want to use your light meter.

There are archival issues today with the digital medium. What are your thoughts on that? Well, that’s a big problem. Digital technology and formats are always changing, so will prior work in outdated formats continue to be updated and reauthorized? I doubt it. Our images will be lost. Currently, there’s something called DOTS (Digital Optical Technology System used for archiving digital media) that I just used on Dark Waters which people are beginning to understand the need for and express interest in, where you can archive digital information in a physical medium of metal alloy. Interestingly enough, flm is still one of the best archival mediums. How remarkable it was looking at the documentary flm Dawson City: Frozen Time, that was constructed with lost silent black and white flm reels that were buried in 1929 in a former swimming pool that became an ice hockey rink in the Yukon Northwest, unearthed almost 100 years later with the images in the negative still viable in a restoration.

As a cinematographer you’ve learned your own way, is there something that you feel that is important for young aspiring cinematographers to know? The most important thing is to look around you, at photographs and paintings in galleries and museums, and try to understand the methods and the intentions behind them.

Are there other artists that you feel inspired by today? The art world is always evolving and redefning visual language. I met this French photographer and artist JR, who states that the streets are the largest photo galleries in the world. The core of his work is about empowering and giving a voice to the silenced in society. JR calls himself an “urban artivist” creating art that is posted up on rooftops, buildings and streets; in the projects in Paris, Amsterdam, New York, the West Bank wall of the Middle East, on the broken bridges of Africa, in the favelas of Brazil, the border wall between Mexico and the United States or on a prison rooftop in Southern California, the world is his studio. An encounter between the subject and passerby on the street becomes a dialog and the essence of his work. I’ve had the greatest respect and admiration for his work over the years, how visually he engages marginalized communities and shares their identity in

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images made visible through site-specifc large-scale posters, which is important in today’s world to fnd how we’re all connected, rather than separated and divided. He made a flm with Agnes Varda called Faces Places, through this I met him at the Telluride Film Festival and we became friends, and later worked together on a poster for the New York Film Festival. There’s another photographer I discovered in New York, Suzanne Stein. She’s a street photographer with the compassion of Dorothea Lange, the intimacy of Diane Arbus and the poetics of Vivian Maier. She was an artist before becoming a photographer when she started experimenting with photography on her iPhone. She practically lives in the streets every day, with her camera in New York and Downtown L.A. Her images are compelling and courageous in their empathetic and visceral approach. Though Suzanne is struggling and still not widely known, she won’t be for very long, I can tell you that.

There’s a lifestyle that comes with being a cinematographer, how has it affected your personal life, or has it? Cinematography has allowed me to see and connect with people in the world in ways I never could have imagined. Traveling with my camera. I think of myself as a visual gypsy.

What do you see when you look ahead for cinematography in the future of flmmaking? People will always need stories to question and understand themselves and help them see and experience the world around them. Film has the ability for us to experience what is seen and hidden at the same time, that can reveal the depth of our own reality and opens us to a fuller sense of ourselves. Cinema is only over a century old, young compared to other art forms. It will always advance and evolve with visual grammar as flmmakers explore new language to tell their stories. Your question also reminds me of a preface of a book of unrealized screenplays by Michaelangelo Antonioni titled That Bowling Alley on The Tiber: Tales Of A Director. To summarize it in his words, the possibility of cinema’s extraordinary capacity for telling lies, falsifying the world with industrialized entertainment, consumer capitalism and organized systems of disinformation with its aversion of mass audiences to understand arduous complexities of feeling and thought will forfeit its own capacity to register or perhaps even reveal authenticity or the possibility of truth, flm might sell its soul. When images reveal our human experience and can transform our thoughts and emotions in both personal and artistic expression, those images will always be the exception and stand against the status quo. It doesn’t matter if we shoot 12k, 4k, 2k or on our iPhones. Nothing will replace the stories we need to tell.

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Matthew Libatique, ASC

Matthew Libatique was inspired to become a flmmaker after seeing Spike Lee’s flm Do The Right Thing (1989). Less than twenty years later, he was working as his cinematographer on She Hate Me (2004), Inside Man (2006), Miracle at St. Anna (2008), Kobe Doin Work (2009) and Chi-Raq (2015). “Matty” attended California State University, Fullerton where he frst became interested in studying flm. While attending the graduate program in Cinematography at AFI (the American Film Institute), he met his longtime collaborator and friend, Darren Aronofsky. Their frst feature flm effort was Pi (1998) where Matty was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography. Their next flm Requiem for A Dream (2000) won Matty the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography. Their next collaboration was the visually stunning, The Fountain (2006). In 2010, their work on Black Swan led to Matty’s frst Academy Award nomination. Their collaboration has continued with Noah (2014) and Mother (2017). In between his frequent collaborations with Spike Lee and Darren Aronofsky, Matty has also worked with Joel Schumacher on Tigerland (2000), Phone Booth (2002) and The Number 23 (2007). He photographed Gothika (2003) for Mathieu Kassovitz, Never Die Alone (2004) for cinematographer turned director, Ernest Dickerson, Everything is Illuminated (2005) for actor turned director, Live Schrieber and Abandon (2002) directed by Stephen Gaghan. He photographed Money Monster (2016) directed by Jody Foster, starring Julia Roberts and George Clooney and The Circle (2017) directed by James Ponsaldt starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. In 2019, he photographed Native Son, directed by Rashid Johnson, Pele: Birth of a Legend (2016) directed by Jeff Zimbalist and Straight Outta Compton (2015) for F. Gary Gray. Matty stepped into the Hollywood action genre with Ironman 1 (2008), Ironman 2 (2010) and Cowboys & Aliens (2011) directed by Jon Favreau. He was also the cinematographer on Venom (2018) directed by Ruben Fleischer and Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020) directed by Cathy Yan. Stepping into comedy, he was cinematographer for The Prom (2020) directed by Ryan Murphy, featuring Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep.

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Matty has photographed numerous commercials as well as music videos for artists such as The Cure, Moby, Tracy Chapman, The Cranberries, Incubus, Matchbox 20, Justin Timberlake, Lou Reed and Metallica, as well as numerous short flms and commercials. His photography on the phenomenally successful A Star Is Born (2018) directed by Bradley Cooper, earned him his second Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography. Matty has become a master cinematographer with many more flms to come.

What are your thoughts on the collaborative relationship between the director and cinematographer? In simple terms, I try to get to know who the director is and acquire a keen sense of their taste and tendencies. Listening and paying attention in every way shape or form is really the most important thing. It requires spending time with them which can be diffcult in a professional setting because directors are pulled in so many directions. Sometimes, it’s easier for a director to just answer logistical questions about casting and costumes than to actually sit down and talk about shots, because that’s a commitment that requires time. A director may be looking for a partner in making the flm which requires more responsibility in shot selection and sometimes, they are looking for someone to simply articulate their specifc vision through light and mood. Understanding who you’re working with is crucial to success. For instance, Darren Aronofsky works with a single camera mentality, he is equal parts composition, atmosphere, performance and storytelling. He has the ability to formulate a distinct vision while at the same time getting the absolute best from his collaborators. Conversely, there are directors who are less specifc about the camera and focus on only performance and storytelling. Their approach may be to rely more on the editorial process to tell the story through the use of coverage. In either case, it’s important that I arm myself with as much understanding of character and narrative so that I can collaborate effectively.

What would the frst meeting for a potential project be like with a director? The responsibility of a cinematographer going into a meeting with a director is to understand the story as much as you possibly can. In my experience, if the director starts to ask you about camera and what your ideas are about camera, it’s an unsophisticated conversation. The conversation to have is about the story and its characters. It’s where you share your impressions of the screenplay and gain information to eventually come to a common understanding of the material. From the cinematographer’s standpoint, just like from the actor’s or the director’s viewpoint, it’s about the story. The story will motivate the questions and the answers will motivate the decisions that defne the look of the flm.

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Stuart Rosenberg was the directing teacher at the American Film Institute (AFI), and he would always say the screenplay is paramount to everything. After that, it’s character motivation, nuances, personalities and the arc of each character. Going into a meeting, that’s what I load up on for ammunition. That’s the conversation I want to have frst, otherwise you run the risk of reading a script and being presumptuous of what the flm means visually. Unless you are reaching for the heart of it, you are going to miss the mark. Really good directors respond to somebody who has the heart of their story in mind. My frst conversations are always about story and character.

What was it like the frst time you met Spike Lee? Well that was a tough one only because he’s a hero of mine. When I was at Cal State Fullerton, Do the Right Thing came out. That flm inspired me to become a cinematographer. I realized for the frst time that flmmaking could be an option for a person like myself. It was a revelation for me. Because I was introduced to the concept that flmmaking could be social commentary as well as entertainment. I became conscious of the collaborations between the director and cinematographer through Lee/ Dickerson, Bertolucci/Storaro, Bergman/Nykvist, Allen/Willis and Stone/Richardson. So, when I met Spike Lee for the frst time, I had all this baggage of who he was and what he meant to me, so it took everything I had to play it as cool as possible to try to make it peer to peer. Luckily, it worked out well, because he hired me on that frst flm, She Hate Me (2004). It was defnitely one of the more nerve-wracking frst interviews, but we settled into a conversation about all things NY, sports and primarily, the flm.

Do you think that there’s a theme that you’re drawn to explore in the flms you select to shoot? Anything that exemplifes the human condition. Often, I connect with the main character’s struggle. Especially with Black Swan, I wasn’t deeply involved with the mother-daughter relationship, but I was really drawn to her striving to be better at her profession at all costs. In Requiem for a Dream, I defnitely felt a relationship between Harry and Sarah, so the relationship of a mother who’s alone. In A Star Is Born, I was drawn to the mentor-mentee relationship of two artists. I like anything I connect with emotionally. But there’s other things, like, the folly of doing Venom or Birds of Prey which brought out the fourteen-yearold in me. Then there’s the Chi-Raqs and the Miracle at St. Annas, which spoke to my college years. I have a life-long concern about race relations and social injustice. Working with Spike Lee, you satisfy those things. But as a cinematographer, at this point in my career, it’s really about what I can do that’s different for me and that will challenge me. But at the core of it, you want to make flms and have a main character who really sends a message to the audience.

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Could you talk about some of the directors you’ve enjoyed collaborations with? I’ve enjoyed making flms with Darren (Aronofsky). We met at a young age and come from a very similar place aesthetically and share a common interest in popular culture. Sharing tastes in music, flms, politics, fortify any creative relationship. Darren has a unique voice as a storyteller. Filmmakers who have this quality inspire me by their sheer talent. I’m also drawn to flmmakers who possess a wealth of experience, like Spike Lee, John Favreau and Joel Schumacher. I’ve learned the importance of poise under fre by the choices they make and their comfort level in storytelling. Spike’s courage to make a scene one single shot, Joel’s ability to cut dialog and deem it unnecessary, Jon’s inventive use of comedy and improvization have all left a mark on me and my growth. The entire set needs the director to lead and I’m the frst to appreciate that when it happens. Working with Olivier Dahan on My Own Love Song, Rashid Johnson on Native Son and Bradley Cooper all resonate with me as well. There was a fuidity and economy to their work. In each case, there was a sense that the only thing of importance was creativity. The everyday logistical calamities never contaminated their process and therefore each was able to reach something special.

You’ve worked with several actor/directors who are also in the flms, like A Star Is Born and Money Monster. Is it different when you’re working with an actor/director than when you’re working with someone who’s just directing? I have worked with plenty of actor/directors; Liev Shreiber, Mathieu Kassovitz, Jon Favreau, Spike Lee if you want to count his acting career. Obviously, Jodie’s an actor who I have learned so much from in terms of how she deals with actors. With a fellow actor, there’s a trust, an absolute trust there. On Money Monster, Jodie would just have an innate ability to understand what George would be struggling with and how to communicate to him. Or Julia, or Jack O’Connell. But A Star Is Born was the frst time I had ever worked with a director who was actually on camera almost the entire time. I realized in talking to him that I needed to wear more hats. I couldn’t operate the camera because I had to be his right hand in terms of whether the shot was working. He asked me a question early on. He said, “Will you do me a favor and just listen to my voice?” It was a little odd. I’m sure he asked our sound mixer too, Steve Morrow. He literally asked me to just listen to his voice and make sure he stayed in character voice-wise. There were only a couple times where I said, “Well, I kind of felt…” I thought that was a great responsibility that a director would give me. Other than that, I watched the shots, I’d think about the coverage, I think about where we’re going to next. He’s equal parts Clint Eastwood and

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David O. Russell. There’s a meticulousness about him, but he has a fuid ability to move the camera without worrying about how many setups. He was just worrying about putting the camera in the right place. Somehow as an actor, he’s able to look out through his peripheral vision to understand whether the camera’s in the right place. Many times, he wouldn’t even look at playback. He would just say, “Are you good?” The way he had to memorize the character of Jack and then put on a directing hat, I had to memorize the light and the camera, and keep an eye on things to help him. Everyone was wearing many hats, my gaffer, my key grip, my operator all had to be engaged in what was happening in that circle right around the camera and the performance. Because the director was on camera. It was a more intense but, in retrospect it was one of the most gratifying experiences I’ve ever had as a flmmaker. I had to sort of let go of the meticulousness of cinematography that I am guilty of getting lost in from time to time.

And, of course, that got you nominated for your second Academy Award nomination. How did it feel the second time around? I talked to you after Black Swan? It felt really, really good. To be honest with you, I thought the movie was powerful, really powerful. But I didn’t anticipate a nomination. The advantage of working on a flm that touches a lot of people and having cinematography that stays true to the narrative, is that you will get recognition. Great cinematography is made, but the flms haven’t been responded to. But in both cases in being nominated, I didn’t ever think that it was my best work. But I’m proud of it. I don’t really love the awards. I think that they are a little pompous. But I do like the recognition. I felt bad for Bradley because he didn’t get the recognition as a director. But having been there twice and lost twice, that’s not so great. I can only imagine what Roger felt like for all those nominations in the years before he won for Blade Runner.

What makes you decide a certain format, like going between 1:85, 2:35 or anamorphic? Let’s just talk about framing. Anamorphic always has a problem of minimum focus, so when I feel like the camera belongs closer to a character saying something subjective, it’s probably better to go spherical. Not only spherical, but 1:85. The reason is the proximity to the camera, it can be closer to the face without cutting off parts of the top and bottom of the frame. Whereas in anamorphic, you pull the camera further away from a subject because you’re protecting the top and bottom of the frame. So, those are my main concerns. How close do I want the camera to be, or how close do the director and I want the camera to be to the subject? But then there are other questions, aesthetic concerns, like how much negative space do you want to exploit? What are our sets going to be like? How will color be

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rendered? How important is the palette? Do I want these colors to be softer or do I want them more out of focus? Because anamorphic sees those things better so a wider lens can have a little painterly background because the colors will soften.

Is this your decision or yours and the directors? 90% of the time it’s mine, because it’s my job to do the research and give the consideration and actually present my thoughts on it. That’s where we come to a decision together. Every choice I make has to have a purpose, one of the frst choices you make is what we’re going to shoot on. Not necessarily the camera, but defnitely the lenses.

Do you do less testing or the same amount of testing when you’re shooting digitally than you did with flm? I do probably the same amount of testing. I’ve incorporated more tests on actors than I used to now. The actor will come in and I will do about six lighting setups on them to make sure the lens has enough ability to see their silhouette in the wide, but also be able to move the camera in for tight and to see how the light is playing on their face. I’ll just run the cues wide and I’ll run the cues tight. But it’s fast. I basically just pre-light it, I just try to improvize as much as I can. I like to get as many different looks and color temperatures so I get as much information as possible. It’s like data mining for cinematography.

Of course, everything has gone more digital now, but when you work with Darren, it seems like you’re mixing format a lot. You’re shooting digitally, you’re shooting Super 16, you’re shooting 35. Is there a reason why, and is it diffcult to mix formats like that? Darren and I always shoot flm. The only time we really mixed digital into it was on Black Swan because of the subway. Pi was the frst time where we had to shoot in the subways without a permit, and that was bringing in gear and a 16mm camera. We did it again on Requiem, where I brought a 35mm camera down there with Ellen Burstyn. Then Black Swan, he wanted me to bring another camera package down there, and I said, “No, I’m not doing it anymore. We’re going to do it with this.” And I made us shoot it with a 5D. That’s the only reason why we did it that way.

When you’re shooting for Darren, do you think you’re going to still continue shooting flm? You know what frustrated him? It’s a funny thing. He visits other flmmakers on set, and they have this beautiful, pristine image that can see everything they

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need to see. On his sets, he’s got this terrible monitor to look at. It’s a struggle to get these HD taps for cameras. It was a great expense that we had to get two HD taps for our 35mm camera. On Mother! we got an HD tap for our S16mm camera. I think he was frustrated by it. So, there’s a good chance the next time we make a flm it will be on digital. It’s all about him being able to see the performance, to see the image. I understand that. What I love about flm is that it’s still craft. There’s something about exposing negative that’s satisfying, that maybe only cinematographers get to feel. The precision in getting your timing lights back and knowing how close you were. That alchemy is only enjoyed by us. It’s appreciated by people at the lab and other cinematographers, maybe your frst assistant camera (AC), your gaffer. I’m sure in other art forms where the foundation is craft, there’s probably things about painting and technique that only the artist enjoys. I think that exposing flm is one of those things for us.

I notice you use a RED Epic Dragon on several flms. Why did you choose that over Alexa? It seems that many cinematographers prefer Alexa. So, was there a reason? My frst digital flm that I shot that on the Alexa was Ruby Sparks. Jon and Val, who are an amazing directorial team, were very frustrated at the lack of color rendition and how much they actually had to force into the flm. They missed the Kodak 5293. They missed what they knew they were going to get by shooting 5218, 5283 or 5274; that really stuck with me, because when you look at a piece of a print off of a negative, there’s a certain color rendition, contrast and tonality that you get from a flm print that is missing from a digital fle. RAW is extremely fat, then you add Look Up Tables (LUTs), and something is still missing. But those were the early days of digital. I think the LUTs have become better. When I saw the Dragon for the frst time, it had a little more separation and that had to do with its internal LUTs. But I liked the image. I was about to go to Brazil to make the flm called Pelé. I thought to myself, what better time to try out a new camera than being in Rio on this crazy movie and working with a whole new crew. I brought RED Dragons down there. They were just coming out and then I ended up shooting Straight Outta Compton on the same cameras.

So, for Straight Outta Compton, it looked like it has some very big crowd scenes, was that a challenging flm to shoot? A lot of that crowd work was digital, but we had about 3,000 people on one or two days on the set of Compton where we re-enacted the concert in Detroit where they famously had to run from the police and got arrested. The great thing about Straight Outta Compton, for me, was when I met Gary Gray, he had an entire wall with snapshots, old prints like you would get at Walgreens, and they

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all came from that time period. He had one photo for every scene in the script. I looked at them and with old photographs, when you look at them, the composition is a bit off, but everything looks so real to me. So, that was the jumping off point for us. The challenge was how do we make this as real as possible and try to strip down as much artifce as possible, but still make it cinematic? Creating the reality in the execution was harder than it looked. Because you wanted the hats. You wanted the white t-shirts. I used a lot of smoke and a low-contrast curve as a LUT on the Dragon, because I didn’t want to bring in artifcial light, so I used a lot of smoke to create lifted shadows in the movie. I couldn’t do that outside at night, but most of the times we were at night and there were cop lights. I needed something low in the frame that was illuminating faces.

You’ve done big movies. Iron Man, Cowboys and Aliens. But when you’re shooting a Marvel flm, it’s like they’ve created a genre of their own these days, is there a certain style or look that they kind of have to adhere to, in a way, to be one of the Marvel flms that audiences are expecting? If there is, I don’t adhere to it. My two experiences with Marvel were Ironman 1 and Ironman 2; Venom is a property of Sony Pictures. It’s a holdover from their licensing of Spider Man. It’s interesting that you ask, I wonder if I was to make a Marvel flm now, whether that would be the case. Because I think Marvel’s aesthetic was defned after I left. Iron Man 2 was a flm that existed to introduce different ideas for their future universe. Iron Man 1 was just like an independent flm from a new studio that was at the birth of something that was going to get much, much larger. I shot both 1 and 2 on flm. They haven’t shot flm since then. But I think in digital there’s a real danger of everything becoming homogenized. Everything being similar. I noticed that on Netfix, or Hulu, things look very similar to me. They don’t distinguish themselves. When I went into Venom, it was like a standalone movie. I was in New York, and it just felt like it was a good time to make a superhero movie, and he was an antihero. The director, Ruben Fleischer said the magic words, “John Carpenter.” I was like, “Cool. I’m in. I’d love to make this movie.” I wish there was a little more darkness in it, but it had a Kurt Russel kind of comedic aspect to it. There is something kind of “everyman” about Tom Hardy’s performance.

So, of the flms that you’ve photographed so far, do you have a particular favorite that you feel that you’re proud of the way it looks or of the experience of making that flm? Do you have a favorite? Oddly, one of my favorite experiences was My Own Love Song, directed by Olivier Dahan. He had made La Vie en Rose, I loved that flm. It was a

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smaller flm with a very modest budget shot in Louisiana. He had such intention and ideas that fowed like a true artist. It was a European sensibility of making a flm. I’ll never forget, we were sitting in the middle of Louisiana and he wanted to wait for a train to go by, as Renée Zellweger, in a wheelchair, rolled through past the gas station. We just sat around, and the whole crew waited. Everybody was asking me, “What are we waiting for?” It was the middle of the night and the frst assistant director (AD) said, “This is how we do it in France, we don’t bring trains, we wait for them.” It just showed me that there are other ways to make flms. So, that was one of my favorite experiences for sure.

Do you decide the shots and angles with a director, or do you expect the director to come to you with those issues already decided? It depends on the director. Some directors don’t shot list at all, Joel Schumacher didn’t shot list. He would show up and get his actors in order, it’s more of an old school way of working. With Joel, it’s more about you have a camera, there’s flm in it, this is what the actors are going to do and let’s go. Then there’s Darren who shot lists the entire flm, storyboards every sequence he possibly can until the end and those are his bible. Every director is going to be different, so it’s about getting to know how they like to work. As a cinematographer, you are basically like a chameleon putting on the coat of whatever director you are working with. The more understanding you have of who that person is, the more successful you are going to be in working on that flm. I’ve been fortunate to work with a variety of directorial styles. Someone may ask for more responsibility and others will ask for much less than you are used to. You just have to understand what game you’re in, and that will tell you how to go about your job preparation.

Do you work with a director on preparing storyboards or shot lists? Darren shot lists with me on the bigger scenes and the smaller scenes he’ll do by himself, that’s part of his process. Primarily because he doesn’t want to paint himself into a corner on what is logistically possible. He is extremely precise and doesn’t like to do the work more than once. On scenes where it is more of a challenge in execution, I will be sitting there saying yes or no, or we can do it this way. From a shot perspective, Darren is the voice; composition and camera are part of his process. He also sets up a specifc language for his flms where things are extremely symmetrical, they only work on a certain axis and he predetermines screen direction. It’s like playing with a musician who plays the same bars over and over. He’s probably the only person I know who is really specifc with storyboards.

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I storyboarded and pre-vized with Jon Favreau on Iron man but that was primarily for budgeting of visual effects. The work was helpful in communicating to departments the fow of the scene and the amount of work to be done. However, his history as an actor made it a priority that his performers were going to take precedence over any idea that we came up with in preproduction. Most recently on Birds of Prey, Cathy Yan and I did almost all the storyboarding together. She has an incredible dedication to her creative team while being able to feld all the requests from the production end of her responsibilities.

What kind of visual references have you used in communication with a director? Or has a director used to communicate with you? References come in many forms. I start mining for images in photography and art, but they can come from music, theatre, writing. Creativity inspires more creativity. I scan photographs from books, fnd images from the internet and create a reference folder to share with the director and production designer. Eventually, this will turn into something I share with the crew to communicate the goal. Obviously, revisiting flms is also in play. While prepping Requiem for a Dream, Philip Lorca DiCorcia and Nan Golden photographs became key references for mood and light. For Gothika, directed by Matthew Kassovitz, I loved the work of Illustrators John J. Muthe and Dave McKean. On Birds of Prey, Cathy Yan brought in the photographs of Mary Wolf which are cast with a distinct urban color palette of magentas, purples and pinks that ft perfectly with the flm’s feminine themes. While prepping Inside Man, Spike Lee was keen on studying classic flms from the seventies and was able to get prints from Martin Scorsese’s collection. Every week, we’d watch a print and discuss aspects that we could apply to our approach. Films like French Connection, Three Days of The Condor and Midnight Cowboy. One of the oddest references came from Rodarte on Black Swan. They designed the ballet costumes for the flm while I sat in on their frst meeting with Darren. They presented an image of a cube that was covered in spikes which resonated with me. It represented a metaphor of internal and external struggle that appropriately articulated the main character. I’ve been peripherally inspired by the Matthew Barney exhibit Drawing Restraint. He was in a harness being held away from what he was trying to draw, it spoke so much about being a cinematographer. Over time, I’ve realized that references shouldn’t always be literal. Often, it is more the essence of an image and the atmosphere. Art is a great motivator for me, because it makes me look beyond the box, you have to create something from the energy of yourself.

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In prepping for Black Swan what visual references did you use? I do a lot of research when I’m going into a flm, especially with Darren. I was looking for feminine stories with a feminine vision and texture, so I looked at The Double Life of Veronique, which is one of my favorite flms from a photographic standpoint. I also looked at Red, White and Blue, because they all had this feminine texture and I wanted to get away from Replusion which was in both of our canons and just fgure out how to tell a feminine story. Kzilowski did it better than anyone as far as I’m concerned. I like to think that if you look at Black Swan that there is a connection between it and the flms I looked at for references. Darren’s original intention was that Black Swan would be an accompaniment piece to his other flms thematically because it was about this one character in a subculture. There was the subculture of wrestling, the subculture of ballet and one person’s obsession with it and how far they will go to hold on. But besides that concept and the hand-held camera, I had no intention of making the flm look like The Wrestler. I also looked at a lot of photographs from Saul Leiter because I like the saturation of the colors. I like where he puts the camera, there are refections and a lot of foreground glass. Those were the references I shared with Darren. When I met with the Production Designer, we pulled out our iPhones and showed each other our references. Before I show up to prep, I’ve already collected all the photographs and whatever I want to present, and as I go through them with Darren, we just toss away the ones we don’t want. I basically do this with a director on whatever flm I’m shooting, a little presentation of what I think the flm should look like. We didn’t really look at flms together, but I made Darren see The Double Life of Veronique and then we had Replusion and of course The Red Shoes. So, those were the main infuences going into the flm, then after that it’s just about what can I do in this location without having to change that much? What can I get away with? A lot of it was dictated by the fact that the camera had to be able to move 360 degrees whether it be in her reality or on the dancefoor.

Do you think it’s important for directors to know movements in art? It’s important for both directors and cinematographers to know art. Production designers know art and have a passion for it. Their offce is often a great place to view references. It’s a chance to take a look at what the Director and Designer have been discussing before the cinematographer arrives. Directing requires an intense attention to detail. A level of intellect and knowledge that pulls from a mental library of art and experience that is going to allow them to communicate to every discipline, not just cinematography. I don’t think I’ve ever met a director who didn’t know at least a little about art.

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In commercials and music videos, the references come in the form of a deck or a look book that has already been determined. Commercial directors spend a great deal of time pouring over images for inspiration which is something I’ve always appreciated.

What magazines are the ones you think are interesting for photographic inspiration? Anything that has to do with fashion, magazines like Flaunt, Surface, the European Vogues. There’s a fashion photographer named Glen Luchford that I used as a reference on Requiem and Gothika, but if you look at his work it’s very infuenced by Blade Runner. So, am I using Blade Runner as a reference? Yes I am, because Blade Runner is one of the top ten flms of all time for me. That’s why I’m saying it’s cyclical. I almost need that constant repetition of images going through me so I can stay motivated and feel that I’m striving for something new.

Do you think it’s the director that leads you to making a flm bright or darker to accommodate the genre? I think as a cinematographer, you are a craftsman frst. In the best-case scenario, the cinematographer is an artist, but we are craftsmen frst and foremost. Sometimes, something is making you wrap that light around closer to the camera than you usually do and it’s an instinct. You may start lighting differently based on what you are shooting, whether your inclination is to light it bright or dark and moody. There are guys who make a living lighting images bright and fat, so if they have to light something more dramatic then, they are moving the light away from the camera. As cinematographers, we know the difference between a light right next to the camera and a light 90 degrees away from it, because we have a frame of reference of what something should look like in our minds. But you strive to deviate from norms, that’s what keeps you going. That’s the problem these days because of the digital post, every time you deliver a thick negative (as a cinematographer), you run the risk of having the look of the flm change if you are not there in post-production.

How technical do you like the director to be in terms of knowledge of lenses, lighting and flm stock? I welcome a director to have knowledge of lenses and but I’d rather they stay out of lighting and flm stocks. It’s more important that they concentrate on where they want to put the camera and what the blocking is rather than what the grain is going to look like or what the color rendition is going to be, or whether I’m at a 2.8 or a 4. I really don’t care if they know. But lenses directly affect the blocking and lighting to an extent. It is helpful if they know their

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focal lengths. But the more they concentrate on the actor’s performance and their storytelling, the better for me. I have a responsibility to expose the flm and sometimes that gets a little crazy, especially if you are pushing or pulling or changing the gamma of the flm, you’re paying attention to a very low level of light and exposure and whether a face is going to be readable at 2 1/2 stops down; those are my responsibilities, not the directors. The more they concentrate on the performance, the more I will understand the performance and I’ll make choices based on what they are doing. But when working with Spike Lee, Darren Aronofsky or even Bradley Cooper, the camera is a shared object. It’s literally, equal parts director/cinematographer. I can only imagine working with the director of Parasite, for example. The lens choice might be ours. But where that camera goes, what it does, what it sees, the director is the frst person to ask. If that person needs help, that’s what we’re there for. But we just collaborate. The camera is ultimately a shared tool between us. They call us cameramen, but really, we’re just the facilitators for whatever the director’s style is. Whether there’s somebody who’s camera heavy or somebody who is not.

Do you prefer working with primes or zooms? At face value, I don’t have a preference for primes or zooms. Unless we are shooting anamorphic. I think zooms are a part of flm language these days and people understand them. I don’t think they throw audiences off, ultimately the subjective viewpoint of the camera can be accentuated by the zoom and that can be a great beneft. This being said, these are tools, and the tools shouldn’t be the driving force in decision-making.

Are you also the camera operator or do you work with an operator? I love operating, but sometimes I may be doing the flm a disservice in multi camera situations because I am unable to view all the frames. In these situations, it’s more important for me to see all the cameras so that I can help each camera feel like the same single voice. On single camera situations, I prefer to operate. It makes for a clearer line of communication. Let’s face it. There’s no better feeling than looking through the eyepiece. Even in digital!

A lot has been done to alter the color palette of flms, in the genre you often shoot in, does the issue of color palette come up? All the time. It’s a very early conversation. Beyond getting to know the director, the chief responsibility of the cinematographer is to have discussions

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with production designers, costume designers and set dressers and ask, “what do you see for this flm?” Then I will either accentuate it based on what I would like to do for the flm or discuss what might hurt it. If I’m largely thinking about a desaturated look but with color separation, and they show me a palette that is very similar and basically melds together I’ll explain that for a flm that is going to be de-saturated with higher contrast those colors are all going to blend together, so more distance should be created in that tonal range. Then you just go by character or story structure, in Requiem it was a very easy delineation between summer, fall and winter and the color of the light deviated the moods of those time periods. Color palette is one of the frst conversations I have with the director, and how to articulate that visually is the other part of that conversation.

Is color palette something the director is coming to you with or an interpretation you are having with the script? Most of the time you are coming into an established color palette because the production designer comes on the show so much earlier than the cinematographer in pre-production. So, what I’m thinking about is the texture of the flm and how colors will be rendered. I have to articulate to the production designer and director how colors are going to shift based on what I’m doing to the flm. Sometimes, I’m at the genesis of the color palette like on The Fountain for example I was in on very early conversations and the color palette was determined by myself, Darren, and the production designer. Even the visual effects guys were involved early and that palette was strictly adhered to by all of us. On a flm that’s stylized, the palette is controlled, you’re going with cooler or warmer colors, but then you are staying within a realm. It’s a question of taste really.You look at some really broad comedies and colors are running rampant. Wardrobe can be the chief offenders because they can be distracting. I’ve been on commercials and have to be the police of the predetermined palette because the director has so much going on. But without a doubt the palette is part of the visual storytelling.

Is there a time of day that is diffcult to recreate on a set? It depends on the size of the set. Day exteriors in general are diffcult to recreate on a set. What you don’t notice in day exteriors is the amount of ambient (light) that exists. It takes a lot of light to recreate that ambience. If it’s a moderately sized set, you’re going to need much more light to create day, it’s not a single source. Daylight is the sun and everything that’s bouncing around in the sky, so taking that into account is transposing those physics into an interior setting and trying to do the math. It’s actually simple from a mathematical standpoint, but it’s diffcult to translate that into an aesthetic standpoint, that’s where you’re chasing your tail a bit.

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Regarding camera movement, is it the director who decides when there is camera movement or do you make suggestions regarding covering shots with movement? Darren is very big on creating his idea for a shot. We fnd the themes so I know it’s going to happen somewhere else in the flm and I may suggest where. Sometimes, camera movement is really born out of the situation at hand. There’s a stylized camera movement that takes you from one place to another and then there is movement that services the blocking of the actors, I’m a big fan of both. The shots that stylize the flm are predetermined. But the shots that are motivated by the movement of the actors function as maintenance within the body of coverage, that will allow an energy to the scene because the actors are able to move. There can also be a static master that shows the whole space and everybody is walking back and forth. Look at the masters like Woody Allen or Ingmar Bergman who brought the actors from the foreground to the background with a static camera, but the actors are moving. In Manhattan, which takes place in a small apartment, the action is happening in the foreground and background, then back into the foreground. Auteurs like Woody Allen or Spike Lee can avoid the conventional coverage and shoot a scene in one shot because they know where to place the camera for single shot scenes and commit to them. Now that I’ve been on more studio flms, I see that’s rare, so many people need coverage, and it gets tedious. The camera movement is just used as another tool and technique to get you out with more interesting coverage. Camera movement is a way to keep the actors in the scene longer. If the scene is three pages long, it’s nice to get the whole thing in one shot and make the shot count. If you move the camera and make each shot and each performance count, you are engaging those actors to give it to you right then and there. Some actors are good between takes 1 and 5, others aren’t good until 10–16, it’s up to the director to make that determination. As a cinematographer, you have to pay attention because you can’t light for somebody else’s shot if they are good in the later shots, you have to know where all the pieces fall.

Could you talk about the difference between what a dolly shot will give you and what a Steadicam shot will give you? How closely are you watching the monitor when the Steadicam operator is shooting? I wasn’t in love with Steadicam until Inside Man where we used it a lot, because it worked for the story. I had established Denzel Washington’s character with a hand-held multi camera feel; so, to juxtapose that to Clive Owen’s character, I had to come up with something that moved through the space as a single camera feel and Steadicam ended up working really well. It’s taking your technique and giving it a purpose. I don’t appreciate Steadicam as a quick fx to a problem. The Steadicam is not meant to stand still for two-thirds of the shot,

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it’s meant to walk around. I have a problem when it becomes a directorial convenience just because of time. If you are a responsible cinematographer and you are doing justice to the story, then it can be a great tool. If you are just not making your day and it’s a panic tool, then you have far worse problems than just Steadicam.

So, you think that at this point you’ve found a way to balance your success with your personal life? I’m better at it now, but mostly because my kids are older. I have 20-year-old, so now my kids are in college. There’s less pressure to be home because they’re gone. But it’s a lifelong struggle. “I'm sorry I’ve missed most of your life.” I think I’ve gotten better at it over time, naturally, because generally speaking, my kids got older, and they needed me less. So, that would be the only thing that’s changed. But I’ve been divorced once, so I missed a large part of my kids’ lives because I’ve been gone so many times. My friends have become my crew. My current wife is a cinematographer, she’s an AFI graduate and on her way to making a career for herself. So, it’s diffcult, but she gets it. I try to separate my personal life from my work life, but part of my personal life spills into my work life because I enjoy the research of looking at art and photographs and watching flms. When I’m making a flm, there’s no other life really. That’s it, there’s nothing else. That’s why it’s hard for me to keep making them over and over again, so I also do commercials. I like commercials but it’s not as rewarding creatively. But you are always sharpening your skill set, anything to stir the pot so you can work on your craft.

I know you are a fan of flm, are you becoming more concerned now about the longevity of flm? I think people will continue to master on it and evolution will decide how viable digital is as a platform to store movies. I think flm wins that one. But as far as shooting flm, I don’t worry about it because there’s nothing I can do about it. When the time comes that we don’t shoot flm, I won’t shoot it anymore. Digital is getting better. I’ve never been tied to any one camera or format, but I do like flm better. Truth be told the Alexa is here now but unless they keep upgrading it, it’s just an old computer. The business needs to fgure out how to make the digital cameras last longer than they do. I buy a new laptop every two years; somebody should start thinking about that.

Where do you think the flm industry is going in the future? We’ve gone through flm, we’ve gone 2K, we’ve gone 4K, now we’re 6K and we’re 8k, where is this going? I think that in the media future, we’re looking at a world of streaming. You have people like Alfonso Cuarón, Martin Scorsese, all making flms for Netfix.

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I think that that’s the immediate future of flmmaking, is that people are going to have to reckon with the fact that we’re not going to have screens. We’re not going to go to the theaters as much. The business is going to shift over to streaming, it was heading that way anyway. I don’t love the fact that we’re looking at a world of streaming. I fnd it very diffcult to watch a movie at home without pausing it for a second to do something or look at my phone. You really have to force yourself. Technology always had a really adverse effect on human patience. I think we’re at the mercy of technical companies like Arrifex, RED or Sony to create cameras that are going to create a streamlined and easier workfow to stream. For example, the 4K mandate at Netfix, is it going to become a 6K mandate? If we’re never going to screen movies anymore, why does our resolution have to be 6K? Why does it have to be 8k? That’s a big question, but I think those are going to be the selling points. Why can’t we shoot flm for our streaming show, if it’s right? I fear that flm was making a comeback and this big hit that we’re taking in theatrical distribution is going to pause on that a little bit. I think that people will continue to make flms, but we’re just going to be watching at home, for the most part. I think the theater experience is going to be two seats that are blocked off between you and somebody else.

You’re working on bigger flms, so that they’re properly archived, but what about the people, the independents, who are doing smaller flms? What is an affordable way to archive digital material? I think that you still have to do the Linear Tape-Open (LTO). That’s what everybody is using anyway. It’s the only thing that people still trust. But you have to archive the LTO. You can shoot movies on a Black Magic 4K and it can still stream on Netfix, or Hulu, or whatever. Not Netfix maybe, I don’t know if it meets their demand of 4K mandate, pixel count. I don’t think Apple or Hulu have a mandate. Maybe labs can maintain a business by creating IPs. They just have to be stored.

And that means they can’t close down the lab, because it’s going to be a storage facility somewhere. I recently met a producer by an old friend. We met at a storage facility in Burbank, and we looked for all the original positive of Pi. The flm came back to us after twenty-fve years and Darren really wants to remaster it. But it was interesting going into a vault and looking for our flm.

Do you have any advice for aspiring cinematographers? As much as I get annoyed with digital and the salesmanship aspect of it, people are lucky today for all the resources available to learn on. I said this years ago

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when people were shooting with PD 100s, flmmaking and creativity is less of a privilege now and more of a right, anybody can do it. I think the main thing for young cinematographers is to keep honing your skills by continuing to shoot. Now you can because you can buy a digital camera. Early in your career you have a lot more time then you think you do, so be creative and store a library of knowledge and research. This business is fascinating because I’ve worked with people who grew up in the slums of South America and I meet people who went to Harvard and Oxford and both are equally as creative. I can’t stress enough, that people need to do research, it’s not just about the flms, it’s about the photography, it’s about the art, it’s about engineering and it’s about science. It’s about everything that’s going on in the world and the more you are attuned to what’s happening and what has happened, the better prepared you are going to be to make something more creative. When I started in this business, I was copying a lot of people and now I’m hopefully evolving into somebody who’s creating things.

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John Lindley, ASC

John Lindley began his career in television in 1981 shooting the episodic series Nurse. He shot numerous movies for television before moving into feature flmmaking in 1984. In 1987, he began his collaboration with Phil Alden Robinson with In the Mood. Two years later, he shot one of the flms he has become most famous for, Field of Dreams (1989). Their collaboration continued with Sneakers in 1992 and The Sum of All Fears (2002). In 1988, John stepped into the horror genre shooting The Serpent and the Rainbow with Wes Craven. John returned to the family drama with Immediate Family (1989) directed by Jonathan Kaplan. In 1991, he began a collaboration with Joseph Ruben with the suspenseful thriller Sleeping With the Enemy. In 1993, they did another thriller together, The Good Son. Stepping into the romantic comedy genre, John photographed Father of the Bride (1991) and I Love Trouble (1994) with Charles Shyer. John continued working in the romantic comedy genre with Nora Ephron, shooting four flms with her including Michael (1996), You’ve Got Mail (1998), Lucky Numbers (2000) and Bewitched (2005). John collaborated with Gary Ross on Pleasantville (1998), a stylized flm incorporating color into black and white as a period piece. To achieve the visual style they were going for, the flm was one of the frst to explore the options available with a digital intermediate (DI). John has continued to shoot such notable flms as Catch and Release (2006) directed by Susanna Grant, the dark and horrifc Mr. Brooks (2007) directed by Bruce A. Evans, Reservation Road (2007) with Terry George, Legion (2009) with Scott Stewart, Imagine That (2009) with Karey Kirkpatrick, The Last Song (2010) with Julie Ann Robinson and St. Vincent (2014) directed by Michael Ahern and Theodore Melf. John has recently returned to his roots in television shooting for numerous shows including Manhunt (2020), Castlerock (2019), Unbelievable (2019), Divorce (2019), Snowfall (2017–2018), Deception (2018), Electric Dreams (2018), Father Figures (2017), Time After Time (2017), Good Girls Revolt (2015), Manhattan (2014), Witches of East End (2013) and Pan Am (2011). John is currently the

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elected national President of the International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600. Inherently a New Yorker, he is able to capture the essence of the city realistically while maintaining its charm and beauty as seen in the flms he has photographed for Nora Ephron. Clearly a family man, John has put his family ahead of his career so that he could spend quality time and maintain a cohesive family unit, which is very diffcult with a cinematographer’s lifestyle.

What made you want to be a cinematographer? Did you go to flm school or apprentice? I had wanted to be a still photographer, but my mother was a literary agent in New York and she had sold the movie rights from a book called David & Lisa to a writer/director couple and they hired me to be a PA (production assistant). The movie was a western in Spain with Faye Dunaway and Stacy Keach. I worked on the flm the summer I graduated from high school. The director’s name was Frank Perry and at the end of the summer he said,‘Look I’m going to do a couple of other movies and I’d like you to work for me’ and I’ll work you up the ladder, maybe get you into the Directors Guild of America (DGA). The only obstacle I had was the draft, I needed to go to college to avoid the draft. I was accepted to NYU and I called them up and said, I’ve got this job offer in the flm business, so how about I pay you tuition but I don’t go to school and you act like I’m matriculated, that way you will have achieved your goal of having a student who is already in the business and I will get to work in the business, and you’ll get an empty seat and my tuition. I thought this was such a good idea that they would leap at the opportunity, but they said, ‘are you kidding?’ So, I had to say no to my frst job offer in the business and I went through the undergraduate flm program at NYU. After I graduated, I decided to try and be a cinematographer. I got a job as a PA on a PBS TV show that was shooting in upstate New York. I was really fortunate because they had hired a bunch of PAs but assigned them to departments, as opposed to one day you get the donuts and the next day you go get the camper and the third day you handle the parking. On this production, they said we need somebody in the camera and electrical departments, and I chose the camera department. I still know some of the people I worked with on that production back in 1973. I just happened to fall in with a nice group of people.

What attracts you to a project creatively? The frst question I ask is ‘who is the director?’ The other question would be, is there a photographic opportunity of any kind? Those are the two main things that I look for. I’ll also quickly ask who the production designer is and take

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a look at the budget to see if the designer has enough to provide something worth shooting.

Have you turned projects down based on the script? Once I had children, I became more cautious about certain kinds of violence, not because I was protecting the world from it but because my threshold for that kind of thing diminished. I have turned projects down that I felt were too violent or just plain evil for whatever reason. I have also turned some comedies down. Gordon Willis managed to make Woody Allen’s comedies look as good as any movies in that era if not better. Then there are some comedies where nobody cares how they look. No one will say to you I don’t care how this movie looks, those are words I have never heard, but I have met people who feel that way.

Is there a particular genre you’re attracted to? I like to do different genres because it’s more interesting for me. I’ve done some action movies, but that gets old after a while. I’ve done some comedies, but what works best for me is if I can mix it up. One of my regrets is that I don’t shoot documentaries anymore because I really like doing those, but that kind of work just doesn’t come my way.

Can you talk about your introduction to shooting for television? When I frst started working, I shot some sponsored one-hour dramas for TV. I shot two or three of them, the guy who produced those was Robert Halmi. He asked me to shoot a TV series in New York called Nurse. It just so happened that it was the only TV series being shot in New York that year. The show starred Michael Learned. I was quite young at the time and I hadn’t done a series before. But that was actually an advantage for me because I didn’t know all the little tricks and short cuts, I just tried to make it look as good as I could which I think was a constant surprise to the people at the network. Since it was the only series being shot in New York that year I got a lot of visibility and suddenly directors were aware of me. I had the chance to work with a lot of directors in a short period of time. Since I was pretty young, the producer told me the network executives were coming to visit, he said ‘these guys are coming in from California, I don’t want you to stand near the camera because I don’t want them to know you’re the DP.’ It was the early eighties and in those days, most people shooting TV shows were at least middle-aged and had a lot of experience and were trustworthy. I was trustworthy but not middle-aged.

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What attributes do you like in a director? It’s not a conscious choice on my part to look for particular attributes in a director, but I’ve noticed in my resume that I have worked with a lot of writer/directors. I like people who are articulate and one of the things I like about working with writers is that they can amend their own material. They don’t lose track of the story, which is easy to do when you are negotiating with actors about how a scene is going to work or what the trajectory of the story is. The writer/directors I’ve worked with are very confdent on the set about what the story is and how to tell it. I fnd that reassuring and admirable. It’s not easy when you do the whole movie out of sequence and it’s not easy when you are working with powerful players who want a character to be a certain way, not because of the story, but because of their own personalities or careers or whatever is driving their agenda.

Do you see a distinct difference between a director for hire and a writer/director? You can be a director for hire and be very capable. I’ve worked with people under those circumstances. I’m a cameraman for hire and I don’t think that being somebody for hire diminishes your passion, enthusiasm or expertise. I think there are other things that come into play that can undermine people’s attachment to a project but I don’t think it’s a matter of whether it’s your material necessarily.

Have you sensed any difference working with a woman director? I have noticed that you worked with several women/writer directors (Nora Ephron, Julianne Robinson, Susanna Grant). I haven’t really noticed a big difference between the men and women directors I’ve worked with. I would say that occasionally I have seen women directors go out of their way to assert their authority because they think maybe that’s necessary, and the men directors take that for granted, they don’t wonder if people are accepting their role. But for the most part I think I’m a collaborator, and as soon as a woman director sees that I’m a partner, she doesn’t need to navigate around me in any way. What distances me is if I think that somebody isn’t working hard. I had that experience a long time ago.

How was it working with Nora Ephron, she seems like she’d be really funny? She was great, she was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and she was fercely loyal to me. She basically adopted my daughter, they visited with

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one another frequently without me. There are a few people that I have worked with who are friends as well as colleagues and Nora was one of those people. Phil Robinson is another, and Susanna Grant, these are people that I stay in touch with. Nora used to ask my daughter to come to her house for Thanksgiving, so that’s the kind of relationship I had with her.

When you frst read a script, what are you looking for initially, what makes you want to do the project? I’m drawn to scripts for different reasons. When I frst read the script for Pleasantville, I saw that it was going to be in black and white and that that was part of the story; that was it, I was in. Field of Dreams, I had read the book and I loved it, and the script was a really good adaptation of a book that’s really diffcult to adapt. It’s a very whimsical story and when it says ‘baseball ghosts appear in the corner and walk on the feld,’ you go okay, I can picture that but for a movie you think what is that, is it grisly or creepy? How do you make it something that people want to see? I thought Phil (Alden Robinson) did that brilliantly and it’s all in the script. Field of Dreams was an adaptation and Pleasantville is an original screenplay but I was easily drawn to both. Sometimes I read a script and I may not get it exactly but if I like the director, I’m in. I try to work with the same people as much as possible.When Field of Dreams frst came out, they weren’t going to release it, which often happens with flms that become iconic.

What would really make you pass on a project? I would pass based on violence or exploitative material. It’s very hard for me to get certain images out of my mind once I’ve seen them. I remember being at a grocery store after that bomb went off in Oklahoma City and I saw one of those weekly news magazines by the checkout. There was a picture of a frefghter holding a baby that had been in the building. Fifteen years later, I could still draw that picture. I don’t really want to put certain images in my head if I can avoid it, because they don’t go away very quickly for me. I don’t particularly want to be a purveyor of that type of thing to other people either.

Do you decide shots and angles with a director or do you prefer that a director come to you with some of those issues already decided? I try to get involved in the storyboarding. I almost always do; in fact I can’t think of the last time that I didn’t. When I work with a director more than once, he or she always carves out that time for me because they fnd it as valuable as I do. That way, a lot of the work is already done. Then the actors show

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up and you rehearse and amend the plan, but at least you’ve addressed the action. At the end of storyboarding, I like to address what each scene is about visually. If there are three people in a conversation, is it two against one or everyone for themselves? Or what’s going on that dictates how you cover the scene or what the angles are. I spend a fair amount of time storyboarding with the directors I’ve worked with. Fortunately, I’ve never worked with a director who has said put the camera here with a 20mm lens on it. I know they exist, but I haven’t had that experience.

Have you ever used visual references to prepare for a flm or has a director come to you with their visual references to come up with a visual style for the flm? I’ve almost always used visual references and frequently directors have brought them to me as well. It’s kind of a natural part of the process. Production designers do it too, so usually the director has already absorbed some of the designer’s visual references, which can be anything from photographs to paintings to other movies. The internet provides visual references in seconds, if you can’t remember the title of a movie but you recall the actor, in two minutes you can be looking at a still grab of the shot you were remembering. I think that’s where this sort of thing is headed and that will become more and more a part of the process.

In terms of artwork or photography, has there ever been a base of material that comes up each time? It depends on the movie. It also depends partly on what I am interested in at the time. When my kids were little, I remember I was watching Snow White with one of the kids and animation is so inspiring because they can light things in animation that you can’t possibly light on a set. I saw something done in silhouette of Snow White and it wasn’t long before I was shooting something in silhouette on the movie I was working on. I pitched it pretty hard to the director, I said you don’t really need to see these people in the shot and at frst there was a struggle and then in the end that’s what it was and everybody was happy. Things come over the transom that you just are open to at the time. Joel Meyerowitz is a contemporary photographer, and he did a book about parks in New York. I really admire him and had met him just prior to starting this project a few years ago. The book came out and I looked at it and thought, hmm, a picture of a path in a park, the light wasn’t particularly interesting, but I think that’s what happens, some of these artists tunnel in and start to fnd meaning in places that don’t connect with the viewer. They’ve gone deeper into the woods than the rest of us have and that’s interesting to me. I’m trying to fgure out how those things can be references. How do you take something that doesn’t have strong composition or lighting and give it some kind of value? But that’s something that I started thinking about when I saw this book of his.

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Do you think it’s important for students who want to be cinematographers to have an awareness of fne art and photography? There are all kinds of cinematographers, you could work as one and not care about art at all or you can be Vittorio Storaro and that’s all you think about. So, it depends on what you want to do. I think people gravitate naturally towards wanting to be artists or wanting to look at art. Why is it that some people go to museums constantly and others wouldn’t go there on a bet? Both of those people could become cinematographers. But I was always interested in art. I went to grade school in New York City and we didn’t have a gym at that school, so we would play in Central Park; if it was a rainy day we would walk to the Metropolitan Museum of Art which was quite close and that’s where we would spend our PE time. When I was going to college, I spent a lot of time at the MoMA, not because I was forced to or because I thought it would get me to heaven but because I liked it. I recommend people do what they like, and the chips will fall.

Do you think there is a preconceived look to lighting for specifc genres? Like romantic comedies looking a certain way? Defnitely. There are misunderstandings of how some genres should look with comedy being the most obvious and clearest example, that it should be brightly lit and should all be two shots. Woody Allen’s Manhattan is a romantic comedy and is one of the best-looking movies I’ve ever seen and it’s not brightly lit and it isn’t just two shots. In recent years, a lot of directors I’ve worked with have struggled with format, should we shoot 2:35 it’s just a comedy, why don’t we shoot 1:85? I once made a list of comedies that were shot in 2:35 and there were some great ones, not just Manhattan, there are a bunch of them. So, that’s kind of a misconception and anybody who thinks a genre has to look a certain way is limited in other creative ways. Because if that’s the way you think, you are not opening your mind to possibilities in general and that’s probably emblematic of a lot of prejudices that will not beneft that particular project.

What about in terms of the producers wanting the high key glossy look of the romantic comedy and altering the look of the it in the DI? Manhattan is a gorgeous flm but it is not a typical romantic comedy. Woody Allen is kind of in a league of his own. Did you ever see Local Hero? Chris Menges, whose work I really admire shot it and it’s a comedy. I remember thinking wow this movie looks unbelievable

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and then, over the years I realized who he was, and I think he’s one of the most accomplished cinematographers of this era. That movie is not brightly lit, but it’s still funny. A digital intermediate brings its own challenges but if you haven’t talked about how the movie is going to look until the DI then something is wrong. There is plenty of room for disagreement even if you have talked about it. I shot an Eddie Murphy flm and I worked on the DI and when the producer saw it, he fipped out; he said,‘you can’t do this’ and then he spent about half a day with me and by the time we were done it was back to where I had put it in the frst place.Which is not an example of what a genius I am, but it shows you that if you look at a movie and think it should be bright and it isn’t, that’s a refex that isn’t helpful. But if you look at a movie and say it made me feel this way and I didn’t want to feel that way. If there is a clue that drives the story, like a gun in a chest of a drawer, well you better be able to see the gun. But if you see people in silhouette, you have to think about the context in which this takes place.

With the comedies you’ve shot, like Father of the Bride, which is more naturally lit but has no ominous shadows whereas Michael is more darkly lit because of the subject matter of the flm; you stepped outside of the boundaries of the genre. Father of the Bride had its ups and downs, the video version is much brighter than the print ever was and when it’s broadcast, it’s brighter still, but in the print, the beginning and the end had a lot more contrast. The frst time they screened it for a few people and Steve Martin was there and he came up to me afterwards and said, ‘That’s looks great, it’s not so bright’ and that’s a guy whose an art collector, so I’ll take that as a positive endorsement. But you’re right, Michael is a different kind of flm, and I shot this movie called The Last Shot that hardly anybody saw but that I love and it’s a comedy but it gets really dark. It has a very odd black humor in certain places, and it gets really dark, but that’s done in concert with the director, I don’t sneak that in.

I loved the TV show Bewitched when I was a kid so of course if you shoot the movie version, it has to resemble the original show right? We looked at the TV show and we were making our own version of the show within the movie and that had to have a certain kind of fat look to it. So yes, I would say that the movie is brighter. Nora in general wants her movies to be accessible and be easy to see and of course she wants the actors to look good.

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You’ve Got Mail is bright but still has a more natural look and it really feels like New York, sometimes you watch flms that are set in New York and they don’t feel like New York at all. I always feel like I have the beneft of growing up in New York. It was no accident that Nora wanted to make that movie there, although she was a transplanted New Yorker that made her even more loyal to the city because she actually grew up in Beverly Hills, but she became more of a New Yorker than most natives.

Do you prefer working with primes or zooms? I generally prefer using primes, mostly because I like the movies that I work on to have a kind of architecture that relates to those lenses. I’ve shot some movies with just three sizes of lenses. The other thing is that I fnd if you have a prime on, nobody says ‘why don’t we zoom?’ That eliminates that conversation. But there are movies that I have happily used a zoom on and that’s fne too. I do use zooms on commercials a lot. I fnd a lot of zooms fare a lot. Some get these milky fares that I don’t care for, there are so many more elements in them that the opportunity for fares grows. I own a couple of zooms that I really like, an Optimo 17–80mm and 24–280mm.

Do you operate your own camera? I always do on commercials. I operated one of the cameras on Reservation Road. But when I frst started, I never worked with operators and it was really hard for me to switch over, but when I did, I didn’t really go back. There were union issues and I know Roger (Deakins) operates but he always gets a standby. I’ve been blessed to work with some really good operators, who are really good photographers, not just pan and tilt people. One of the operators I work with is so much more personable than me and I like to have him around so he can make friends with the directors.

Do you stand by and watch the monitor with the director when you are shooting flm? I prefer not to watch the monitor. I have an onboard monitor on the camera, but I like to see what I’m seeing. Video interpolates lighting in a very strange way, the tap on a flm camera is really a surveillance camera that’s been jammed into a movie camera, so the contrast range is nothing like HD might be; it’s just standard defnition and it’s very misleading. I like to stand by the camera always. The other thing is I like to interact with the actors, I’m constantly asking them to make adjustments and I can’t do that if I just show up once in a

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while. The more directors migrate towards the monitor, the better my role has become at the camera with the actors because at the end of the take, they sort of look up and often I’m the frst person they see, so that creates a bond that’s kind of valuable for me. I don’t sit down; I like to stand up and be involved. Directors who wind up huddled around monitors become more of a disembodied voice. I once read something about artifcial intelligence that stuck with me, basically, it said that if you were fying a plane and someone said to you every couple of minutes 2 degrees right, 2 degrees left, go up 500 feet, that you’d go okay, but if a computer was telling the same thing, you would want to fnd a way to shut it off and not listen to it. So, if you are just a voice coming out of a tent, ‘could you take a half step right, there’s a light right behind your head,’ it’s not long before actors aren’t wanting to respond. But if you are in a room with them and are part of the process, then it’s different because you’re engaged with them. I defnitely think that produces better results.

How extensively do you test flm stock before shooting? Well, it depends. I’m using flm stocks now that I’ve used for a long time. I still test underexposure and overexposure because I like to see what the contrast range is. I tend to test flters and things more than stocks. I used Fuji on Legion, I used the 500 Eterna and the 64 daylight. I tested the TV stocks and stayed away from them because I wanted more contrast. I’ve had all good experiences with Kodak.

How involved is the producer in any of the creative decisions in the flms you make? I can’t think of a movie I’ve worked on where the producer was heavily involved in creative choices unless it was the director who was also the producer, which is often the case. I’m pretty old school in the way I work with the director, the producer pays me, and I work for the director, that’s the way I look at it. That’s where my loyalty lies. If I want to do something that I think might disturb the producer or the studio, I let the director know and make the director my partner. That’s kind of the way I see it. I guess it’s different on lower budget flms or on TV, but with the movies I’ve worked on, the director is the one who hires me, so that’s the person I stand behind and hopefully is the person that stands behind me.

How about working with the production designer, do you do a lot of work with them? The production designer (PD) is the key player for me, so before I take a movie, I’ll ask who the PD is. Because in the end I’m photographing somebody else’s sets. It’s their sense of color and ability to accommodate the lighting or have it

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infuence the set. That’s just crucial to me. I’ve been fortunate to have worked with some really talented people. The frst movie I ever shot, Tony Walton was the production designer because he was a friend of the director and it was a tiny little movie, but Tony Walton had multiple Academy Awards, multiple Tony Awards, he had done every kind of design there is. On I Love Trouble, the production designer was Dean Tavoularis, that guy is just unbelievable, we were on a long car ride together, we had fown to Chicago and had to drive to Madison, WI and we had just met. I was asking him about the early part of his career and he said his frst break was Bonnie & Clyde, then Zabriske Point, The Conversation, The Godfather, One from the Heart and Godfather 2. When you work with people like that, you see what’s really possible.

Regarding camera movement, is it the director who decides the camera moves or do you make suggestions regarding covering shots with movement? I watch the rehearsal and then I pitch ideas. Depending on the director and the atmosphere on the set at that moment, the director is either open to these ideas or not. Sometimes directors get overwhelmed after a rehearsal because it didn’t go the way they wanted, or actors need attention or the dialog needs attention so it’s not the easiest time to get people to stretch. But it depends, I’ve shot all of Phil Robinson’s movies, he doesn’t make enough movies, but he and I had a shorthand early on that was ‘no bad shots.’ We’d watch a rehearsal with a director’s viewfnder and wander around checking angles. What happens is after the rehearsal breaks up; that’s when the machine really starts on a set, and that machine is expensive, so everyone wants to get it going as quickly as possible. The sooner you set the shot, the sooner everyone can be ready to do their job and move on. The time you spend working out what that shot is can be very expensive and it might be happening between two people, the director and cinematographer, but in fact 150 people are doing nothing at that moment, so you have to add them to the cost. It’s not easy to insulate yourself from that pressure. It’s not easy for directors to do it because they are responsible with the cinematographer for making the day. To think clearly under pressure like that is very diffcult. It’s easier for me because all I’m thinking about is where the camera is going to go and the lighting. But the director is thinking, I’ve got to move on, make sure the actor is happy, etc. It’s rare that I have a hard time setting a shot with a director and the better I know them, the more I know whether they will go along with my suggestions.

Could you talk about the difference between dolly shots and Steadicam and your feelings about working with them? I have mixed feelings about Steadicam, there are times to use them and times not to. I never use it as a way to do a quicker dolly shot. In Legion, I made a

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conscious decision never to use the Steadicam and I convinced the director of that, even though there were times in the desert where people were saying ‘this would be a good time for Steadicam.’ I said, no, not using it. I fnd that Steadicam can sometimes take the energy out of a shot. They can be quite elegant, and I can think of numerous examples of Steadicam shots that I really admire, but if you fall into it as a convenience it’s generally a disappointment. Because of the foaty quality that it has, it can feel very subjective in, but I would never use it just because it’s faster to set up than a dolly.

I know a lot of young directors can get addicted to the Steadicam once they start using it and don’t know quite when to stop. More and more people are just running around with handheld cameras. If you watch dramatic television these days, they’ve got four or fve REDs and they’re waving them all over the place. I think in the show Friday Night Lights, that was a kind of an anti-style breakthrough, let’s disrupt the screen direction and have a bunch of cameras and the lighting can go to hell, we don’t care; sometimes, they shoot fve cameras on that show, when they routinely shoot three. I saw an interview with Gordon Willis after they screened a digital version of The Godfather, and there was a taped interview of him that screened before it, and he talked about why he stopped shooting. He was extremely articulate that guy, so one of the things he talked about that really struck me is that he couldn’t stand to work with people who were just gathering material, that he had the good fortune to work with directors who knew what they wanted. He wasn’t talking about how much time they had to spend at work, it wasn’t about that. It was about how incisive someone can be creatively, compared to how lax someone can be creatively, and he couldn’t stand the latter and it was really interesting because there’s a lot of gathering going on now. A guy that operated with me had also operated ten or twelve movies with Gordon Willis, and anybody who worked with him talks about the experience of the seriousness of the set. People may not talk about how fun it was, but they do talk about how it was a pretty important place to be. Gordon’s body of work is amazing. I’m glad he was fnally given an Academy Award; I just wish it didn’t have to be from the back door. Given how infuential he was and the consistent quality of his work, it wasn’t like he shot a couple of movies that looked good, it’s the whole body of his work. When I was working on tests for Pleasantville, I was working with DuArt, a lab in New York that had done all of Woody Allen’s movies. I told the guy who ran the lab that he had really helped me with the black and white stuff, and he said I wouldn’t know any of this if it wasn’t for Gordon, he taught me! He was really knowledgeable and there he was giving Gordon the credit for teaching him. The day will never come when I go into a lab and explain to them how to do it, it’s just not who I am.

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Do you have a particular format that you like to work in? I like 2:35 a lot and after that, I like 1:85 or 16×9, which is 1:78, they are very close, but what I don’t like is the square frame. I like the width of the 2:35 frame a lot, it provides the opportunity to unbalance the frame which I like. Now there are so many formats, you shoot something in 2:35 and you think what might happen in the future if it’s panned and scanned, will I be there when that happens? Who is going to make that choice? So, that’s a little tricky but I don’t know if there is much to be done about it.

Do you suggest formats to directors? I have fought for 2:35 on some movies where the director wanted to do it 1:85, and never had a director come to me afterwards and say, ‘I’m really sorry we shot 2:35.’ Basically, once they see what you can get out of it, it’s pretty appealing. Designers don’t love it because you eliminate ceilings and depending on whatever it is you’re doing that might be a sacrifce depending on what the locations are. When I shot Mr. Brooks, we got a banquet hall and the thing that we all liked about it was the ceiling and it was really a struggle to get that ceiling in shots. You shoot from a low angle and then the actors aren’t happy. But I think designers have more trouble with it than directors, because it means making the sets bigger sometimes. But I really like 2:35.

I had the opportunity to see a print of Mr. Brooks at CSUF, that Kevin Costner brought in because he’s an alumnus. I was really impressed by the look of the flm and the richness of the colors and blacks seeing it projected on flm. I’m pleased with the way that movie looks. The opening sequence was really cool, but unfortunately it was cut out of the fnal version of the flm. I’m sorry that didn’t survive but that’s the power of the movie star producer.

What are your thoughts on digital technology versus flm? What do you prefer to work with? I was an early adopter of the RED. I expected this digital transformation to happen much more quickly than it has. I used to think that the professional market was more adventurous than the amateur market and I think that digital photography got inverted, I used to see soccer moms with digital cameras way before I saw a digital camera on a flm set. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike really hastened the move to digital because TV producers with American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) contracts could shoot HD and not have to deal with the SAG strike. I think that once digital exhibition completely takes over, that could be

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the end of flm. It will take a while to install all of those projectors and there may still be some international exhibitors who don’t do it as quickly as is done in this country, but who knows? But it’s inevitable, and the tide is rising very quickly. There are losses and gains as with every technological advance, it’s much easier for people to take pictures and have an opinion about how they look on the set because what you see is pretty much what you get. One of the charms of being the cinematographer with flm is that often you’re the only person, besides maybe the operator and the gaffer, who can look at a set that’s been lit and know exactly how it’s going to look in a screening room once it’s been photographed with flm. Obviously with digital, you see it right away and there’s a loss of autonomy. People can make judgment calls on the lighting right there on the set, but on the other hand there’s some great manipulation that can be done in the DI. Things that were hard to do in a lab now you go to a DI and you adjust colors and contrast in seconds. I can do some of my lighting after the fact and I am aware of that when I’m on set. There was a time when the novel was going to be dead and the theater was going to be dead, all these things that were going to die, and it turns out they didn’t. What I wonder is will there be some kind of flm even when most things are done digitally or if the business will not be able to allow that? My kids got very excited about buying vinyl records, I remember when everyone was excited about the death of vinyl records except a few sound people I know who said that CDs don’t have the same dynamic range, but nobody listened to them. You could put a CD on the dashboard of your car, put your coffee cup on them and still play them. Now real audiophiles want the vinyl back. I wonder if that will happen with flm? Or does it take too much of a structure with labs and projectors, so will it all just go away? If you go to the ASC Clubhouse or Panavision, you see some old Technicolor three strip cameras sitting on a tripod that look like they were used on a wagon train. There were some guys who thought that was as far as it was ever going to get technologically. Maybe one day, people will look at the flm cameras we used today with the same kind of perspective, ‘wow look at that old thing, incredible they actually used that.’

You were one of the pioneers on working with the digital intermediate on Pleasantville and I imagine the DI has come a long way since then. Yeah it took us almost a year to fnish Pleasantville, where now I do one in ten days or less. It depends on the colorist and if I’ve worked with the person before. But Pleasantville was a very complicated long process. There was no DI before Pleasantville and people thought I was cheating when I did it on that flm. As if it was so easy. I remember when Roger (Deakins) shot O Brother Where Art Thou and suddenly, I’m reading articles about how wonderful it is that Roger is doing this thing called a DI, why is it he does it and everyone says he’s a genius, I do it and everyone says I’m cheating? (laughs).

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When you are shooting now knowing that the DI is a given, what do you do differently? Knowing that, I can spend less time fagging lights, which can be quite time consuming at night. I can use broader strokes, but I still put the light where I want it, I can’t move the light in the DI, but if I put the light where I want it but the background is too bright, I used to spend some time dealing with that on the set and now I don’t, I just know I’ll deal with that later. I can save a bunch of time on the set if I know I’m going to be at the DI later. It’s mostly dealing with reducing light not adding it or changing the contrast. I might not spend as much time taking the fll away from something knowing I can increase the contrast later.

That is coming in with the knowledge and understanding of what the color palette already is? Color palette is something that I work on with the director and the production designer to build certain things in. I don’t want to fuss with fve or six colors every time I do a scene or a shot. If we’re saying these are pastels or saturated colors, I want to make sure that’s all together. For example, I always fnd orange juice very piercing in a scene, so in a DI I go right after that OJ or I might de-saturate just the color green if I think something looks too Kodachrome. But I don’t want to have to go through every shot in the movie if somebody says ‘you know I think we should have more pastels’ and they didn’t build that in, that would take me forever. Some of those things you can track easily and some of them you can’t. You can only lay a color on something in so far as the gray is saturated or not. If I have a light red and I take that color out, it’s a light gray, I can’t make that color a dark red, I can’t just grab the color and darken it, I can saturate or de-saturate but the level of darkness is built into it in the exposure. I’m pretty careful when I work on a DI, I know where I am in every reel every day and I know where I have to be at the end of the process.

Have you ever had actors interfere with your work on the DI? If it’s one particular faw or blemish or whatever, sometimes it’s more time consuming and expensive to deal with it on the set, so you deal with it later. A lot of actors are getting body scans as part of the process and then they can replace parts of them if they have to. It’s expensive but especially with big stars who might be somewhere else and you need to reshoot one shot and just see them in the side of the frame in profle. I’ve worked with a bunch of actors who’ve been scanned and it’s interesting because then who owns the scan? There was a commercial with David Spade with Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live who died long ago, and yet he’s in this commercial. There was that

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Wells Fargo commercial years ago with John Wayne who was modulated in there.

Have you ever had diffculty dealing with an actor/ actress who wanted changes in the DI suite? There are some actresses who are so beautiful you could put a fashlight on and they would look great. On Sleeping With The Enemy, Julia Roberts was in her mid-twenties, and I remember we had started to rehearse and nobody was around and they needed some stills for some props when we frst started to shoot, so I said ‘I’m happy to do it but I’m really not a still photographer,’ and they said it doesn’t matter these are just going to be prop photos. I took Julia outside, where in North Carolina the sun is beating down and I had a camera with a long lens and I look at these pictures the next day and I’m thinking Herb Ritz eat your heart out and it had nothing to do with me, she’s just so photogenic that it didn’t matter. Or Jennifer Gardner, I think Hillary Swank is beautiful, Joan Allen is an amazing-looking woman and you can’t go wrong photographing them it’s just so easy and then there’s the guys too.

Kevin is pretty in Field of Dreams, but psychotic in Mr. Brooks, so he had to look a little creepy and Bill Hurt too. Yeah, Kevin was really young in Field of Dreams. But Bill Hurt, that guy is such an amazing actor. He’s really so good in The Big Chill and he’s unbelievable in that movie Into the Wild even though he’s only in it for like 90 seconds. We went to high school together; he was a year ahead of me. He’s such a good actor. Before Mr. Brooks, I had worked with him on Michael, and we were in the dramatics club together in high school but I hadn’t seen him in a while and I looked up his credits, his body of work is really impressive, amazing work and a brilliant actor very aptly named, hurt. He’s very misanthropic. Mostly, he talks about working for alimony.

How has being a cinematographer affected your family life? My wife was a set decorator when we met, so she had her eyes open going into this. My parents were divorced when I was quite young. I got married when I was older and one of my life goals was to not provide a broken home for my children. In my era, divorce was very unusual and it’s a very destructive thing for kids. Now that it’s quite common, I think the destruction is often overlooked. I see children who have really suffered from the high rate of divorce. We worked really hard at staying married and have so far succeeded several decades into it. She was really great about bringing the kids to me all the time when they were young. Many of the people on my crew, their wives would be angry and would act out that hostility by not bringing the kids to movie sets,

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but Kim was the opposite. It was good for the kids, good for me and good for our marriage. But that takes a huge effort, it’s much easier to stay home. There are some women who like their husbands being gone. I read this really cool book about Nantucket and the average whaling expedition was two years long, this was in the mid-1900s, so the women in Nantucket ran the place because all the guys were gone. It’s refected in their writing, the songs they wrote, the poetry they wrote, and it has been cited as an example of women’s independence way before its time. I know there are people who get divorced after twenty or thirty years, so I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I feel pretty confdent that my marriage will survive. I work out of town much less than I used to. What’s easy is going away, what’s hard is coming back. Because the place changes without you, once my wife and I realized that we got better at it. Re-entry is what we called it, because it’s the subtle things, like somebody took over my sink at the bathroom. Then there are less subtle things like who tells the kids when to go to bed, suddenly I’m saying oh you can stay up, whereas when I was away and she was trying to run a place with three kids and then I’m like “Uncle Buck” who comes along, ‘sure stay up as long as you’d like, here, have some candy’ (laughs). Or when the kids were little, they would be sleeping in the bed with her and I come home and go hey what’s going on? Once we recognized that, then we got better at dealing with re-entry and it helped us. I’m fortunate to have married the right person who is a great mother and a great wife and a good person.

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Seamus McGarvey was born and raised in Armagh, Northern Ireland. His love for capturing the image started with a single lens refex camera where he photographed whatever captured his eye around his hometown. He attended a flm program in London where he was inspired by mentor, Jacek Petrycki, to shoot motion picture images. He began shooting short flms, documentaries and low budget features. After graduating in 1988, a job shooting for the British Film Institute (BFI) led to a career track in cinematography. He has photographed and directed over 100 music videos, for such artists as U2, The Rolling Stones, PJ Harvey, Robbie Williams, Sir Paul McCartney, Dusty Springfeld and Coldplay. Seamus photographed the feature flm The Winter Guest (1997) for Alan Rickman and A Map of the World (1999) for Scott Elliott. In 2000, he photographed High Fidelity, directed by Stephen Frears and in 2001, he photographed Enigma for Michael Apted. Mike Nichols approached Seamus to photograph the HBO flm Wit for him in 2001. In 2002, the beautiful cinematography in the critically acclaimed The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry, caught my attention for its use of color palette to subtly distinguish the three storylines. Seamus stepped into comedy with Along Came Polly (2005) directed by John Hamburg and the glitzy, stylized Sahara (2005) for Breck Eisner. In 2006, Seamus straddled two different worlds, shooting World Trade Center for Oliver Stone and Charlotte’s Web for Gary Winick. In 2007, Seamus began his collaboration with Joe Wright for the critically acclaimed Atonement, which led to his frst Academy Award nomination. In 2009, he photographed The Soloist with Wright and their third collaboration in 2020 was Cyrano. Seamus photographed Nowhere Boy with longtime friend Sam Taylor-Johnson. The controversial subject matter of teen violence caught his attention in We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), directed by Lynne Ramsey. In between these notable feature flms, Seamus takes on documentary projects such as A Fuller Life (2013), Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (2012), Lost Angels: Skid Row is My Home (2010) or a short flm for a friend. Seamus reteamed with Joe Wright to bring Anna Karenina (2012) to the screen leading to his second Academy Award nomination. He stepped into the world of the comic book action genre with Avengers also in 2012, directed by Joss

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Whedon. He was the cinematographer for Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, and Nocturnal Animals (2016), directed by Tom Ford. He stepped into the science fction genre for Life (2017), directed by Daniel Espinoza and the musical genre for The Greatest Showman (2018), directed by Michael Gracey. In 2018, he photographed Greta for Neil Jordan and Bad Times at the El Royal for Drew Goddard. More recently, Seamus has stepped into the world of episodic television as the cinematographer for The Nevers. Seamus is at the peak of his career. I absolutely enjoyed speaking with him about his work that ultimately stems from a love of the visual image and an artist’s eye for light and composition.

What made you want to be a cinematographer? Did you go to flm school or apprentice? I started in photography, so technically I learned the mechanics of cinematography through doing stills. I loved the chemistry of flm and the possibilities of what can happen in the dark room. Looking at things through one’s eye is very different than the selective gaze of a lens. For me, it was really about the stills being the genesis of it all. That is how I started to see things in translation because the camera captures immediate reality in a very impressive way. There is a physical distortion of reality through a lens with depth of feld. That was initially what fascinated me, how sequences of still images have shifting meanings depending on how they are arranged. I actually didn’t want to be a flmmaker at frst, I was interested purely in creating stills. But I was always fascinated by how placing images together can create meaning or evoke an emotion depending on how they are arranged, so in a sense that is very basic editing. I photographed things in my hometown in Ireland and it was a very solitary pursuit, it was like an obsession of mine, but it defnitely gave me the bug for cinema. I still consider myself a photographer, I rarely use the word cinematographer, it seems so grandiose. I love taking stills and I take them with a different intent now. Back then, I was an earnest teenager and I believed I was an artist (laughs) and now I do flms that are in service of a script and work in a collaborative way. I kind of miss the solitary pursuit of having a camera and being lost in your imagination with a lens, but that is something I am trying to retrieve again now. I am fnding that photography is really therapeutic and is bringing me back to why I love flm.

How did you transition from shooting stills to actually shooting movies? I applied to London Polytechnic Center; they had a program in FilmTelevision-Photography that was wonderful. Generally speaking, we had very inspiring shooters that came in and taught us and guided us. It was a small class of ffteen people, so we all worked collaboratively on our flms. I never had a

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chance to shoot any until the very, very last flm. Those plum jobs as cinematographers were always taken by the more aggressive members of the class, so I was always wielding the boom, which is where I learned about sound, or I would be the editing assistant, all of which is great training but I was desperate to photograph things. While I was in the program, I continued to take photographs, used their dark room. At the end of it, I thought well, I really haven’t had a chance to shoot anything, so I was thinking that maybe I should go back to shooting stills. But I had this really inspiring teacher Jacek Petrycki, he had shot many flms in Poland, and here I was this amateur camera buff. I thought he was one of the greatest cinematographers; we are still in touch. He became this great mentor and made me think about what the camera means, what movement means, what color palette means, the intersection with the designer and director and all those things that are vital to flm. I have always admired the Polish style of cinema and particularly how they train their flmmakers. Their flm school is one of the greatest in the world and I have had the privilege of going there and meeting past students, you can see it in their work. Their cinematography is informed and intelligent. It is actually the Polish flmmakers who I admire, they don’t do things for spectacle and photography can be spectacular. I think a lot of the American style of shooting is overbaked, overcooked, it is easy to lapse into bombast and I think that the Polish style has this reserve and it can be dramatic and anarchic when it needs to be. But it has this feeling of ‘rightness’ and that is something Jacek taught me. I guess he saw that I had some ficker of talent and he insisted that I shoot this absolutely terrible black and white road movie that I am embarrassed to even see now, but at least I had a chance to get behind the lens. After I left college, I became a painter and a decorator. I got sort of a break shooting a flm for the BFI. Some of my friends from college had gone on to work at the BFI and it was through them that I met some producers who gave me a chance to shoot a no budget short flm. After that, I got offered a no budget feature, and did that for a few years and in between being an assistant, I managed to get some work as a camera trainee, then as a flm loader on various flms. I think that really helped because I just went into it, I was fearless, and I was cheap. Learning on the job. I shot stuff, shot loads of shorts. I hadn’t much experience on the feature flm, but I didn’t have guarantors looking over my shoulder, so once I had done a few of these low budget features and people saw that I could work fast and fnish on budget and we all had a good time doing it, one thing just led to another. I was really lucky.

What attracts you to a project creatively, what makes you want to do it. I love a good yarn, so the story is the essential thing. If I like the story and my imagination is peaked by it, then great; I know that I can do something interesting photographically. Of course, I also have to meet the director and

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it’s important that we have a good rapport because flms are pretty high-octane places and tempers can rise. I think if you meet a director that you know you can go through the fre with, survive and still be friends at the end of it, that’s the right person to work with.

What attributes do you look for in a director, when you are thinking about taking on a project? I like when people have a sense of humor, because when they are rough and tumble, it’s really not fun making a flm. I like directors who can think fast. I really admire intelligence and also somebody with an unexpected take on things, people who don’t rely on formula. I love when directors surprise me with new ideas and don’t try to mimic things that have gone on before. A good director is open to ideas. I like an interesting, creative person who can relate to actors. As a cinematographer, you don’t want to build a bridge to the actors, they are the director’s responsibility. I really love when there is that exchange between me and a director, when the director can be honest and direct and say ‘look I don’t like that—but I like that’ and I can show things to them and they are honest about it instead of feeling either intimidated or afraid to say ‘look, that doesn’t ft with my vision.’

Do you see a difference in working with American directors versus British directors? No, not really. There is such diversity in directing styles and as a result I am a different cameraman with everyone. With Mike Nichols to Joe Wright, for instance, they are direct polar opposites. Or Oliver Stone, I mean there is nobody like Oliver Stone, so you can’t really compare, and nationality doesn’t come into it really. I think when you get to that stage, if they are that good, it transcends borders. Maybe the directors I have worked with in Britain have favored more literary projects. I’ve wanted for ages and ages to work with Lynne Ramsay; We Need to Talk About Kevin was her frst flm based on a book. Before that, she was working on her own original scripts and she devised this kind of camera stylo, her own style of the camera writing as a pen. It became its own voice, rather than the chapters of a book. In The Hours or Atonement, even in their structure they belie their literary roots. So, somebody like Lynne is amazing because she just doesn’t have those interests, but she is very adroit with the camera and that is lovely to see. Those are the directors I like, somebody who understands not only what a lens does or what moving a camera in a particular way might do to a viewer but also the sort of syntax of the sequences of shots. Great directors can imagine sequences, cinematic sequences like sentences, or like words, they can pre-conceive. Joe Wright is like that. Joe and I worked

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for weeks and weeks totally locked off from anyone on Atonement, storyboarding, editing, and it is almost exactly the flm, I mean shot to shot. I know Roger Deakins rather well, and he and the Coen brothers also work like that.

What was your experience with Oliver Stone like? I loved him. I’m desperate to work with him again. But he always asks for Rodrigo Prieto. I went on the set of Wall Street II, I had just moved to New York and Oliver invited me down, which was so nice of him because it is weird being on other sets, but I walked into this grand set, and it was some fancy party and it was lit so beautifully. I mean, Rodrigo is such a genius, you couldn’t even see a light, but it had this glow, you could tell it was just going to look incredible on flm. Oliver grabbed both Rodrigo and me and started twiddling our ears and he said, ‘I am torn between two lovers; how can I choose?’ and it was just such a lovely thing to do. I love Oliver. He is incredibly gentle and super smart and I love his politics, I love his honesty, I mean he has got his devils like everybody does, but he is open and he struggles with a lot of stuff but that just makes him a fuller human being. I really, really get on well with him. He was brilliant when I met him because he doesn’t like conservative approaches to anything. The World Trade Center script was quite an emotional straightforward story. But it really didn’t demand the extreme style that Oliver Stone flms were known for under the auspices of Bob Richardson. The kind of extreme of lighting with both contrast and overexposure and cross processing and lots of different textural tricks. This was at the outset going to be very sparse and respectful and that was what Oliver signed up for when we discussed the look of the flm.

What would make you pass on a project? Obviously, if I don’t get on well with the director when we meet, or if it is subject matter that I disagree with, I’m kind of political. I have passed on things for political reasons, or with directors who have political affliations that I disagree with. Or that are funded by ‘oppressives’ as I see it.

Could you talk about working with the digital intermediate (DI)? I love the DI. I’ve had great experiences with it, but I also like to shoot stuff in camera because then everybody is on the same page; everybody knows from production design to costume, they know what the color is. I always approach the photography stage as though it were a photochemical fnish, capturing what I need in camera as much as possible. I think that shows intent and direction in the photography. You can’t fag an image digitally, darken a section of

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the image the same way, it looks like a vignette rather than a properly fagged lamp that will fall off in a particular direction. When Producers say don’t set that fag and we’ll save three minutes on the set and fx it in the DI, it’s just a different look, it feels different to an actor, it’s just not the same to try to paint it again. The DI offers tremendous advantages and I’m a big fan of it. But I do like digital photography and I work with Photoshop, so to be able to change the grading of the shot in the middle or to introduce fltration as the shot progresses is a huge bonus. I used it a lot on Atonement, especially on the big Steadicam shot, we did quite a bit of work on that, although there was no CGI (computer generated images), there were a couple of shots where we added some smoke in the back of some soldiers, but essentially that shot was photographed like one great performance art piece. I was able to do quite a lot in the DI when the camera tilts up and sort of bring down the exposure a little bit, although I was riding the exposure on the day I was shooting it but in the DI suite I was able to create traveling windows over faces, I was able to darken the sky. It is just a wonderful tool, there was also a moment when Robbie, played by James McAvoy, fnds the bodies of these girls laid out where he’s wandering through this apple orchard, he takes off his helmet and he looks up to the sky and there’s a sort of brightening, a shift in exposure, we did that digitally and it was very subtle. People have said to me was that a light change or did the sun come out? It had to be sort of a transcendent moment before he saw that horror, so that was something we did in the DI. It was an idea Joe had while we were grading it, and he said, ‘let’s try that.’ Previously, fnishing flms the photochemical route was like an inner sanctum of secrecy, like a masonic lodge in those bloody laboratories. You watch the flm in real time and in those scenes with quick cuts you are missing shots, you only get a chance to go through the flm maybe three times before the print is struck, it takes so long to do it again and again. I fnd it eminently frustrating where I watch the movie and say why didn’t I take that down a bit, and it does look great when you do it well. But with the digital intermediate I’m grading the flm with the director, so it’s extending our collaboration. In the lab doing the photochemical fnish, the director never came with me when I was grading the flm for the print. It was twenty miles outside of London and smelled of hypo mix, it was a horrible place to be, with men in white coats fying around the place, directors tend not to come there. But I love the DI suites with the leather sofas with people coming in offering cups of coffee, it’s a wonderful alternative.

Do you shoot any differently knowing you are going to do a DI? No, I tend not to, but there are times when I’m seeing rushes and I think oh no, but don’t worry, it will be fne in the DI.

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Have you used specifc visual references for flms? I use them a lot, I’ve got a very big photographic book collection and I am constantly referring to them. I’m always chopping things out of magazines, fashion magazines or anything that inspires me, I keep it in a folder that I can return to whenever I’m trying to describe something, because people will react more clearly to a picture rather than to words. It’s as useful to see what you don’t like as well as what you do. When you offer things up and a director says, ‘no I don’t like that,’ it gets rid of a whole paradigm of possibilities. It’s very diffcult for some people to put in words what they see, so using visual references you are immediately speaking the same language in photographic terms. It’s a great way to start the exchange of ideas creatively. If I describe something to you now it may create an image in your head that’s entirely different than what it is. It might suggest something different metaphorically but at least you’ve got the image there in front of you. It’s just a great way of making sure everyone is on the same page. Joe Wright will have lots of ideas and the designer will too, that’s the lovely thing about working with Joe; he’s got these important collaborators that he works with, Sarah Greenwood has worked with him a long time and she’s just wonderful. We all bring these things to the table. I love that period of working because you are seeing inspiring work, not only what your ideas are and honing that but it inspires you to do great work because you see what other people are doing. You see great photographers’ work that makes me jealous with their genius. We look at other flms too, not so much for Atonement, but for the Soloist we looked at John Cassavete flms because we wanted to make it look a bit more terrestrial, and that’s enjoyable too, it’s just sitting with the director and referencing great movies. I’ve learned so much also hearing other people’s reactions to other work.

How about establishing a specifc color palette for character and story? I love thinking about color, Joe was very clear in Atonement not only in costume and design, but what the feel of the movie would be, not simply color palette but the contrast of the image and its range, and the use of depth of feld. We started that flm with a very nostalgic warm feel, a little overexposed using lights that were burning out, it was the hottest day of the year and we tested all these flters and ended up with these stockings. When we looked at these stockings over the back of the lens on a test by themselves, they looked too extreme, so I said to Joe it looks too saccharine 1970s, really dodgy. We did tests again, side by side and that part of the flm was going to be a 40-minute section and the audience would get used to that look, and it might be weird when it’s frst up. You know the way Kieslowski did The Double Life of Veronique and that frst image comes up and you go it’s bright yellow, a really heavy flter but after a while, you are more forcefully drawn into that world

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because of that bold fltration decision. For Atonement, that strong look was for the opening of the flm to contrast the wartime, which was grittier, we used different flm stock, and pushed it a lot for more grain. That was something that I couldn’t really do as much in The Hours because there was a lot more parallel action intercutting, so I had to be gentler with the fltration on that one, although the different eras are marked by different approaches. There was less of a leap between the looks, Virginia Wolfe had a heavier tobacco look, I used an antique suede flter and for the 1950s, I used a low contrast stock and a little diffusion and the present day nothing on the camera, except if you look at every Meryl Streep close-up, it is ridiculously diffused, because she wouldn’t get in front of the camera unless there was diffusion.

Do you have a preference of using prime lenses over zooms? I like zooms, they are so good these days. I also like working with primes not because they are better or sharper but because there’s a discipline to working with the prime lens, you take a lens and fnd the shot. With the zoom, the director can say zoom in closer and suddenly, you are in a close-up and not lit for it. You can get a little lazier with the language of the lens and the language of the shot is kind of like talking in slang. But I do love working with zooms because they can speed things up a bit. With the Panavision Primo zooms, I can’t tell the difference between a 40mm on the zoom and a 40mm prime, I just can’t see it. I’m sure there are people who can scrutinize it on a collimator and say see it falls off at the edge. But when you are watching a flm, you won’t see any difference. I do use zooms a lot, I like to use them on a tracking shot going right to left, because you can hide a zoom in there and use it for effect. I love that. We did quite a few zooms in Atonement, like that shot when Franny is looking out the window and Robbie is being taken away, you go right under her eye, we tracked as well, we had a doubler on the zoom and we went from a 70mm to a 290mm. They are quite useful, and people talk about the emotional resonance of that shot which you couldn’t have done with a prime lens. I really love the flms of Nick Roeg, he is the master of the zoom, for instance in Walkabout, the zoom is a mechanical thing, so you can see an image turning inside out. He used it with great effect in the outback of Australia where nature is virtually breathing and he would zoom in and out and suddenly these rocks would appear to breathe, incredible to see, magical stuff. The zoom is coming back, and a lot of flmmakers are warming to it again, of course in the 1970s, everyone used it. I do think it has creative uses.

Do you like when a director is technical and knows exactly what focal length they’re calling or do you prefer directors who are not as technically inclined? Different folks, different strokes, Mike Nichols never said to me, go on a 40mm, but Joe tends to, Oliver never asked for a lens, but he knows what he

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likes once it’s on there. Even Sam Taylor-Wood who is a photographer wasn’t prescriptive about focal length, she’d said, let’s go tight here and I’d choose the lens.

Do you like to be involved in the preproduction blocking and planning of shots with a director or are you fne with blocking on the spot? I love blocking it on the spot. When we plan stuff, we very rarely get into blocking as such, particularly with group scenes. I think if you get an idea of key shots in a scene, that’s something to preplan. But if you are completely rigid as to how you block something, then you are not open to the wonderful things that the actors can bring to a scene. Robert Downey Jr. was amazing that way, we kind of threw out the rule book with him in The Soloist. We slightly overprepped the flm and he’d come in and it was just like okay, let me just get the camera so I can point it at the story and off you go. I do like planning, because even if you don’t execute exactly what you’ve planned, it’s time spent with the director where you get to know intimately what foats their boat and visa-versa. I fnd that directors will make adjustments to the script, tiny little things that maybe they didn’t see before because I react to a scene in a different way that’s unexpected. I just love that period, it’s the calm before the storm and if you get on well during that period, it also sees you through tricky times on the stage. Sometimes on set, the sun is going down and you are trying to get a shot and you’re screaming at each other, it’s just mental. It’s urgent and exciting, I love working fast, it’s just brilliant because you think quicker and follow your instincts.

Do you usually operate your own camera? I like operating but I can’t do it here because of the union. But I don’t mind, I’ve been working with some of the greatest operators in the world here. I like to think I’m a good operator, I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet, but I love handheld, I’m good at it. I love having the earpiece in and hearing the dialog and following the action, just going with the fow because you feel connected with the scene that way. I get a real buzz out of that and so I miss it when someone else is operating. They’ll bring something else to it, it’s interesting how human beings see and feel differently on subtle little shifts. You see it in hand-held shifts in composition that can really affect the mood such as a little push or a peripheral push like short sighting somebody so they are looking into the fat edge of the frame with the space behind their head, all these things have meaning. On The Soloist, we had a brilliant operator, Mitch Dubin, he does a lot with Spielberg, he’s one of the greatest hand-held operators in the world. In Britain, I’ve done a lot of operating. On Atonement, we had a great Steadicam operator, Pete Robertson, we often ran two cameras together at the same time and I always took one of the cameras. Here in the States, I operate on

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commercials because that’s usually what’s done. Even on a low budget flm, like We Need to Talk About Kevin, I wanted to operate, but it was a union flm made under a special agreement and I had to have an operator. I had this absolutely brilliant, young guy and it was one of his frst flms and I was really worried about it, but I was prepared: I made a dispensation with the union, if it didn’t work out, we’d still keep him on board because he had to operate. In the end, he was absolutely brilliant and a lovely guy. I do trust people a lot creatively, we gave this guy a break and he just shone, so I’d love to work with him again.

Do you prefer working with the Steadicam or Dolly? It depends. I like using Steadicam when there is no other way to do the shot. I don’t like tracking with Steadicam when you could just lay a little dolly track because the horizon shifts on Steadicam and you are subject to the personality of the operator. That ghostly gaze of the Steadicam, it’s like a spectral thing, it’s not like a hand-held image. It’s a weird and wonderful little tool that has its place but I think it can be overused. I’m sure I got nominated for the Oscar because of that Steadicam shot in Atonement. I kind of don’t like it but I admire it, I argued with Joe against doing it. I said it’s so out of place in this flm, it’s like a peacock showing its feathers and he argued me down by saying it’s psychological, it’s a dream image, it’s circular and carnivalesque and it’s supposed to evoke a hallucinatory vibe of Robbie just before he dies. You could only shoot on the beach at the end of the day, the sea was in so far that there were only a couple of hours a day that you could shoot there and the light was only good in the evening, so we had no choice, we staged it all in one shot and it got a lot of acclaim. I set up the shot with Joe, but it was this great operator Pete Robinson that executed it on Steadicam.

Wasn’t there some crane in there too or was it all Steadicam? Preceding that shot, we had a huge Strada crane which is 130’ or something. There was this marshland area of reeds that Robbie and his mate run through, it sort of looks like a helicopter shot but it was just the arc of the crane and we cut a pass through all this stuff. The actual big scene was Steadicam all the way through.

Do you have a particular format that you prefer to work in? I love anamorphic. I love the lenses and the way the depth of feld works because it takes an image and turns it into glass and celluloid and spits it out in a way that people just can’t normally see. It becomes essentially cinematographic because it’s a physical extraction of reality that is literally squeezed and un-squeezed. It’s a cine-poetic intersession of reality. I shot Lynne Ramsey’s flm We Need to Talk About Kevin anamorphic even though it was a tiny budget

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flm, but I really felt it needed it because it’s about the distance between people, a mother and a child and we used that negative space. I also used it for the extremely shallow depth of feld, so when I focused on the back of his head, everything else is out of focus, it’s about pushing into someone’s mind. I used it before he kills all his classmates to create an interference. We fared the colors a lot with red, white and blue, creating Americana colors. The character, “Kevin,” has these delusions of grandeur with this bow and arrow and kills all his classmates, but he gets up on stage in front of no one and opens his arms, so we did this big track and I was just sitting on the dolly faring out the edges of the lens. I got goose pimples watching the rushes from that scene because you see these great things happening in the lens, beautifully accidental.

The use of anamorphic gives that little budget movie quite a big movie feel. It does and yet it’s very intimate. People see the anamorphic format as scale and grandeur, but actually the times I’ve used it have been quite the opposite. I used it on another low budget flm The War Zone, Tim Roth’s flm, which is a domestic drama about child abuse, a really heavy flm. We had these domestic landscapes as well as exterior landscapes that had a bleak look, I used these old lenses that Chris Menges had used on The Mission, nobody had touched them since that flm. They were in a dusty old box at Panavision, they’ve been revamped but they were First World War lenses, anamorphized. Very beautiful, tiny little jewels, seriously they were tiny, but anamorphic, it was great working with those.

What do you think about the HDSLRs? (Hybrid Digital Single Lens Refex cameras that can take both stills and videos.) I did a documentary on Harry Dean Stanton, self-funded by Sophie Hoober who was the director and the only thing I could shoot on was the Canon 5D Mark 2, because it was cheaper and I could shoot in low light. It was a great tool to use and it looks really beautiful. I shoot with one lens, a 50mm F1.2 and it looks amazing. I did this test in New York outside a pub on Spring Street, just messing around under street lights and followed them around handheld, and we blew it up and saw it in the cinema on a 40’ wide screen and it was like I was seeing flm for the frst time. A new stock, a new look, a new feel, there’s no digital artifacts, none of that rigidity of the image. It just felt really painterly, really gorgeous, so I’m a huge fan. I immediately went on Canon’s page and sent them a video and some clips from the Harry Dean documentary. I’ve been obliterating natural light for so long and with this camera I realize I can just use natural light and gently enhance it. Enhanced naturalism.

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Those cameras really revolutionized the way a lot of things are shot. When the Arrifex Alexa came along, that was the game changer straight up, I really love it. The look of it, what it can do, particularly shooting three dimensionally (3D), and it’s made by a camera company. The Alexa has Arrifex behind it, they tested it and they made a camera with the input of all these directors of photography (DPs) from around the world. The result is a camera that everyone wants, that fts on your shoulder. Everything is in the right place, it has the right sized chip, it’s not all bells and whistles, it’s about the ability to photograph in low light, it’s balanced for tungsten rather than daylight.

Do you think Super 16mm is still hanging in there as a viable alternative to HD? I do, I think so. What’s lovely about Super 16mm is that you can hand hold, use a Steadicam, work in small spaces. When you want to shoot on reversal using the collaboration of originating on flm and fnishing with the DI you can shoot anything you want. With reversal (flm stock), which is brilliant, you can do cross processing or shoot black and white, I love shooting black and white reversal on super 16mm, it’s so beautiful. With the DI, nobody needs a negative anymore. There are anamorphic systems for Super 16mm as well. JDC in London uses a partial anamorphic system.

For true black and white, do you still think you need to shoot flm for that? Yes, with panchromatic stock you can flter a blue sky with a red flter, you can use a green, an orange, yellow, those flters have an effect that can only exist on black and white flm. I know that Roger (Deakins) shot the Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) on color and it looks amazing, but he couldn’t flter the skies. The problem is that Kodak stopped evolving the B & W stocks, so they are still grainy, and not that impressive. It’s fne for a grittier look, but I think Roger was right in not shooting in true B & W to achieve a cleaner look. Today’s BW stocks have much less silver in them, so they are really not as good as they were in the 1940s and 1950s; they just don’t have that range of the full gray scale as they used to. But if you want that silkiness in the B&W, you have to shoot on color stock and take the color out.

What do you think about the longevity of flm? It’s horrible to say, what’s going to happen is not so much that people won’t want to shoot on flm forever, but distribution is digital now. That was where the labs made most of their money, with 6000 prints of Harry Potter or

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whatever. It’s not the processing of dailies for some low budget feature, or even a big budget feature, that doesn’t pay a lab all that much. So as soon as distribution fnally goes 100% digital across the board, I think we’re all fucked for flm, sadly. Some boutique places might stay open to do some processing, but manufacturers won’t be able to sustain it. There are environmental issues that processing and manufacturing of flm is destroying the environment. My worry a decade ago, when everyone said that flm was going away, was that digital hadn’t evolved to the level of where flm was at the time. But the Alexa is a solid step in the right direction even though it has a whole different texture than flm, but at least it doesn’t forsake quality whereas everything else did. All the previous incarnations, the Genesis and everything, they just weren’t good enough. But I think we’re seeing the death throes now. It is intoxicating to breathe in the scent of hot celluloid. There is nothing like the smell of emulsion. There is a philosophical argument to the structural aspect of flm that might change when people don’t see what they are dealing with, the very material. There is something in that tangibility that encourages respect and also human beings are conditioned to see things as objects, not nothing, and digital is nothing. It’s a very abstract notion that you are photographing something with nothing! (laughs) I worry about archival. We’re trusting our world to code and terrible experiences have shown that computers go down, hard drives go down. I’ve lost stuff that I’ve shot, even some of the Harry Dean stuff when it was transferred, it was on two hard drives and it was gone, they both went down! What are the odds of that happening?

What do you think flm students in a cinematography class should be learning? When teaching students, I think it’s to learn about lenses, how do you tell a story with a lens? What does camera movement mean? The how is much less interesting than the why, urge looking, forget about the technology. The less distraction there is with technical, the better. I’ve come to enjoy forgetting about technology a bit.

What does an aspiring cinematographer need to know about being a cinematographer? Never stop looking at how natural light falls, take photographs all the time and look at them again, look at how you can see differently through the camera. There are good and bad things about being a DP, I love the creative aspects of it, but it’s quite a carnival lifestyle because you are constantly traveling which can be lonely. On the one hand, you are working in this incredibly energetic furnace of creativity, but then you go into the absolute silence of your own room before going back into it again. It’s an absolute distortion of

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reality. It’s only for certain souls, I think a lot of people freak out under this. I’d hardly recommend it as a lifestyle, but it is tremendously exciting and there’s nothing better than artistic fulfllment. Witnessing a flm coming to life from script to screen, it’s lasting, if they sort out the archival issues. You feel you are making something that people can see for a very long time, long after you are gone, something that can have an impact. I am very privileged to be a part of that creative process. I meet people on airplanes, and they say I like that or I saw that. When you are a part of something that moved, or affected people, I get a real kick out of that. But the lifestyle, god, beware of marriages if you’re a DP, relationships are very hard to sustain.

Reed Morano, ASC

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Since childhood, Reed has unknowingly been preparing herself to be a director/director of photography (DP). It began with a love of story and writing. But once she found herself behind a video camera given to her by her father to record family events, she instead created commercials with her younger brother. Her family encouraged watching movies of all kinds exposing Reed to a variety of flms and encouraging a love of cinema. By high school, she had found an interest in still photography and thought photojournalism might be something to pursue in college. But it was her father who suggested she go to flm school at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. At NYU, she learned the craft of flmmaking and discovered her passion for cinematography. While freelancing in production as a personal assistant (PA), Reed was fascinated by what the gaffers did to cut and trim the lights, so she decided to work in lighting and grip. Eventually, she found herself wanting to pursue cinematography, where she could resume telling stories through the lens of the camera. She was DP on numerous shorts before landing her frst feature gig on Docs and Robbers (2004). With her frst feature behind her, she moved on to DP the documentary Off the Grid; Life on the Mesa (2007). Her next narrative flm as a DP was Once Upon a Film (2007) where she had the chance to use Super-16mm flm. The flm that really got her noticed was the award-winning, Frozen River (2008), which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and was nominated for two Academy Awards. This opened the door for her to continue to DP independent feature flms like Little Birds (2011) directed by Elgin James, Yelling to the Sky (2011) directed by Victoria Mahoney, For Ellen (2012) directed by So Yong Kim and Free Samples (2012) directed by Jay Gammill. She had the opportunity to DP for Rob Reiner on the flm The Magic of Belle Isle (2012). She was the DP for the thriller Kill Your Darlings (2013) directed by John Krokidas, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete (2013) and Autumn Blood (2013) directed by Markus Blunder, Skeleton Twins (2014) directed by Craig Johnson and War Story (2014) directed by Mark Jackson. She worked as a DP with Rob Reiner again on the comedy And So It Goes (2014) featuring Diane Keaton and Michael Douglas. Reed also worked on numerous television series as director of photography including Psychic Detectives (fourteen episodes), Don’t Sweat It

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(two episodes), Closet Cases (two episodes), Looking (eight episodes) and the Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger-produced Vinyl (fve episodes). She was the DP on the pilot of Divorce (2016) and was nominated for a primetime Emmy for her work in cinematography. She was the DP on TV documentary House of Style: Music, Models and MTV (2012) and Beyonce: Lemonade (TV special, 2016) and the Griffn Dunnedirected documentary, Joan Didion; The Center Will Not Hold (2017). Reed’s feature flm directing debut was Meadowland (2015) where she could allow her storytelling skills to re-emerge, but she wasn’t ready to let go of the camera yet, so used it as a stylus to communicate with the actors. Since Meadowlands, Reed has focused her attention towards directing, she did an episode of Halt and Catch Fire (2016) and Billions (2017). She executive produced and directed the frst three episodes of the acclaimed, award-winning HULU series, The Handmaids Tale (2017), which was the frst time in twenty-two years that the Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama was awarded to a woman, and only the third time ever. Reed also took home the award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Dramatic Series at the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Awards, making her the frst woman ever to win both in the same year. In addition to these accolades for Reed, no streaming service had ever won an Emmy for best drama until her pilot. She also directed and was the DP on I Think We’re Alone Now, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, with Reed winning the Special Jury Prize. With her career on fre, Reed directed her third feature flm, The Rhythm Section (2020). She has added producing to her skillset, directing and executive producing ten episodes of The Power (2020). Reed will continue directing with the upcoming feature flm The Godmother with Jennifer Lopez in the lead. She is at the peak of her career and can go in any direction she chooses, with numerous life lessons learned, she has found her voice as a director. But ultimately, it all goes back to that imaginative little girl who seemed to inherently know it all begins with the story.

What was your journey to becoming a cinematographer/ director? When I was very young, I would write stories all the time. I didn’t actually excel at any one thing that kids normally do, like this one’s the soccer champion, this one’s in all the musicals. But the one thing I did do the most of was write stories. So, for a long time my family thought I was going to be a writer. In my elementary school years, around third grade, my father, who had been working over in Asia, brought back one of those gigantic video cameras, like a JVC. It was a big camera with the fade-in and fade-out, and he said, “I’m going to show you how to use this so you can document all of the family events.” I was like, I just want to write my stories. I don’t want to walk around with a camera.” But once he showed it to me, my mom said that I wouldn’t put the camera down once I fnally got the hang of it. I would be outside just

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flming the grass grow. She told me, “I had no idea what you were flming half the time, but you would be out there with the camera, laying in the grass for hours.” Then there were endless commercials I made with my brother who’s three years younger than me. I made him star in all these commercials. You can hear me going, “Action,” and flming, and it’s really funny. I had no idea I was directing, or what I was preparing myself for. I just always thought, “I'm going to be a writer.” When I got to high school, I basically stopped writing and got into photography. So, when I went to go apply to college, I applied to BU for journalism. But this was at a time when journalism was getting to be more diffcult because, it was like ‘94, ‘95. But I thought, “Okay. That’s a real job.” But it was my dad who suggested, “Why not apply to flm school? You love New York, you want to move there. You love flming and photography, you love writing stories, it combines all of the things you love.” I didn’t realize I could really do that or how unique it was to have a parent actually make that suggestion.

Yeah. Usually, they suggest the opposite. Don’t go to flm school. I really, really loved movies. No one in my family was in the movie industry. My dad was an entrepreneur, but he always had dreams of making movies. I think he thought he could live vicariously through me. He was a big storyteller. We saw all the movies in the movie theater. It didn’t matter what age the movie was for or what it was, we would see everything with him and with my mom. So, when I applied, to NYU, Tisch School of the Arts, I sent in my photography and writing. I ended up getting in and I was super excited. I had no idea what I was in for. On the very frst shoot I was a PA, and I was enraptured with the whole scene. That was before I knew I wanted to DP, I assumed I would probably do something like write or direct because being a cameraman felt super technical, even though I had been doing that already.

Did you get your tech skills from NYU? Or did you learn on the job more? I learned all the basics at NYU. On that very frst shoot, when I was just a PA, I watched the DP. At that time period at NYU, they were only shooting flm. It was 16mm and I remember watching the DP measure from the camera to the subject, and I was so curious, even though I’d been shooting photography on flm, and developing it, there were all these mysteries. After that frst shoot, I knew what path I wanted to take. I wanted to be that person who gets to see it frst. What I didn’t realize was that’s what a director does too. They see it in their head and then they try to manifest it into to images. I really loved the idea of that. But it was that same weekend of that frst shoot

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that my dad had a heart attack and he ended up passing away. It was a weird coincidence that I went back up to New Hampshire and saw him when he was in a coma and they were keeping him on a respirator. Before that shoot, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life, but it was on set that weekend that it became clear to me and I knew that it was because of him. I think it was serendipitous in a way. I’m not like a religious person or very spiritual, but I’ve always felt like there was defnitely some kind of correlation between those events. Then, I never looked back. I just made that decision and I stayed with it, and I thought, “maybe one day when I feel more confdent, maybe I’ll direct something.” I only did a few shorts in college. But NYU, gave me the playground to make the mistakes, just carrying the camera and trying to get exposures. Eventually, I learned how to hold the camera, operate and frame shots to tell a story.

Did you start working in New York after you fnished at NYU? Right out of NYU, I started working as a grip/electric intern or an assistant camera (AC). That was when I learned the most, when I could watch the key grip and the gaffer work. I actually started to go up through gripping, which is a more unusual path. But I actually think it makes perfect sense because gaffing is super important, but it’s what you do to the light once it’s up that really evokes the atmosphere and the feeling. What you put in front of it and how you cut the light and how you shape the light. In the American system, that’s what the key grip does.

Were you always based in New York? Or did you take a moment to say, “Now I have to go to LA to work in the industry”? I did, actually. For a couple of years, I stayed in New York, and then I thought, I’m doing really well in this indie scene in New York, maybe I can go and live in a warm place and do the same kind of thing there. But what I didn’t realize is, that in New York, I was a little fsh in a little pond and that in LA, I would be a little, tiny, microscopic fsh in a giant ocean. I’m glad I gave it a go. I guess one thing leads to another, but I feel like that was a year and a half of my life that maybe I wasted. It was hard to work there. So, when I got back to New York, I was much more determined to get that frst feature and start shooting long-form narrative, which was the goal for me at that point as a DP.

So, you were only in LA a year and a half? I left my apartment in New York on the night of September 10th and I went an hour out of the city, up to Connecticut to say goodbye to my mom with my sister. When we got up in the morning, we were just going to have a coffee with

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her and get on the road to drive across country. But it was September 11th, 2001, we were like, “What is even happening?” So, of course, I couldn’t leave New York, which was my place with all my friends. I had to stay and make sure that everyone was okay. I stayed in New York for another four months, before going cross country. When I was in LA, I started out as a runner at a TV studio. I also answered phones. I was a receptionist at a boutique sound design place in Burbank. That couldn’t have been any further from my skillset, but it turns out that I totally loved sound. I didn’t know a thing about it at that time. I was also working at the Cheesecake Factory in Brentwood and I was expediting food at a restaurant called Menemsha in Marina Del Rey. Everyone seemed to talk about making movies at the level I was at, but no one was actually doing it. I went back home around Christmas, and I broke my foot while I was there, so my mom and my aunt were like, “You can’t go back to LA. How are you going to pay your bills? You’re a waitress and you’re on your feet all day.” So, my aunt said, “Just stay in Long Island with me and help me babysit the kids this winter and then you can get back into flm.” That’s what I did, and by the next summer, I got my frst feature, my frst paid job as a cinematographer.

And which one was that? One of my best friends from college was directing it, Eric Juhola. He brought me on board. It was one of the frst flms that was done when the Sony CineAlta frst came out, when HD was totally new. I really hadn’t spent any time shooting video other than my own personal stuff. Where I felt the most comfortable was with flm. I couldn’t wrap my head around how to make video look good. It just looked like crap to me, so I was like, “This is so hard,” but I took the job because I knew I had to take every opportunity I could get at that stage. Even now, I still think I have that mentality in a lot of ways. But I did it, it was called Docs and Robbers. You probably get the idea just based on the title, but we had such a great time and it was great for me because then at least I could say, “Okay, I’ve shot a feature.” Eventually, I continued to shoot more short flms on flm. Some on digital. I did another feature Eric produced, which was called Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa. I did Once Upon a Film on S16mm, in New York, that one was the exact thing I was looking for. My friend, Decker, directed it and all the people that worked on that flm with me, are still all my friends. That flm didn’t do anything too crazy, but it was nice that I got that experience of shooting flm in a lot of different situations in New York City and outside of the city. Then, after that, I ended up trying to reevaluate what I was doing because I needed to make actual money.

The indie scene doesn’t lend itself to that. Not really. I was just temping all the time around the movies and around my key gripping. I ended up key gripping a $1-million feature and it was very

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traumatic. I wasn’t having a hard time with the crew, we were thick as thieves and we were really doing well and doing our best, but we had a tyrant for a boss, so it was diffcult. After that, I decided to try to just focus on making it a priority to be a DP. I ended up getting offered a job from a former classmate of mine to DP a TV series on TLC, which was called Cover Shot. There were many other steps in the process, that I’m glossing over, but these were the highlights. What was good about that was I didn’t really want to shoot reality TV, but it was a paycheck and it was the highest pay rate I’d ever gotten. I was the DP of the whole show with multiple cameras. I was lighting stages, sets that we were going to come back to all the time and using huge cranes in the middle of Times Square. It was all this stuff I knew would be useful to know how to work with. While I was on that show, towards the end of it was when I came across the script for Frozen River. I would always take things in steps, so at that point I knew that the only way I was really going to get to do the work I wanted to do is if a feature I shot went to a flm festival like Sundance. When I read the script for Frozen River, I thought, this is defnitely going to Sundance. It was that kind of movie. I loved Native American themes and It was the most elevated piece of material I had done up to that point. I was really excited and got my whole crew on board, everybody was working for $100 a day across the board. It was like a nightmare shoot in freezing cold weather, but we made a good flm, and I loved the experience of working with those actors. And the solidarity with the crew, we were up in Plattsburgh, New York in February where the temperatures are so low outside every day that there were warnings on the news every morning to not be outside, but that was where we were the entire time. Then we were really, really excited when it got into Sundance. That was amazing. My goal was completed. Afterwards, I went off to shoot a reality show in LA for the same people from Cover Shot. While I was on that show, I got a phone call, “Hey, we just won the Grand Jury Prize for Frozen River.” I didn’t even really think about a prize at Sundance, but that’s how out of the loop of festivals I was. So of course, we never had any aspirations of that, nor did we ever think it would even go on to be nominated for a couple of Academy Awards, which was insane. It was a tough shoot, there were moments when everybody wanted to quit, I wanted to quit. But we all decided, “We’re going to fnish this movie.” It was like torture, but I knew we had to fnish. Of course, I’m really glad that I toughed it out. I think there’s a lesson in there, you shouldn’t be forced to go to work if you’re unhappy in that workplace, but if you know in your gut on a particular job, “I’ve just got to make it through this.” I’m not a quitter, so that was not really an option for me.

So, you suffered through it, but it had a good payoff at the end? It had a great payoff at the end. Then of course, I had to learn that when your frst movie gets into Sundance, you’re like, “Whoa, that was easy.” But

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that happens once, like winning the lottery. Also, not every torturous experience pays off in the end, sometimes they totally don’t. What I’ve learned is that sometimes the most fun shoots are the ones that end up not amounting to anything, sadly, for no reason at all except that it’s just the way it pans out sometimes.

Did you go back to reality TV afterwards or stay with features? I did a little bit, but after I had the flm at Sundance, I started to get called for all those kinds of movies. That was what unlocked the door and got me into that world. When I look back on it, I wonder what I could have done differently to have accelerated the process? Often, young people ask how I got to where I am, but everybody’s journey is different. My path was so winding, it isn’t a perfect example of what to do. Maybe I could have jumped on a bigger feature sooner, but you never know where that’s going to take you. The only thing I know for sure is that learning from the bottom, from being a PA to an AC, gripping and working in electric, camera operating to becoming a DP, before I decided to direct is the path that I would recommend. Because you learn so much about what works and doesn’t work when you work on a number of movies as a DP.

There are a lot of people who come up through the ranks versus flm school. Others pop out of the American Film Institute (AFI) and seem to start working, what are your thoughts on this? I think they have really good connections and AFI has a great program there. There’s a little more of an old school struggle when you come out of NYU because you don’t automatically get hooked up with jobs in the end. I never did a grad program like AFI. With undergrad, the problem is I didn’t feel prepared to direct at that stage because I thought, “I don’t even know what my point of view is yet.” I loved getting a script and trying to visualize where the shots would be, to help tell that story, but I didn’t feel confdent enough that anyone wanted to hear or see my point of view. It took a good ffteen years of being a DP to realize that maybe I should give directing a try. I was rejecting it a little bit at frst, probably out of fear, but then I started to think, maybe there are some skills I have that I just don’t know yet. Or maybe I’ll love it. My switching over to directing came out of multiple people suggesting to me to do it because of my on-set demeanor and narrative instincts. Sometimes, I’d be on shoots and I’d have insane directors and the producer would be like, “You should think about directing.” Because I’d be calm and on an even keel, and I have a great bedside manner with the actors. As a DP, I always had such a respectful and very, very, very intense relationship with the actors in terms of bonding with them. I think that that was one of the main reasons people would

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see me and be like, “Why don’t you think about directing? Because you have such an understanding with the actors.”

You liked working with actors? Because I think a lot of DPs may have a connection through the shooting, but don’t necessarily have the resources to give them a particular note to alter their performance in a different way. I didn’t know if I had that ability or not, but I did feel like I could recognize when I was DP for a director who didn’t have that bedside manner. As a DP, you don’t always hear what the director is saying to the actors. That’s usually more private. I had some directors that used to scream notes across the room, while I was rolling, which is very disconcerting but also funny. But I would think to myself, “I’m not doing it like that.” And I think I had a hunch from my storytelling days as a child. But I do think, as a director, you need life experience. Not in all cases. Obviously, there are some people who are the prodigies, the Orson Welles’ of the world. They can come right out as a young person and start directing a masterpiece, but I know I was not that person. By the time I thought about giving it a try, I knew I wasn’t going to do it with just any script, I knew I had to fnd one that spoke to me, something I felt confdent about. But you never really do feel fully confdent. I read a lot of books on how to direct actors, which turned out to be really stressful and maybe slightly unnecessary. Because it really does come down to being individual in how you work.

Is there a particular director whose work you admire? The thing is, I love so many different genres. Raising Arizona was one of my favorite movies, directed by the Coen brothers. It’s one of those movies that made me want to make movies. I loved Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, directed by Michel Gondry. I was obsessed with Ellen Kuras, who I’m lucky enough to call a friend now. But I remember the days when I didn’t know her yet, and I was just starting out as a DP, my agent introduced me to her, and it was like, I’m probably one of 100 people coming up and saying, “Oh, Ellen, it’s so great to meet you.” But now, it’s so great to know all your heroes. But there were so many different kinds of movies that I loved, from all types of different directors. There were the movies I was obsessed with growing up, like Spielberg movies and Rob Reiner movies, and I ended up actually being a DP for Rob Reiner.

That’s pretty amazing. Which was so great. He has such a totally different style than me, but we had a blast. I learned so much from him. He even let me do some of my handheld, which was great. I learned a lot from the indie flm directors that I worked

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with too, like Victoria Mahoney, who I did Yelling to the Sky with and So Yong Kim. Actually, working with the two of them taught me a lot. As well as Elgin James who directed Little Birds and also John Krokidas who did Kill Your Darlings, I really learned a lot from the directors that I worked with at that level. I was a big fan of Darren Aronofsky, because Requiem for a Dream was one of my favorite flms. I would also say Rushmore infuenced me at that time period when I was coming up. There wasn’t one thing, it was more like I was in awe of a lot of different things and trying to absorb all of them.

It sounds like you were paying particular attention to the way they were working rather than some DPs that are just focused on what they are doing with the lighting and how the lighting was hitting the actors. I think you had both ears going in those directions, that other DPs didn’t. It sounds to me like you were preparing to be a director. And the fact that you’re a writer? I mean, then you’re more attuned to story. I was always a very non-technical DP who would just go with my gut, even though I knew the technical aspects of my job, I was always coming at it from an emotional perspective. Some of the directors I worked with treated me like a peer, because of the creative perspective I brought to them. We were really studying the craft together. When I went to do the frst flm I directed, Meadowland, I decided to DP it as well because I thought that that was an easier way to go. But after day one, I was like, “Hmm, is it too late for me to call somebody?” Luckily, I had a great team and they helped me manage the time. I’m glad I pushed forward through it because it resulted in a really intimate portrait of these two people. Because I could be right there with the camera, seeing it through the lens as I was accustomed to.

And you were operating as well? Operating and whispering to them, yeah. Which was really powerful. Once I got the hang of it, it was great. It was a great experience. A really cathartic experience.

As you were learning and observing different directors, were there any particular attributes that you decided you really didn’t like? I have worked with so many great directors, but then I worked with some other directors that maybe let their own personal emotions refect onto everyone, the crew, the actors. That was a really big deal for me, something that I would not do. If I was having a personal issue or upset about something, I did not ever want anyone to feel it because it’s going to affect the story.

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Also, it’s just not fair to do to people. Also, knowing not to get frustrated if you’re not getting what you want. You have to think your way out of the puzzle in your head, you can’t expect that if you keep doing the same thing over and over. It’s going to eventually change. You have to know, “Okay, I gave that idea two, three tries. Four tries maybe. It’s not working, now I’ve got to come up with another way to do it.” That could be anything from trying to get a really emotional performance out of an actor and realizing that maybe that person can’t get emotional about that particular thing that day, so instead you fgure out a way to make them physically emote pain. Maybe it doesn’t take the form you originally imagined, but you must adapt in real time. I learned that you have to give a lot of yourself and sometimes you have to tell a personal story that will make an actor think about a moment that relates to something in their life. Then, suddenly, you are sharing this common feeling. For me, I wanted to put myself into the same situation I was asking my actors to be in. So, by operating the camera, that was a start. When I did Meadowland with Olivia, I knew I was going to be asking her to imagine a very painful scenario. She was a new mom and I had already had two boys. I ended up casting my oldest in the movie as Olivia’s son. I did it for multiple reasons, but I wanted someone who was not an actor and who would be comfortable around me. I think he did a great job, but also it was really a visceral, painful experience to have to be in that editing room for however many months, trying to imagine this horrible thing was happening to my son, Casey. And you have to push the scene to be like, “What will make me feel the weight of this loss?” But it was also my kid at the same time and sometimes you can compartmentalize that, sometimes you can’t. Then you wonder, “Am I handicapping myself for creating emotion that way?” But I think it worked, because if a director feels something about what they’re shooting, that can come through to the audience. I had cancer right before we made that movie, it was a stage two squamous cell carcinoma. I had a period of time in 2014, before we started shooting where, for 135 days, I didn’t eat or drink anything by mouth, I had a feeding tube. I started treatment in January, and then ended it in March. Then I was bed ridden until about the end of May. We got fnanced for Meadowland in April, when I still couldn’t really talk or move out of my bed. I said to Olivia Wilde and my producer Matt Tauber, “Don’t you think we should tell these fnanciers that I’ve literally just completed cancer treatment?” They were like, “You’re going to be fne. We’re shooting in August.” I was thinking, I can’t even walk! We started prep in July, and July 31st I got the feeding tube out. Then on August 18th, we started shooting.

That’s pretty crazy. That’s intense. I think having that goal at the end of the year was what actually helped me really heal.

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That’s a humongous goal. Yeah. It was killing me to be in bed, I was laying there thinking, “Everyone’s shooting movies.” I also had to give up a flm I was in the middle of shooting as DP.

Wow. Is there a theme that attracts you? Have you discovered what it is that you gravitate towards more than another? You know what? I’m trying to branch out a lot. I did for a while, I think I like speculative fction, that kind of thing. Something that can be a little bit heightened. But I also like a story that can dance the fne line between really emotional drama but also be funny. I really like both. It’s hard to fnd things that have that. It’s really just about realism in that sense. But ultimately, what I’m always looking for is a strong character, with a strong point of view. I always like if the character is also fawed, which of course makes the movie challenging but it’s more interesting. Nobody likes just to watch the good guy all the time.

True, I binged on Vinyl earlier in the year. Talk about a fawed character, right? He was my favorite fawed character. I think that was the problem with that show, why it ended up getting canceled was that it was hard for people to like him, but I just loved him.

I love that actor and I thought he was doing a fantastic job, but you do get to a point where you’re like, "Dude, get it together, man." Yeah, like stop just messing up everyone’s lives, too. I guess I had a prejudice, because I was the DP and I was also so psyched to be working on a show that was Marty’s. Every episode I shot, we would have a tone meeting with Marty, and that was incredible. It was like the ultimate flm school. Once, I remember we had a tone meeting with Marty and Mick Jagger, I was just sitting in the corner, eating a cheese sandwich trying to be quiet but I was thinking, “I cannot believe this is happening right now.” They were just swapping stories about everything and their whole experience growing up and common friends. And me and my assistant director (AD), Julie, would just look at each other like, “This is so cool.”

Pretty cool, yeah. But also, Marty’s world is a male world. And then there’s you, shooting. I know. I love that. I thought it was so cool. I’m sure I was Rodrigo’s idea initially, then he told Marty, and I’m sure Marty just listens and does in that sense put that responsibility in Rodrigo’s hands, which was amazing for Rodrigo to

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give me that opportunity. But it is a very masculine world. That’s the other thing, too. I’ve always wanted as both a DP and as a director to be able to tell those masculine stories as well, and so, as it turned out, I’ve told a lot of female stories of very strong, slightly masculine females in some ways. And I really love those. But I feel like I just want to be able to tell all the stories. I don’t think women should be relegated to telling women’s stories exclusively.

I’m 100% with you. Yeah, you know what I mean? It’s like, I would love to see more women directing stories about men, because I think you would see different kinds of action flms or different kinds of adventure movies. It would be interesting to see those flms told from a different perspective.

When you’re prepping as a director versus prepping as a cinematographer, are you prepping with your cinematographer in the same way you would like to be prepped? When it’s another DP, I’m doing it in the same way that I’ve prepped with directors in the past. I try to watch movies with them, tons of movies. We start making iCloud albums of images we like, a lot of still photography, sometimes paintings, movie clips, ideas, swapping ideas all the time and talking about the things we’re watching. When it’s me, whenever I made shot lists and I was DPing the movie, I would always have my AD and my assistant there and I would talk it out with them. I would also have more extended prep with my gaffer and key grip. I would let them have a bigger window into what I was doing as a director. I would rely a lot on my gaffer, my key grip, and my digital imaging technician chief (DIT), if I was shooting. I’m very open with the crew about what’s happening, to the point where on I Think We’re Alone Now, a lot, I would often put music and headphones in the ear of my dolly grip, when he was pushing a dolly and that was music that maybe I would use in that scene. Things like that, to allow everyone around me to know the tone that I was trying to create. But now I do it the same, even when I have a DP. I’m kind of going back and forth. I love the experience of getting to work with another person. I am very loyal to crew, so I work with the same two DPs over and over, because I had done work with them in that capacity before. And I love them, there’s no reason not to keep working with them. But I also feel like I want to branch out, I want to work with some of the other DPs that I’ve been trying to work with. I think there’s a lot of really super talented women out there and I would love to have that experience of working with them. And it’s fun because I think I probably let the DP have more freedom in many ways and encourage them to go take more risks. But the only one tricky part is that people would have to decide if they want to work with me because I do like to operate the camera sometimes.

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It’s not because I don’t think someone else can do it. It’s just because it’s just become part of my directing style, where I have that connection with the actors and being able to direct them without breaking up the shot and being on a monitor. I don’t do it all the time. I just reserve it for moments where I think it will help the scene. But I also think the reason the DPs I’ve worked with keep wanting to work with me is because I know how a DP wants to be treated. I respect their choices. I respect their decisions. We have a lot of fun experimenting. I don’t go in there and tell them how to light anything, I would never do such a thing. Once I’ve downloaded what I want and we’ve brainstormed together about how we want it to look in the prep, they have all the information. I’ve never done anything more than say like, “You know what? You don’t need that big light over there. I won’t mind if it’s a little darker.” Something like that. But normally, I would never say a thing, because I just have too much respect for my fellow DPs. You hired them for a reason, you know how they do it. Hire the person that’s right, that you know is going to aesthetically work for you, for that particular project and then don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Let them do their job. That applies to everything, except for occasionally when I want to get a particular thing out of the performance, then I operate.

You grab the camera. That’s my only little rule breaker. I tell people up front. “If that’s a problem, I totally get it. I would hate that if I was DPing for someone.”

Is there a particular DP you’d really like to work with? I was trying to get together to work Ellen on a number of occasions, but I know she’s mainly directing as well. I’ve always wanted to also work with Bradford Young. He and I do have a plan to work together. Schedule-wise, it hasn’t worked out yet. But he wants to shoot something with me as well, so we have something on the horizon. I have a lot of really close friends who are DPs, that I would love to work with them, like Amy Vincent and Rachel Morrison and Eric Steelberg and Ben Kutchins. They’re all amazing DPs whose work I love but I also love our friendships most, so I always put that frst.

Right. But sometimes DPs and directors become or are very good friends. If you look at Matty and Darren Aronofsky… Oh, yeah, Matty is another person I would love to work with, we’ve also almost worked together a couple of times. And Mandy Walker. I was trying to get her on something but she wasn’t available. One day! There are loads of talented DPs in the generation coming up now, as well.

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Yeah. Because you feel like you’d be giving them an opportunity and in a way it’s sort of mentoring. Well, maybe, but also in a way, it will be a different experience. I just want to have all the experiences. Now, I can hire who I want. It’s very different these days. I can hire an up and comer if I push hard enough.

So, at this point of your career, are you going to continue to DP for other people, other directors? Or do you see yourself focused more on the directing track? Well, I actually haven’t been a DP for anybody else since I shot Vinyl. Just for my own stuff, those two features. I was DP on a couple of commercials for myself. But otherwise I’ve pretty much stopped being a DP for other people. I almost worked with Spike Jonze, he came and asked me to do something. But if someone like Marty or Tarantino, if their usual guys were busy and they did come knock on my door, it would be hard for me to say no, because it would be amazing to have those experiences. So, I would say never say never.

But right now, you are more focused on the directing track, for sure? Yeah, for sure.

As a previous writer, do you ever write your own material? I usually end up doing a pass on the scripts at the end. In general, I’ll usually do a lot of writing on the scripts that I direct. But I always prefer working with another writer because, it’s kind of my attitude with everything, two heads are better than one. That’s why as much as I enjoy shooting a movie myself, I love the idea of collaborating with other people, because it’s exciting to mix the creative perspectives. You have more ideas to go back and forth with, to brainstorm. That’s where the best ideas usually come from, two different ideas that spawn a third, better idea.

You’ve obviously been an inspiration to a lot of cinematographers, women in particular, but also now women directors, do you see the doors opening more readily for female cinematographers? Are they opening as readily for female directors? I think there have always been more female directors working than there have been female cinematographers. Now, it’s really getting to be inclusive and this

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younger generation of flmmakers coming up, they don’t look at a woman being a DP or directing as taboo, they just treat it with the equality that it deserves. There is still the old-world view of it though, and most of the people who are in charge of hiring at the studio level are from a different era, where I think they have trust issues with women, both as directors and as DPs. So, you have to prove yourself extra in both positions to show people, I can do this. Or you need somebody who’s really going to go to bat for you and say, “I can guarantee you this person will deliver.” It’s very slow going in that world. I was recently talking to somebody about a big A-list actor on a very masculine movie that I got offered to do, but I was like, this might not be the right one, although I can’t ignore this opportunity because how often does a female director get offered this type of movie? Which would traditionally, go to any number of male directors before it would go to someone like me. In some way, there’s always a female point of view (POV) in my stories, usually. But I do think that in a way, to help make those necessary changes in Hollywood, people need to see that if male directors can direct female stories and male stories, well then, female directors and DPs can do both female and male stories as well. But it is my priority to get those female stories on screen and out there for people to see. So, I would never want to diminish that. But I also love the idea of branching out a little because I do believe we won’t really truly break the glass ceiling until it becomes a norm where a woman director would tell a story where it’s not always a female lead. The way I look at it is, if I can direct a big flm that has a male lead, that’s considered a masculine flm, and build a fan base there, then maybe I could go back the next time around and tell a female story that I want to tell and actually have the audience that would now pay attention to this female story that they might not have paid attention to before. Just because of the way that Hollywood works. It’s a weird round-about way to get your stuff seen. But I think that’s why most of us do this, because we want people to watch our stories and experiences. I think it’s the same for DPs. They want people to watch the experience they’ve created. Unfortunately, the way the world works, the masculine stories have always taken center stage and knocked everything off to the side and made it slightly less important. I think in order to make those other stories important, in some ways you have to conquer that. Maybe it makes sense in some ways to conquer that area and then say, “Okay, now I’m going to bring in all the stories that you really need to see.” It’s a weird backwards theory that I have, that may or may not actually be fruitful. But I’ve already tried it the other way, telling female stories and sometimes people see them, most of the time they don’t. But they need to. I think if it was a director who had a big success and then they told a female story, more people would see it. It’s just that simple.

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What about the big Marvel kind of movies, like Wonder Woman or things that do have or are that big budget comic book thing, but there is a female protagonist? Yeah, I think it’s great. I think it’s great that women are doing that. I also don’t think female directors should only have to direct the Wonder Woman. Because it’s like, “Oh, it’s Wonder Woman, let’s get a woman. It’s Supergirl, let’s get a woman.” Yes, of course, get a woman for those, but then also let a woman direct Green Lantern or Batman. Why can’t a woman direct Batman?

I think a woman should direct Batman. Maybe it should be you? I’m defnitely not saying take the women’s stories away from women, but I defnitely think that the only way we can have true equality is if everyone can choose for themselves what they want to do. I think women should always tell women’s stories because that’s how we’re going to see them, but the only way that we’re going to really break through is when we can all get the same jobs as men get, if we want them. Not everybody’s going to want that. I don’t always want that. But it’s always interesting to me.

If a script comes to you, it has to be something that speaks to you thematically or emotionally, or you can’t connect to it. Totally, absolutely. You have to believe you can bring something to the table with it, like we have to tell this particular story. And I think as long as you connect with the story, all that other stuff doesn’t matter. But I also think it’s our duty as women flmmakers to get the stories we don’t see enough of on screen, women in roles that aren’t subservient to men. I still take that very seriously, and that’s most of the projects I have on the horizon. So, it doesn’t change my motives, but it’s just another thing that could help the cause, if women and men were equally considered for all jobs.

Would you like to discuss anything that you have coming up? One of the features I have coming up next is Madrina, aka The Godmother, which is a movie about the story of Griselda Blanco. She’s one of the hardest, most insane, probably the toughest gangster of all time, honestly. In many ways, she did some stuff that’s just evil. Jennifer Lopez is going to play her. I’m obsessed with that story because she’s a character that you don’t often get to see. I think, just on the base level of having a gangster movie, that also happens to be true, about a woman seems so unbelievable, you’re like, “How could she have done all of this?” But she did. It’s an incredible story.

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Have you been able to fnd a balance between your personal life and your career? Because you do have kids? I have to say it’s hard, it’s really, really hard. Luckily, my kids are kind of used to me being away on set a lot. They’re used to the lifestyle now, so it’s not a big deal. I think it’s harder for me than it is for them. But for now, as a director I’m trying to accumulate a lot of projects that I want to do, and I’ll plow through them. You have to also remember you need time in your life to spend with your family and I think one of the nice freedoms of directing is that you can. You’re on set for a certain amount of time and then you’re in post. It would be nice if more companies made it a priority for directors to post wherever their family is, or make sure that their family can be with them. I love my job and I’m so grateful to have it but we shouldn’t have to sacrifce our personal lives to tell our stories. There’s more openness now, especially with women moving into directing. But the same thing should apply to DPs. I know a lot of DPs can work that out with their contracts, depending on what budget flm you’re on. But as a DP you spend most of the year away from your family and that’s really hard.

And you’re at the peak. You’re like, right there at the peak of your career. Where do you see yourself in the next ten years? What do you want to be doing? I’m really grateful for all the things I’ve been able to do. I guess I just hope I can keep learning and expanding the genres I’m working in and giving voices to the voiceless, whether it’s through my own storytelling or helping other people tell their stories. So, if I have the power to do anything, I have projects that I’m invested in that are not just my projects, that I put more priority on than my own projects. Because I’ve done some cool stuff, I’m good for a minute, I want to help someone else do something cool that people need to see. One of the greatest things about telling stories and being a writer or a director, is you do have to put yourself in other people’s shoes. But you shouldn’t reserve that for when you’re on a movie. It makes you better, I think, if you really think about it in real life and apply it to your actual goals in life.

Right. So, that’s kind of stepping more into producing. Yes, I think I’ll be doing some producing as well. To help other people, to get to see movies I want to see made and because there’s no reason not to. But also, I would love to just keep telling stories, the same way I am now. I learn something new on every job and it pushes me in a different direction. I think in ten years, it would be nice if I was making big movies and small movies. Just working with great talent. Great DPs and actors and actresses and hopefully I’ll be working with some great writers because that’s where it all starts. You’ve got to get that great story, that great script. That’s where it all starts.

Polly Morgan, ASC, BSC

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Polly grew up on a farm in the English countryside, nowhere near Hollywood and the infuence of the motion picture industry. But it found her anyway. Exposed to a flm crew that came to shoot on her family’s property, she was introduced to the life of production as a teen. With a love of American movies and an interest in art history, her mind was opened to the possibility of a career path of becoming a cinematographer. With sheer determination and a driving passion to learn, she found a way to immerse herself in learning the craft of production. She attended the University of Leeds where she completed a degree in broadcasting. She chose to do her internship in Toronto, Canada where she had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time on set. Her experiences there enabled her to get work at Ridley Scott’s company, RSA Films in London, which led to working with directors of photography (DPs) such as Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC and Haris Zambarloukos, BSC, GSC as a camera assistant on music videos and commercials. Undaunted by her goal to become a cinematographer, Polly continued to work her way up through the ranks of the camera department in London. But her desire to be in America led her to attend the Media Workshops in Maine, where she took Master Cinematography classes with Michael Goi, ASC. She attended the American Film Institute on a Fulbright Scholarship and while she was there, worked as an assistant for Wally Pfster, ASC on Inception and upon completion began working on American Horror Story, with Michael Goi. Polly was named one of Variety’s Ten Cinematographers to Watch in 2016. Now, she is the cinematographer behind studio flms such as A Quiet Place ll (2020), Lucy in the Sky (2019), the television series Legion (nine episodes) and Strange Angel (two episodes). Polly’s list of credits prior to getting to this point is vast. She was director of photography on numerous feature flms including, 6 Balloons (2018), Spinning Man (2018), Slumber (2017), The Intervention (2016), Holy Hell (documentary, 2016), Drawing out Genius (documentary 2014), We’ll Never Have Paris (2014), The Pretty One (2013) and The Truth About Emmanuel (2013), which was a nominee for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance flm festival.

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She also photographed Junkie (2012), Rock Jocks (2012), The Evil Inside (2011) and her frst feature flm as a DP, Venom (2011). Polly has also shot numerous short flms, TV episodes and music videos. She has done additional camera work on documentaries, feature flms and TV series. Polly was invited to join the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) in 2018, satisfying a lifelong dream of becoming a cinematographer in Hollywood, a feat she has most certainly accomplished. Prior to this invitation, she was invited into the BSC (British Society of Cinematographers) and is currently the only female member in both organizations. With her career on the rise, Polly is not only managing life as a cinematographer, but also as a mother and wife as she continues to follow the call of her destiny.

Were you living outside of London when you were growing up? Tell me how you became interested in cinematography? I grew up on a farm in the middle of the English countryside. I got exposed to a flm crew when a production came to shoot on our property when I was a teenager. But I had always loved movies, mostly American movies. I was not a particularly scientifc or academic person and my grandad was an artist, so I always knew that my career was going to be in the arts. I had no idea how to get into the business. So, I worked at my local hospital radio station, and then my local radio station. I wrote letters to TV shows asking to intern. There wasn’t anyone that I knew growing up who was even remotely involved in media or flm production or anything like that. So, I really didn’t know how I was going to get my foot in the door. I was just kind of doing all this stuff I’d read about in books. I actually didn’t even know precisely what a cinematographer was at frst.

Did you study flm while in college? Or would you say you worked yourself up through the ranks? A little of both actually, I went to university and I took this BBC co-run course. My degree was half run by the BBC and half run by the University of Leeds. That was when I got my hands on a camera for the frst time and started making short flms. For my year-out in the industry instead of going to London, which is what all my colleagues did, I went instead to Toronto, Canada. I found a director who let me come and intern with him for a year. He worked in commercials and he was also trying to get his flms together. He got me some paid PA work for his commercial company and I also worked for free, researching documentaries for him. So, that was my frst experience on a professional set, and I learned a lot. Then I went back and fnished my degree at Leeds.

Did you work in London for a while? After I graduated, I was able to become an in-house runner at Ridley Scott’s company in London because of my experience in Canada. When I was on set,

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I would always hang out with the camera teams and slowly, through doing that, they would say, “Oh come out and be our trainee, come work for free.” So, I would go be a trainee whenever I could. Then slowly, they started hiring me as the loader and then on the “B” camera. I just kind of put myself into the department that way. I’m not sure that you can do that quite the same way in the States because of the unions. Whereas in England, the lack of unions makes it easier to get experience. I did that a lot, throughout my career, working for free so I could learn. When I was an assistant, I was also making short flms in my spare time. I had to save up to pay for the flm stock and processing, because I was getting my camera packages for free from Panavision. I would make short flms, sort of artistic short flms that didn’t really make any sense and shoot music videos.

Did you work with Seamus McGarvey? Yes, I did. I used to camera assist for Seamus in England on music videos, the frst one was for Coldplay. He knew that I was hungry to be a DP and offered to write me a letter of recommendation for the National Film School in London, as he was on the Board at the time. But it never really inspired me. I mean, people do ask me frequently why I didn’t go to that school, but I think it was because my love for Americana was so strong that I was drawn to come to the States. I was captivated by the idea of high school and cheerleaders and lockers and the prom and what I had seen in the movies. It just intrigued me so much. The thought of coming to America and working on big movies was really appealing.

How did you end up going to the American Film Institute (AFI)? One of the cameramen that I worked for, Haris Zambarloukos, a Cypriot DP who’s lovely, was a graduate of AFI. He said to me, look, if you really want to do this, you can’t spend your life being a camera assistant. You’ve got to go to flm school. As I had always wanted to come to America, I thought if he went to AFI, then I’m going apply to AFI. My frst time around I got into the school, but I didn’t have enough money to go, because it’s so expensive. As an International student, I couldn’t get a graduate loan, so I applied for various grants, one of those being a Fulbright which I didn’t get. Instead I went to the Media Workshops in Maine and I did four different camera workshops. Even those were expensive, but while I was there, I met Michael Goi (ASC) who was amazing. I went back to England more inspired and realized that I really did need to go to AFI. I decided to reapply for a Fulbright, and I asked Michael Goi if he would write me a letter of recommendation and the second time around, I got awarded the Fulbright. That basically gave me $40,000 to

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put towards my tuition and I begged and borrowed the rest of the money and I was able to go out to LA. While I was at AFI, unbeknown to me, Michael Goi was keeping track of all the content that I was making at school. He mentored me and once I left AFI, and had a few movies under my belt, he asked me to shoot additional photography for him on American Horror Story. That was my frst experience in a union production, which was a terrifying, but a good experience. I stayed in the States after I graduated because work snowballed, and I wanted to make the most of the momentum.

AFI is the quintessential Hollywood flm school conservatory that opens doors for people’s careers and seemed to have opened the door of Hollywood for you. Absolutely. I think that when I started looking at all the cinematographers I really admired, I saw that many of them had come out of AFI. The great thing now is that there seems to be a lot of really great female DPs coming out of there. I just went back to do a talk there and I think next year will be the frst year that there will be more women in the program than men! It seems like the young women are just so ultra focused and determined, and that might be because like minorities, they have to fght to have a voice.

I do think that the younger women are more like that now, less daunted, like you they push on. So many people email me and say, I’m thinking of going to AFI, should I do it? Do you recommend it? All I can say is that for my own personal experience, it was fantastic, but in many different ways. One of those was because it helped get me my Visa to stay in the States and also led me to working for Wally Pfster as his assistant on Inception. That was an incredible learning experience and an amazing period of my life, despite being ridiculously hard work; it just taught me so much. Sadly though, there were many people in my year and others that I know who have graduated AFI and haven’t made it, so there’s no guarantee.

What was your experience like after fnishing at AFI? How did you get started working in the industry? As well as shooting all kinds of no/low budget productions, I did a short flm for the release of the Canon C-300 Cinema camera with Vincent Laforet, who was a well-known stills photographer. He was trying to get his directing career going and he had been introduced to me through a friend and he asked me to shoot it. I didn’t know that it was such a big deal to do the flm at the time and as people say in this business, that got “heat on me”! Suddenly, everyone was like, “Oh my god, you’re on fre, you’re on fre.” That little

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burst lasted a couple of months and then it was like, now I don’t know how I’m going to pay my rent. I would shoot low budget indies and short flms and have big gaps in-between, so I decided to go back to the UK and see if I could get work there. I managed to get an agent in London and that helped get me work shooting BBC dramas and then I would come back and do independent movies. After a few years bouncing back and forth, I realized I couldn’t possibly continue the lifestyle. That’s when I was in my mid-thirties and while I was really happy to be working and busy, I never got to see any friends and realized I was never going to be able to have a relationship. I decided to stay in one country for a bit and chose to live in LA. Fortunately, a year or so later, I got offered the TV series Legion, which was career changing for me and where I met Noah Hawley. Noah was the creator of Fargo and Legion and after working with him, he asked me to shoot his frst feature Lucy in the Sky. That helped me get A Quiet Place ll. So, it’s just one of those things where it’s just a little bit of luck.

It’s also the tenacity that you obviously had as well, and you defnitely had a path. Let’s touch on your art background a little bit. Do you think that your love of art history helped formulate your eye for composition, lighting and framing? Absolutely. I think art defnitely came frst and foremost for me. My grandfather wrote and illustrated a book, and my mother was an artist too, so it was something that was always around when I was growing up. When I was at school, I studied art history and we would go on feld trips to London. There was so much access to amazing galleries and shows. The medium really spoke to me because I was quite badly dyslexic, so I could always communicate with images far better than I could with written words. I got drawn into that part of my education and at the end of what you call high school, they started offering us a photography program. The way it works in the UK is that you choose three fnal subjects in the last two years, so history of art was one of mine and I minored in photography. It was like a blending of those two worlds, the idea of light and where you put the camera in relation to the light source.

I felt the same way about paintings. It focuses you to really look at light and understand the source of it. When students say to me how did you learn to light, my answer is that I would go out and not know exactly what I was doing, but kind of had an instinct of what I liked and how I wanted it to look. Knowing art and appreciating certain styles and approaches, led me to make my own choices when lighting a scene. Over time of course, I learned from trial and error, but it was defnitely always more of a feeling. Looking through art and photography books all those years and learning so much about them for the exams, it just seeped into my pores.

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Then you also have that instinct for composition, where when somebody hands you a camera you already know what to do with the framing and gravitate towards the light being a certain way. That’s already in you. I think so. I feel so fortunate to have had that. Life throws you things without you realizing it. Everything you’ve been exposed to makes you the person and the artist that you are. I’ve also had the opportunity to travel extensively and I always grow from those experiences. Different places and cultures have such different colors, textures and light that it always helps shape my eye further.

Having that kind of background, do you share visual references from painting, photography with directors when you’re preparing for a flm? Like many cinematographers, I create ‘look books’ for when we get together for prep meetings. All different types of media are put on the table. Anything from paintings, photography, sculpture and even music. Everything that can help to evoke some kind of emotion. It’s representative, but there may be a tone, a color or even a texture of how rough or glossy it is. I think images and art and using different forms of media help convey something that words just can’t. When you share that experience with somebody, it takes away the need for description. It’s a clearer way of communicating than explaining something with just words.

When you’re deciding color palette and talking about the visual look of the flm, that all comes into play when you’re in prep? Yes, because maybe you’re referencing pop art with bright saturated tones or impressionist art like Monet with more pastel hues. So, it’s all different palettes, different textures, different qualities of light. I think sometimes we take for granted our individual use of language and what certain words mean to us, with references you can make it clear what the visual intention is for a certain scene or emotional beat. For example, if you felt the emotion of the scene would be best represented with a strong key source, then it’s easier to show that to a director than to just describe it. It’s bringing in all those elements to convey a commonality of language and a shared cohesive vision for the project.

So again, that collective knowledge of having your background and love of cinema, movies, art and photography, it all culminates as a reference that you can just sort of pull out and see if you’re on the same page with a director. That’s what’s so exciting to me because there is such a vast endless array of work out there that you are always discovering. When somebody shows you

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an art piece, or a photograph or a movie that you’ve not experienced yet, it’s just so thrilling because you keep getting inspired and you keep discovering new things. That is the wonderful thing about what we do. We seek it out and it’s nourishing to be surrounded by it all.

Learning cinematography and flmmaking is an ongoing lifelong learning experience. You never stop learning. When I was at AFI, we were being taught all about LAD (Lab Aim Density) that referred to printing 35mm negative correctly and for me, being dyslexic, fguring out all of those numbers was a nightmare. Luckily, that information is not needed now and so students can focus on other things. What’s so fun about it is we’re taught with digital, to shoot at the camera’s native ISO1 to use the sensor to its optimum capability. We are encouraged to create the most pristine image with equal latitude in the highlights and shadows. But I don’t necessarily want to create a perfect image. Maybe I want to shoot at 3200 ISO, and I want all that texture in it or I want all the range in the highlights. Perhaps, I want my lenses to be from the 1950s and I want them to fall off in weird places. I want to throw the rules out of the window and go with more of a feeling, to evoke something in the viewer and be a storyteller with the images you create. That being said, I had to know it all and get comfortable with the technology, before I understood how to throw it all away to create what I wanted.

I was reading in American Cinematographer that for Lucy in the Sky you used the aspect ratio to differentiate thematic and emotional beats in a character. Going from 1:33 to 1:85 to 2:35…. I think that’s a really interesting way to convey that subjective internalized feeling. Can you talk a little about how you came to that? The director, Noah Hawley had been using aspect ratio as a tool for a long time. The use of the space in the frame had always intrigued him. He had used it in Fargo, and we used it in Legion as well. In season two, we would shoot with anamorphic lenses 2:40 to represent astral planes, dreams or any unusual space in time and then whenever we were in the main narrative and in real time, we would shoot spherical 16×9. We also framed for 4:3 for some fashbacks. Aspect ratio became a tool that gave us a way to tell the story and we continued that theme in season three, where we used it to illustrate the two main characters’ worlds. When I frst read the script for Lucy in the Sky, the aspect ratio changes were already written in and it was an exciting script to read because it was so visual. We used light and framing to hide the changes, so they felt very smooth within the movie, with the aim that you weren’t distracted by it. It’s an interesting process because when you prep a movie, you and the director come up with a

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plan and often in the edit, things move around. Those elegant transitions you spent time solving in prep don’t apply because of the new layout of the scene. But it’s the evolution of a flm. It starts one way as written word, develops a new life as it’s being shot and then becomes something different in the edit. Noah ended up creating even more unique aspect ratios in the editing room, so there was a lot of expansion and compression throughout the movie. He is such an inventive director that the process of breaking down the script and having that as a tool, that was really interesting.

What attracts you to want to do a project creatively? What themes speak to your heart? If there’s a strong emotional core to the story, that speaks to me. When I was younger, I was attracted to cinema mainly because of escapism. It was the experience of being transported to different worlds. That’s why Legion was intriguing to me because it was so unique and took the viewer away from reality. For the most part however, I’ve really been drawn to scripts where I can relate on a deeper level with the characters and I feel like I can be a tool in helping to convey their journey. As much as I enjoy pure fun movies, the reason I love sitting down and watching a flm is because I get to experience a different view on life and live in someone else’s shoes. The ones that really speak are the ones that provide an emotional reaction and stay with me for days afterwards. All of the struggles and pain that I have experienced in life, all those challenges that we all go through as humans, I defnitely put into my work. I draw on all that pain, frustration or happiness to inspire my work and I think that’s probably why the emotional side of the story is so meaningful to me. When I was younger, I dreamt of shooting big Hollywood movies. It’s such a different landscape than it was back then, but now my dreams have changed. My hope is that I get to work on movies that move me with characters I connect with. I’m very fortunate now in my career that I’m able to focus scripts that speak to me. I’ll ask myself, do I want to spend the next four months of my life doing this? How am I going to be able to give myself to this piece of work? I put my heart and soul into the process, and I can’t imagine not being invested one hundred percent. It’s a sacrifce to spend so much time away from my family and I want to collaborate with the right flmmakers and make something that is meaningful.

It shows who you are as a flmmaker, as an artist, as a cinematographer, and that you’re fortunate to be at this stage of your career where you are able to make that choice. It has only been in the last year that I’ve actually been able to be picky. It’s not like I am getting sent scripts left and right. I am lucky that I can support myself and have the ability to work on the projects that speak to me. The flm business

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is a rollercoaster and is full of ups and downs. It’s important to make smart choices because you don’t know how long the upward swing is going to last. There are some DPs that have longevity in their careers and are always going to be sent great material and be in demand. They manage to work successfully until they decide to retire. But then, there are a lot of DPs that you see who get a lot of acclaim quickly and then they just disappear off the map or fall out of favor. That’s the thing about this business, it’s ruthless. For me, I’m aware I need to cultivate my career and hopefully make the right choices now, so that I will stay relevant for the next thirty years. As long as the story always comes frst, hopefully things will be okay.

What attracted you to shoot A Quiet Place II? It’s generally considered a horror flm, correct? When I read the script for A Quiet Place ll, I hadn’t actually seen the frst movie. They were in a real rush for me to read it and it was challenging as my baby was only fve weeks old and my husband was out of town for two months. It was one of the frst scripts sent to me, and it was not only beautifully written, but written in a very visual way. It was so descriptive that you could just picture the world unfolding as the characters moved within it. Despite being seen as a horror movie, at its core, it is a story of a mother who wants to protect her kids, but the kids are having to grow up and fend for themselves. I think those themes at that time in my life, being a new mother, really grabbed my attention. Once I read it, I watched the frst movie where she gives birth and she’s got this newborn baby, and it was completely harrowing. While working on A Quiet Place II, I was pumping breast milk the whole time and I was very hormonal. I defnitely got emotional when working on disturbing scenes with the children or the scenes with the baby, but I would pull myself together and put all that emotion into the work.

I don’t really watch horror flms because I’m too psychically damaged from them. How did you even get through that? I have worked on a bunch of low budget horror flms and American Horror Story with Michael Goi and the experiences would damage my psyche sometimes. The atmosphere on set is usually tense because you’re doing something where actors have to put themselves in dark places. There’s all this really disturbing stuff happening, and the energy just seeps out and it’s contagious. I think the reason that the frst A Quiet Place movie was so great is because John was inspired by his love of Spielberg movies, specifcally Jaws. Jaws is a shark movie but really a movie about a community and a man who wants to protect it and his family. A Quiet Place ll is not really full-on horror, it’s more like a family drama. Even though there are creatures killing people, it’s really about parents protecting their children, which I think makes it really powerful and nostalgic for people to watch.

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What led to the decision to actually shoot that on flm? When the DP of the frst A Quiet Place (2018) (Charlotte Bruus Christensen) and John had the discussion initially, she pitched shooting on flm because of his love of older movies and he just fell in love with it. However, the studio was against us using it on the sequel and it became a big part of prep and was the subject of many discussions. The lack of labs and the fact that we would have to fy the exposed negative to LA became a cost and time issue. Ultimately, we won the fght and I’m thrilled we did it on flm as it really is a beautiful medium and defnitely adds to the timeless feeling that the movie has. The experience of working with it however was slightly terrifying, because although we had shot American Horror Story on flm, that was eight years ago. So, I was defnitely nervous when we started shooting but it was amazing how quickly I got comfortable using just my light meter. It was a joy to be on set and take a few readings and be ready, without having to keep going back to look at a monitor and make changes. I would love to keep shooting on flm, but it has its downside. We had to send our dailies on a plane from Buffalo to LA, nobody saw any lab reports for three days. John likes to improvize with the camera and even though we were shooting flm, we would keep the camera rolling. The frst assistant camera (AC) did an amazing job, but it was anamorphic, so sometimes we would get the focus report and the focus was not good. That made it quite stressful, because you didn’t necessarily know if you had the shot or not. But ultimately, it was worth it, and I think the movie benefts greatly from the decision.

Digitally, you’re used to a native 800 to 1600; on flm you’ve got 500. We were shooting with 500 Tungsten quite a lot of time and I was hoping to rate it at 320 but my gaffer persuaded me to go to 400 and it was defnitely an adjustment for my eye to get used to lighting a stop brighter than I normally would. I tried to not push the negative whenever possible as I don’t necessarily love the way it effects the shadows but sometimes, there was no other choice.

I saw the trailer and it looked beautiful. I thought that’s pretty low light on flm. Going from digital into that can be tricky. Yeah, it is tricky. You have to play a lot safer than you do with digital. When I started shooting A Quiet Place II, I did lots of tests with different flm stocks. Overexposing it, then bringing it down and underexposing it. Everything is going to look better if you overexpose it and you have a nice thick negative. Your blacks are going to be nice and rich and you will have room to adjust in the digital interactive (DI). While we were shooting, I started being a little bit more relaxed and underexposed the flm at times. I was impressed how much latitude was in the negative, but I had to keep reminding myself to add more light to make sure that that negative was really thick.

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Something that has been taking up my attention recently is the whole concept of HDR (high dynamic range). When a DP goes in to do the DI, we spend all this time making our theatrical release look the best it can in P3 color space. Then historically, they do a trim pass to convert that P3 color space to Rec 709 standard dynamic range (SDR). For most of my career, it has been a 1:1 comparison and the SDR 709 has looked great, completely comparable to the P3. But now we’re getting into this arena where we are delivering in HDR. There is no industry standard on this process currently and often the DP isn’t supervising the HDR pass, so there can be considerable differences between the look of the theatrical version and the one people are watching at home. When I watched Lucy in the Sky on my 4K OLED TV, I was surprised at the difference in the look. The post house had sent me a new iPad with the HDR version which looked great but on my older iPad or my TV, the shadows were a lot deeper and at times, lost information. It’s frustrating that there is so much variance in how people see your work depending on the viewing device and environment. You hope that most people go to a theater and watch it the way you intended but really a majority of people might see it at home on television or even on their iPad or iPhone. HDR is a new technology that is becoming industry standard and the way I approach my work is different because of it. When I shot my last episode of Legion, it was very moody. I was like, “Wow, gosh this is the darkest thing I’ve ever done.” And then I got nominated for an ASC award for it!

Going to the theater is going to become a whole different experience. Because most people will be at home streaming movies on their 4K fat screens. I defnitely think about how it’s going to be viewed when I’m shooting something. It’s a different experience watching a movie on a small screen than it is experiencing it on a big theatrical screen and it really does change the choices that you make. Cinematography is going to change over the next twenty years. Not only the craft itself and the tools that we have to work with but also the different viewing platforms that people consume the content on.

Do you think that shooting on flm is an option that flmmakers will still consider? You said you had to fght for it. What do you think about younger cinematographers coming up with the fascination of shooting flm? Do you think it’s going to stay around? I do. When digital cameras frst started taking hold in the industry, people thought flm was dead, but now there’s been a resurgence of flm. More people are shooting flm than they were fve or ten years ago, so I think there will

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always be a place for it. What makes it diffcult is that there are less flm labs around and so the ease of being able to shoot flm is a factor for producers. For us, it wasn’t necessarily the thought of it being more expensive, because I don’t think that shooting flm is vastly more expensive than shooting digital. But the fact that they then have to fy the negative to Los Angeles so there’s a time delay in knowing we got the material. That’s what makes it more complex and makes people nervous because there’s a lot of money riding on the dailies. I think flm will always have a place. It really helps the story in certain instances and other times shooting on digital is the right tool to use. It’s just another option on how to create the visuals. The idea of having many different paints in our paint box. So, I hope it’s going to stay around.

What attributes do you like in a director? Intuitively, how do you select working with a director? The idea that a director will be a strong collaborator is what I fnd really appealing. Somebody that wants to get into the nitty gritty with me. It doesn’t matter if they have a technical background. Just someone that is interested in exploring the story in a visual way and gets excited about it. That they don’t necessarily just want to cover it or just want it to look pretty. That they are open to dig deep into the visual language and use it to enhance the narrative. That’s what makes a good collaboration.

How do you like to prepare for a flm? Some people really like to just sequester a director and really dig into the script. How do you generally like to prepare? For me, I can never get enough time with the director. You just can’t get them in the room long enough. I usually spend a lot of time breaking down the script on my own scene by scene. I’ll write down each scene, and then all the different visual attributes associated with it. Framing ideas, lighting, special effects (SFX), visual effects (VFX) and transitions from each scene. I add in references and perhaps the shot lists/storyboards and it becomes a bible for me. I then break the document down in shooting order so that when I’m on set, I can quickly look at it and go okay, it’s day ten and these scenes are going to be approached this way. Most of the time, it sits in my bag since by the time I get to set everything is locked down in my mind, but as the shoot goes on, it’s a helpful reference. Someone asked me the other day about a shot list, and did I think a shot list was important? When I don’t have enough time with the director, I’ll break down shot ideas myself, but I do it for scheduling or to order equipment because I need to have a rough idea of how we’re going to cover something. I need to make sure that we have the right tools available and that the assistant

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director (AD) knows how much time things might take. Some directors love to plan and shot list/storyboard and then that helps every department plan more precisely but it’s really an individual thing. For A Quiet Place ll, I rarely sat down with John, but we spent a lot of time together at the locations. Every day when he was available to prep, we would get in the van and go to locations and walk around and talk about the blocking for the actors and camera. I would then go back and translate those conversations into gear lists and requests for different departments. For example, I might say, I’m going to need to have a techno crane here or I need smoke on that set. Those discussions made up my master document instead of sitting with him and breaking down the script in a more traditional sense. Personally, I just want to make sure that I know the script inside and out. Because of my dyslexia and how my brain learns, once I write everything down and use color coding, then it really helps me absorb all the information I need on a day-to-day basis. The breakdowns are helpful because once you start shooting you don’t have any time and have to respond quickly to situations and hundreds of questions. Once I’ve put it all down on paper, it’s solidifed in my mind and helps me respond effciently. The greatest moments on set are when you witness the shots come to life. Ideas and images you have had in your mind for months become real and you get to share them with others. There are times when I just get goose bumps through the process.

You are part of a generation of women that have a career, children a partner and all the things that have been sacrifced by your female predecessors. But have you faced any challenges that have made you feel like it’s deterring you at all? I am so stubborn that there is nothing that would have ever deterred me from my goal. Honestly, I’m the kind of person who will not be discouraged. When I was at school, I remember they brought my mother in one day and they said, “We don’t think Polly’s smart enough to fnish high school. She should go to secretarial college, or she should be in hotel management.” And my mum said to me after the meeting, “Do you want to fnish?” And I said, “Yes, and I’m going to show these motherfuckers.” I’m the kind of person, if someone tells me I can’t do something, I’m going to show them that I can.

Have you faced any obstacles along the way? I have had people tell me that I’m not talented, but the real obstacle was being my own worst critic. I’ve always found it hard to appreciate my work and accept that it is good enough. I’m inherently a perfectionist, so I have had to learn to let that go and see that there is great beauty in imperfection. Apart from that, there

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is obviously the fact that I am a woman in a male-dominated feld. When I was a camera assistant in England, the behavior there could be pretty childish. Like when I was trying to pass a head up a ladder, I had electrics pulling my trousers down or pulling my underwear. At the start of my career, it was harder to get jobs as a female DP. I suppose some men prefer working with other men, but luckily other men love the idea of working with women and feel that it’s a great balance to have more estrogen on set and a feminine perspective. Now of course, there are more and more female directors and that’s an exciting thing to witness. I’m really excited and hopeful for the future. When I see the younger generation look at each other, they don’t see each other in a way that differentiates themselves through sex. The young men look at young women as equals and so the future is promising.

These are “me-too” moments you obviously had, working in the UK when you were young and coming up, and it’s unfortunate, I hope it no longer continues for future generations. Sometimes, if I shared stories with my mum, she would be like, “Oh, you should complain,” or “You should fle a report.” And I’d reply, “That doesn’t exist in the flm business.” I’m self- employed. Who am I going to go talk to? It’s made me tough, I think. I have grown a thick skin. I’m not offended easily. Many things just wash off my back and it’s really taught me patience. It’s helped me to not to worry about things too much.

Have there been sacrifces you had to make in your family life along the way? I went back to work when my baby was fve weeks and I didn’t get to see her very often. I had to pump most of my breast milk because I couldn’t be there to feed her physically. That was incredibly hard but are just the sacrifces you have to make sometimes, because I did want to be a mother and a wife, but also…god, I love my job. It was my priority for my whole life, and now it’s not my priority anymore, because my family is, but it’s still such a huge part of who I am that I have to balance it out as much as I can. When I was frst starting out, the few women I met at work were producers and most of them were childless. It was my assumption as a young woman that if I was going to be successful in this career, then I was going to have to sacrifce being a mother. I had that in my mind for such a long time. Fortunately, that was not the case. I had my frst baby when I was 39, and now I’m having another one at 41. It’s a lot of work, but it shows how people are a lot more accepting of not only women working within the business, but that women need to juggle being mothers as well.

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Women of my generation did have to make the choice not to have children, it wasn’t accepted to be pregnant on set. Which is why many women chose a different path, such as myself, I have two children. It didn’t seem practical or possible at that time in the 1980s or even early 1990s. There weren’t any role models, or anybody to inspire you. It’s great these days that I’m able to do talks, and even though I’m very camera shy and I hate putting myself out there, show young women that they can have it all. It’s really important for young women to see other women doing it and just know that it’s completely possible. It is a career choice, and you don’t have to give up any big life decisions in order to be successful. It’s great that it’s gotten to this point, after so long.

I have great admiration for what women of your generation are doing right now. You’re not messing around with little stuff. You’re making big movies and you are on set pregnant, it’s incredible. I love that this is happening. It’s funny because my agent called me yesterday and said, "Oh that movie’s ready to make you an offer” and I was saying to her, do you think that we should tell them that I’m pregnant because by the time the movie wraps, I’ll be seven and a half months pregnant. Her response was, “Look, it's a bunch of male producers and there’s no point in making a big deal of it now. As we sign the contract, we’ll say, Oh by the way, Polly’s pregnant.” I had a camera on my shoulder at forty weeks last time and I’m lucky because I have had simple pregnancies and am able to be physical. I’m the youngest of fve girls and we’ve all been lucky to have really easy pregnancies, I can still do everything being seven and a half months pregnant and it’s frustrating that sometimes it is seen as a handicap.

You just show up. Oh yeah, I’m pregnant. So, what are we shooting? I like that. It’s not like, Oh gee, I’m sorry I’m pregnant. Yeah, it’s really none of anyone’s business if I’m pregnant, I can still do the job as well as if I wasn’t. I think we have come such a long way in the last twenty years and cinematography has really blossomed as a career choice. When I look back to the days when I was a runner in England, determined to become a cinematographer, most of the cinematographers that were busy working were all in their forties and ffties, as you had to work through the hierarchy in order to become a DP. You had to work your way up the ladder. From my understanding, they didn’t really start respecting you as a cinematographer until you were older. Now there’s been a shift with digital acquisition that young people are getting the chance to shoot, they’re able to just get out there and make

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their own content. They’re able to hustle and show they have talent. It’s all happening a lot younger and that age factor is really interesting because of how you present yourself not only as a woman but also as a DP.

You’re an inspiration to young women cinematographers. Do you think the doors are now opening wider for women to come through to go into different channels? Not only in cinematography, but directing and writing as well, where they hadn’t really been acknowledged before? I think, luckily, people are open and interested in diverse storytellers these days. Growing up, I didn’t think about the fact that everything I had been exposed to was made by a White man. Now, I think people want and are fascinated by stories from all different parts of the world being taught by all different types of people. I think they’re embracing that. People are now seeking these stories out because it’s important we all have balance. We want and need to learn from each other and from our different life experiences. I have seen the industry really open up, with women working in all areas of production. From working in construction to being special effects (SPX) supervisors, to being drivers and directors. Women, thank goodness, can be anything they want. It is still more challenging than in should be but hopefully that will continue to improve. It’s a business full of ups and downs and you need the constitution to be able to handle that, but it can be so incredibly rewarding and exciting. Hopefully, the me-too experiences are a thing of the past.

Do you have any aspirations to direct in the future? Or do you want to just focus on cinematography right now? It’s a diffcult question because my focus is on cinematography because it’s ever evolving and growing and it’s going to keep me on my toes. That being said, when I look at the women DPs that I love and respect, like Rachel, Ellen, Charlotte, these women have all turned their eye to directing now. I’m very happy being a DP and I have a lot of aspirations for things that I want to achieve as DP. But I’ll say never say never.

Note 1 ISO stands for International Standards Organization. It is a numerical value used by digital and flm cameras alike to defne the light sensitivity of the recording medium.

Rachel Morrison, ASC

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Photography has an ability to capture moments in time that can recreate a memory or feeling when viewed again. At a young age, Rachel realized this was a way to freeze moments in time with her parents as she was growing up. Both of her parents had health issues and she lost her mother to cancer when she was only 15. The creation of images in the darkroom provided comfort and solace when her worse fears became reality. It was her mother who began taking pictures of the family, but it was Rachel who took over that position. With an eye for creating realistic images and an interest in confict photography, she decided to attend NYU to pursue studies in photojournalism. The shift to focus on cinematography was not an easy choice for her to make but came when she realized the emotional power of the moving image. She was drawn to the transcendent capability of motion pictures to transport one to another time and place or evoke an emotional response in a way a single image could not. After completing her degree at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Rachel began a career working in television and documentary. In 2005, she was one of the cinematographers on the flm Rikers High which earned her an Emmy nomination for cinematography. She continued to earn a living in unscripted television, but this wasn’t fulflling enough to sustain her. She had more to contribute visually and narratively. AFI (American Film Institute) provided her with the opportunity to focus exclusively on the craft of cinematography. Her debut independent feature flm as a director of photography (DP) was Palo Alto photographed in 2006, while she was still at AFI. Saddled with student debt from AFI upon graduation, she took a job shooting The Hills, which was not her passion position, but did provide the educational opportunity to light and shoot a multi-camera set for two years. As cameras became more affordable, flms looked to shoot with two or more cameras and this was a skillset Morrison had honed. She made the risky choice to turn away from a steady paycheck in reality and never looked back. She continued her narrative features with Sound of My Voice (2011), Dorfman in Love (2011), Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (2012) and Any Day Now (2012).

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Building upon her experience in still photography, documentary work informed her ability to appreciate realism and make quick operating decisions about how best to evoke emotion and refect the stakes with a camera, in real time. Between narrative features, she continued to photograph several documentaries for television including Summit on the Summit (2010), Lady Gaga: Inside on the Outside (2011) and Oprah’s Master Class: Special Edition (2012). In 2013, Rachel began her collaboration with Ryan Coogler with the critically acclaimed, award-winning Fruitvale Station. The gaze of her lens was fnally capturing content she had been aspiring towards her entire career, a flm that was more substantial than merely entertainment. In the same year, she photographed the documentary Life on the Line, the narrative comedy Some Girls and the dramatic thriller The Harvest. Her focus on feature flms continued in 2014 with Little Accidents, Druid Peak and Cake. She photographed Dope (2015) for Rick Famuyiwa and then reunited with him for the HBO-produced Confrmation (2016) about Anita Hill. In 2017, she photographed Mudbound, directed by Dee Rees; the flm that would change the course of her career and mark her in history as being the frst woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Her eye for naturalism worked well to create the visual tone needed for this award-winning flm. Stepping into the world of big budget Marvel flms, Rachel reteamed with Ryan Coogler on the Academy Award-nominated blockbuster Black Panther (2018). Following one of her themes of depicting strong female characters, she photographed Seberg (2019), directed by Benedict Andrews. Rachel has the capability of channeling emotion through the camera with a passion that goes beyond merely gathering images. She carefully selects what she wants to cast her gaze upon with a desire to create something with meaning. She has expanded her talents to include the world of directing with the frst two episodes of Hightown, short flm Homemade and her frst feature flm as a director, Flint Strong. Rachel is focused, driven and ambitious, but as a mother and wife she also has a strong love and commitment to her family. She is an inspiration, leading the pack of a new generation of female cinematographers.

You have a beautiful dramatic lighting style both in your commercials and in your feature flm work. Is there a specifc approach you take to lighting? I actually try to approach each project from a unique perspective but what unifes my work, the one consistency, is something that I’ve given the term, ‘subjective realism’ to. What that means to me is that everything you do to craft, and bend reality is a refection of the emotional stakes of the characters. So, you can heighten the contrast when someone is having an emotionally climactic moment. You basically have the liberty to be stylized and to enhance

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things when it feels right. In a moment where it should be mundane, you lean into that, so it doesn’t feel self-aware. It’s all about capturing emotional authenticity. I try to shoot in a way that mirrors the emotional arc of the characters at any given moment. That can apply to commercials, documentaries or features. I consider whose story am I telling in this moment and where are they on their emotional journey? Then I make the cinematography a refection of that moment.

Was there, or is there, a particular cinematographer that you were inspired by early on? A number of them for different reasons. Gordon Willis of course, for his lack of fear when it came to the darkness. Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler for what they did in terms of elevating naturalism. The contemporary equivalents would be Emmanuel Lubezki and Greig Fraser. There are a lot of people whose work has infuenced me in one way or another, like Bradford (Young) is like the Gordon Willis of our time in terms of the risks he takes. I really appreciate that he puts himself out there. I also admire Roger Deakins and Conrad Hall for being versatile technicians who have steered their careers by the choices that they’ve made. I think one of the biggest assets to any great DP is their ability to choose projects they believe in and not let their decisions be steered by a paycheck. Starting out, I had to kiss a few frogs but for as long as I’ve had the choice, I’ve been pretty clear about not shooting anything I didn’t want to put out in the world or to dedicate six months of my life to.

Can you talk a little about your background and what led you to cinematography? I went to NYU with only the vaguest understanding of what a cinematographer was and did but with an intrinsic passion for it. I enrolled as a photo major because there was no cinematography major in the flm department and at the time I had very little interest in directing. The photo department was incredibly special because it was this tiny department with 100 students in a University of 35,000. You got all the attention of a small school with the resources of a massive one. But I wanted to shoot flms as well as print my own photographs, so I began a double major in Photography and Film my Junior year.

How did you end up going to AFI? It was after 9/11 and I was getting sucked into shooting reality TV and I thought, I’m so close to what I want to do and yet so far from it. A friend of mine whom I considered a very strong DP enrolled in AFI so I thought, if he still feels like he has something to learn, then I must have something to learn

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too. I also knew if I didn’t alter my path, I was going to get used to making a decent day-rate, shooting things that I didn’t care about, and that it would be diffcult to get out of that paradigm.

Do think that AFI helped to get you on the track that you are on? Absolutely. It’s a very profcient school technically, so I learned a lot. But I also needed the confdence in my own abilities to really succeed in the world and that’s what it gave me. Especially as a female DP, you have to be secure in your own instincts. Film is a subjective medium. There is no right or wrong. So, you have to trust your gut. Perhaps the greatest skill I gained from AFI was the security in my own technical prowess to lead with confdence. AFI also prepared me for making flms at a professional level in a way that maybe undergrad doesn’t. For the most part, an undergrad program encourages experimentation and dreaming but sometimes without the construct or boundaries of the real world.

Where did you learn your lighting skills, is it something that is taught or is it more instinctual? AFI, like any school, teaches you the technical side of things, but nobody is going to tell you how to light a scene, that is more subjective. It’s not mathematical where you know if you got the equation right, it just has to feel right to you and resonate within you. That speaks to the confdence I was talking about. There’s a million ways to light a scene between a mother and daughter or to light the death of a loved one, but ‘right’ is only something you can feel reverberating in your heart. So, AFI or any flm program, doesn’t teach you how to light a scene specifcally, but about what all of your options are; what a fresnel does versus a HMI. Today, it’s probably more about the LED technology and how you use a vector scope to expose for a digital camera versus how you use a light meter for flm. So, it gives you all the technical skills of the craft, but beyond that comes from within. AFI does put a lot of weight on narrative storytelling, which resonated for me even before I went there. It emphasizes substance over style. If anybody walks out of a movie and all they can talk about is how beautiful the cinematography is, then you’ve actually failed at your job. If they’re not talking about what a great flm it was, if it didn’t move them emotionally, then on some level you missed the mark.

When somebody comes to you with a project that you might potentially shoot, what do you consider before accepting that? It’s always about the script frst and foremost. The material has to speak to me, and I have to feel like it matters. I’ve always tried to look for material where

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I felt like I was making a contribution to the world in some way with stories that needed to be told. Maybe not my frst three features where you mainly want to get experience, but since then I’ve been much more conscious of the material. Then I ask whether I think the flm will fnd an audience, because there have been situations where I was proud of the work I did on the flm, but it never went anywhere. Then it’s about the director. Because for a DP, the person who’s going to make or break this thing, is the person at the helm. As much as you can do in production, they are making the movie all over again in post, and choices that can be made—even with music and sound design—can sink a movie. So, you really have to have faith in the director’s vision, that it’s singular or at least a consistent enough vision that what you think you’re making during production is going to be what is presented at the end. Then I consider everything else. Do we have the budget to make the movie? Who is the producer? It all matters because ultimately, making a flm is like building a family or going to war together. It’s not just a question of whether the director is competent, but I also have to consider do I want to be in close quarters with this person for a really long time, is this somebody I would take a bullet for? In my case as a mom, any project I choose, I’m choosing it over time with my children, so I want to be happy every day that I go to work and not resent that this project is taking me away from my family.

You must be in a good position now to be selective? True, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a lot to select from, which is kind of how I ended up directing as of late. To fnd a story that hits on all fronts is rare. There aren’t many scripts out there that feel like you’re taking a step forward and not a step sideways or backwards. Or there are great scripts that don’t have the budget to sustain the idea. So, I decided to cast a wider net with reading things to direct too and that is how I landed where I am. It wasn’t because I set out to direct, which is weirdly the assumption.

Do you like to sit down and give notes with the script? As a director, absolutely. I realized after two to three years of reading scripts, that you’re never going to get a script that’s actually ready to go, or somebody would be making it already. You have to be willing to take the journey to getting the script from whatever stage it is when you read it, to what it ends up being when you shoot it. That has been a real process even with Flint Strong. Barry Jenkins wrote the script and he’s an amazing writer, but structurally it still needed work because it was still closely tied to the documentary that inspired it, so I tried to reimagine it somewhat and put my stamp on it too.

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As a cinematographer are you sitting down and going over the script with the director intensely, thinking out theme, color, all of those things? That’s the goal in any collaboration, to get to the heart of the thing and to make sure you’re both on the same page so that ultimately as the DP, you can translate the director’s vision into imagery, even when the director is not next to you. Often, the director is putting out 9,000 other fres while you’re setting up the shot, so they’re not even there with you to weigh in right away. The hope is that they show up to the set and say, “That’s great, it’s just what I had in mind.” The prep work is really to get inside the director’s head so that you are telling the same story.

Do you fnd you frequently use specifc visual references? Or is it flm dependent? It’s totally dependent on the flm. There are references I fnd will reemerge on a lot of flms, usually some combination of photography, fne art and other flms. On Mudbound, Dee Rees didn’t want to reference a single other flm besides Les Blank documentaries because she was intent on wanting her vision to feel original and unique, so she didn’t want to see a frame from another narrative flm and be subconsciously infuenced. But more often than not, looking at other flms is a great way to get on the same page with the director, especially if the director is not entirely technical. It’s a great way to communicate by example – for instance, do we want a wide angle close like this, or a long lens from far away like this? Do you like the feel of anamorphic lenses or spherical etc. You’d be surprised how many directors don’t know the difference until you show them.

Is there a genre that you really have no interest in shooting? I don’t think I would shoot a horror flm because I literally can’t watch them. I guess I’m a wimp and get too freaked out. But at this point I have zero interest. I can appreciate the cinematography and I recognize a lot of people get to do a lot of beautiful work in horror, it’s just not my genre. A thriller maybe, but not true horror. I don’t ever want to make a movie I wouldn’t go see in the theater myself and I to this day have never seen a horror movie. Comedy is also tough because it doesn’t lend itself to being cinematic. I suppose a few people like the Coen Brothers have found a way to do it, but I would say generally speaking, I would do a dark comedy or a dramatic comedy, but not a broad comedy.

What about format, what makes you decide between Super 35, S16, 1:85, 2:35 or Anamorphic? Digital or flm? It starts with the aspect ratio and then what feels right. With Fruitvale, we really wanted the flm to feel experiential like a documentary, so we wanted

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the granularity of flm. Ryan pushed for S16mm and I was pushing for 2 perf 35mm, but he wanted a 16:9 aspect ratio, not a wide screen 2:39 format. In the end, I’m really glad that we did shoot 16 because current 35mm isn’t as grainy as it used to be. Ironically, the flm stocks that are left are the ones that were designed to compete with digital by being tighter in grain and having greater latitude. But these are ultimately the most similar to digital when to me the point of shooting flm is that tactile organic quality. But format is really about what makes sense from a logistical and emotional standpoint. There are a lot of flms where I’d love to originate on flm, for example Mudbound, but we simply couldn’t afford it. We tested it and ultimately were told if we were going to shoot on flm that we would have to lose two days out of our schedule, which was already un-makeable, so it just wasn’t realistic. But in testing it, I had my colorist match the Alexa material, which I shot with heightened ASA1, and then I added grain in post. I basically had him match the 35mm flm look, and it was a surprisingly convincing match. It was certainly a good enough match to put us at ease and know that we could have something that still felt flmic and tactile. There’s just such a big leap now from Super 16 into 35 because you can’t really make 35mm flm look grainy and you can’t really get super 16 to look sharp. I think as our eyes have gotten so accustomed to 4K, 6K, now you look at 16, it looks really soft in a way that it didn’t used to. For Seberg, we elected to shoot on flm because the producer was really into flm, so he supported it. But for that one if it was up to me, we would have shot digital by night and flm by day. I think they felt like that was just too complicated, but that would have been my preference to be honest. Because nowadays actors are so used to having night scenes lit to look and feel like night, that when you start lighting for anamorphic flm, it’s super bright. Kristen [Stewart] and Anthony [Mackie] had a sex scene in Seberg and I was like, “Sorry guys, you’re basically in an orgy with me and my assistant camera (AC), and the other operator, and the other AC” because they could see us, hear the flm running through the magazines. It’s a very different ‘mood’ lighting for flm than lighting with practicals and candles on a high sensitivity digital camera. So, I do feel there are some sacrifces with shooting on flm, especially at night where you forgo a little bit of the authenticity in the lighting that the actors have gotten so accustomed to. But then there are other things you gain from flm like maybe the actors only have to do three takes and they bring their very best to each one, knowing it’s not in needless supply. Overall, I think celluloid really has its place and I love it. There’s nothing more beautiful. Digital has come incredibly far, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to flm by day.

Are there cinematographers working today who have never shot flm? I don’t know of any personally, but I’m sure there’s a ton out there. Most DPs still like to shoot on flm whenever possible. The DP on Flint Strong hasn’t shot

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a feature on flm, but she’s the one with the flm camera on set taking pictures. She’s the one who, any chance on a commercial she gets, shoots flm. So, the interest is defnitely still there for many younger DPs.

What are your thoughts on the longevity of flm? Do you think it’s going to remain an option, or do you think it’s something that will eventually disappear? I hope that it remains an option, I really do. I don’t understand how it all works in terms of the supply and demand of it all. I never thought Polaroid would go out of business. The day that they announced they were done, I was shocked. It’s hard for me to predict. I think the archival conversation helps to keep it alive but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before digital becomes stable enough that the bean counters win out in the end.

How are they archiving the flms you’re shooting digitally? What’s the process? Do they make a negative? The bigger budget and studio flms archive, so obviously Black Panther is getting archived. Or a flm has to achieve some kind of status that the AFI Institute for Preservation is scanning it or Criterion maybe scans and archives. I think a lot of the smaller, lesser seen flms probably don’t ever get a flm archive. There’s a digital master and those are probably remastered every so often, hopefully somebody’s checking to make sure that they’re still stable. You can fnd some really great, older flms and silent flms in their entirety on YouTube. But if you try to put up something contemporary, people will shut you down in a heartbeat. So eventually what will happen is that the archive will consist of compressed and repurposed low-res versions of flms after they are not commercially relevant but at least they will exist in cyberspace for eternity.

Tell me about the project that you’re working on as a director, Flint Strong; what drew you to that subject matter? I tend to be drawn to character dramas with something meaningful to say and it has that in spades. I also like flms based on true stories because you can pull from research. It’s about a female boxer named Claressa Shields from Flint, Michigan and it manifests like a traditional sports movie but where a traditional sports movie would end with her winning the gold at age 17, in many ways this is where the real story begins. She comes back to Flint and nothing has really changed for her. She was too Black, too street, too female to receive the attention she deserved and that many of her White/male peers received. It’s about the American dream versus the American reality if you don’t look or act a certain way. It’s an incredibly moving story that I think is timely, important, unexpected and universal. I also recognize much of myself in Claressa’s

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journey. I’m not Black but I have always been an anomaly, always had an uphill battle against the odds. I’m drawn to flms that are very independent, that’s sort of been my background, so I was surprised as anyone to start with a studio flm but when I fnd something that feels like it has social messaging, has a consciousness to it, all of the things I care about, but with a chance of a more universal appeal, then that’s the space that I want to play in. I was trying to fnd something that felt like it could reach people and still be meaningful. Something that I could put my own vision behind that is just commercial enough, but not too broad or pandering to the lowest common denominator. It’s a little hard to be the creative genius who makes a work of art that nobody actually gets to see. I’ve shot a couple of those where it’s like a tree falling in the forest.

Are you shooting this as well or are you focused on directing? I’m not shooting it. I decided that as hard as that is to give up, I wanted to put everything into directing the performances. As much as it hurts not to be the one holding the camera, I am equally grateful to take something off my plate.

How did you select your DP for Flint? It was a tough choice for a number of reasons. I wanted a female DP, but it had to be the right person for the job. I wasn’t going to hire a DP just because she was female. At frst, I didn’t know if I was looking for somebody who was going to shoot exactly as I would have shot and be my eyes on the ground? Then I went back to something that Ryan had done which was to surround himself with different personalities, different genders, different races, different backgrounds, different ages, trying to pull the best from each of us, to create something universally relatable. I think that’s how he’s been so commercially successful, because he has this petri dish of different experiences and he’s not afraid to ask the best boy electric what he thinks of a performance. He’s taught me so much about not feeling that as a director, you have to be the only voice in the room. He gathers opinions from everybody and then uses them to inform his own. He’s still a leader and he’s still the vision, but he recognizes that maybe sometimes the best idea could come from the personal assistant (PA). So, I realized that for my DP, that I wanted somebody who actually had different ideas than how I would do something, because then I could take the best of what I bring to the table and what this other person brings. That’s why I ended up with Kate Arizmendi, who hasn’t done much feature work, but whose commercial work I thought was exceptionally beautiful. What I like about her work is that it never pushes a style so hard that I didn’t buy what she is selling, but she’s probably a little more stylized than I am inherently. I felt

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like that could be good to push me out of my comfort zone with some of the lighting and compositional choices. Also, this is a huge opportunity for her of course and I wanted somebody who was going to be 150% in and could really give it their all.

Do you feel like you’re prepping this flm with your cinematographer the way that you would prep with the director? In the past, I’ve had projects where the director got pulled in so many directions that they didn’t have time to shot list, and I was shocked. I was like how can you not fnd time to shot list your own flm?! And now I fnd myself saying, “Kate, can you just take a pass at these scenes and then we’ll discuss them.” I found myself with the shoe on the other foot. I think it’s actually really benefcial for me as a DP to have the experience directing, because I will certainly bring much more empathy and compassion to that role on future projects that I shoot.

How do you feel about directing actors and making all those decisions that you didn’t have to make before? From my experience of being on sets, I learned to create an environment that’s conducive to getting the best performance out of an actor. That part I bring with spades. I take what I’ve learned from all the different directors I’ve worked closely with, including what I’ve learned not to do, and apply it to my own directing. In terms of the nuances and subtlety of achieving something out of a performance, I’m still honing the craft. It goes back to what we discussed initially – subjectivity – in the fact that there is no right answer in storytelling or art. Until I’ve done it more, I won’t be as confdent as I have become as a DP. I know exactly what I want out of a frame or out of a camera move and can say, got it, moving on. With directing I’m still fnding my way a little bit. It seems like I’m an actor’s director, they’re really enjoying working with me and with every take they give a little something different. So, for now, the best I can do is be a gatherer and see what I can use in the edit in terms of the specifc nuance of the performance. Whereas maybe after three features, I’ll know on the second take that I’m ready to move on.

Had you done any directing prior to taking on the feature? I directed a pilot last April (Hightown), we cross-bordered it, so it was almost like a feature. But it’s different because in television you hand in a directors cut and then the producers and show runner do what they will with it. For example, the fnal music isn’t necessarily what I would have chosen. I wouldn’t

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have changed the actual edit that much, but it’s not the same as doing my own feature.

Has being a cinematographer affected your personal life? I’m lucky that I’ve managed to strike a balance between my work and home life. It’s not impossible, but there will always be sacrifces and anybody who makes it sound like it’s easy is lying to themselves. In our current situation, my wife stays home with the kids, so there’s the added pressure for me in supporting the whole family, but what we gain from that is we’ve been able to travel as a unit. My son starts school next year, so then decisions will get a lot harder. There’s no question that this career is hard on marriage and family. And vice versa. If you prioritize your career, you often spend many months away from the family. If you prioritize family, you often have to pass on incredible career opportunities. I do my best to fnd a balance but there’s always sacrifce on both ends. Sometimes, I feel that my greatest success is managing to have both family and career at all, but other times, I feel like I’m never quite fulflling my potential at either. And this is entirely normal. I envy the careers of many of my male counterparts who shoot some of the biggest flms across the globe, but I don’t envy their three divorces or that they barely know their own children. At the end of the day, movies don’t love you back which is something I have to remind myself often. But all that being said, I’m a better parent when I’m fulflled in my work; hence the need for balance.

Being a female cinematographer also has the added challenge of adding children into your life, especially if you are the one carrying the child, something male DPs have never had to consider, can you talk about that? I worked throughout both pregnancies but had to hide it the frst time around. By my second child, I had established myself enough that I decided to use my power for good. I think normalizing the fact that a lot of us do have families is necessary. I try to lead by example, so the next generation of female flmmakers won’t feel like they have to make a choice between having kids and working.

I do see that as changing, and changing with you in particular, because women of my generation did make the choice very often not to have children. Yeah, I’ve heard that. There are a number of female DPs in particular who have told me that and I think it’s heartbreaking. I put myself out there beyond

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my comfort zone because I didn’t want that to be the future. No woman should have to choose between having children and having a career.

You are a trailblazer for sure. How did it feel to be the frst woman cinematographer nominated for an Academy Award? It was incredible but it was also overwhelming. What caught me off guard is just how much signifcance was attributed to being ‘the frst.’ I guess it was partially because we were all so appalled that in ninety years no women had even been nominated before. I was also pregnant in my frst trimester. It was insane timing, all great things were happening at the same time, I was pregnant, I got the Oscar nomination and Black Panther was blowing up, but it was arguably too much for me to comprehend and handle at one time. I wish I could have spread it out. In some ways, I can appreciate it more now with some perspective than in the moment, because I was just too inundated.

It must have been like when you’re in the moment you want to feel it, but it’s such an out of body experience that it’s hard to actually absorb it, I would imagine. I’m sure it’s going to happen to you again, maybe you’ll be better prepared next time around. Oh thanks. I don’t know about it happening again, unless you’re Deakins and have your pick of the projects, it’s a little like lightening striking twice. There are so many great DPs who still haven’t been nominated because there just aren’t enough great projects to go around.

Is there any advice you would give cinematographers coming up today, wanting to be where you are, in particular women? I think your two greatest assets above any other tool is your ability to choose and to know your own self-worth. With regard to choices, stay true to your own ambitions. If you want to shoot dramas, don’t get tempted by a studio comedy just because it pays well. It will only lead to more comedies. Moreover, choose your projects carefully. In the same way that 90% of directing is casting, 90% of cinematography is selecting a project that has the potential to be strong and unique and meaningful in some way. You can do great work on a terrible script and it’s never going to exceed the narrative itself. Self-worth comes down to confdence. If you lead from a place of conviction, people will respect and follow you to the ends of the world. Make no mistake – conviction does not mean voice or anger. If anything, I always try

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to be a team player, be rational, reasonable and respectful to both my crew and to my director. But be passionate because you feel your choices confdently.

It is a different time and we’re all a product of our time and we have to face what that is. I think you’re in a great place, trailblazing for future generations of female cinematographers. You have to be aware that you are defnitely being a positive role model. Do you think that the door for women cinematographers and directors is open now, in a way that it wasn’t before? Absolutely! I am very proud of helping to pry that door open and now that it is open, I encourage everyone to charge through the door. We need stories by and about people of every gender and race. We need the world in front of and behind the lens to more closely resemble the world at large.

Do you think that door is open only for younger women? No, but I do think it’s an ageist industry and that’s probably one of the last hurdles we’re going to have to overcome. Especially in cinematography, people can’t picture their grandma holding a camera and that’s what they think we do specifcally as cinematographers. I can imagine it’s much harder as you get older to get a job, especially for women. Here we are having this movement and the door is wide open, but if you’re already 55, is it too late? It shouldn’t be! But conversely, look at Maryse, Ellen, Nancy, Sandi, the women who have managed to make it work for decades, they are the real trailblazers. A successful career depends on the right balance of skill, luck and personality. You need good fortune to get your foot in the door and you need the skill to not get kicked back out. There are a million people out there who are skilled technicians but it’s not enough just to be knowledgeable. You tell stories through emotion, not just technical prowess. You also have to be that person somebody wants to spend time with, break bread with or go to war with. In a good collaboration, you form a bond that is unbreakable, irreplaceable.

You have had a couple of collaborations with the same director, Ryan Coogler. Ryan and I shot Fruitvale and then we were going to do Creed (photographed by Maryse Alberti), but I was pregnant and due right in the middle of the shoot. At the time I thought not shooting Creed would be the death knell to my career but fortunately, he called me back for Black Panther and fought passionately for me despite my lack of studio or video effects (VFX) experience. Rick (Famuyiwa) and I did Dope and then Confrmation together. Rick also had to push for my approval even though it was still a relatively small flm. I think

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I had three separate meetings at HBO to convince them I’d be capable. It was crazy. It was also a different time. Thankfully, things are changing. Almost every director I’ve shot for has asked me to shoot their next flm. I haven’t always been able to do it, or wanted to, but the meaningful part is getting asked back to the table, you know?

Note 1 The ASA (American Standards Association) scale is an arbitrary rating of flm speed; that is, the sensitivity of the flm to light. If everything else is kept constant, the required exposure time is inversely proportional to the ASA rating.

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When Rodrigo was only ten years old, he began making Super 8mm movies with his brother for Halloween parties, bringing their clay monsters to life. This inspired his attraction to the camera, and he became interested in still photography. While working as an assistant in a photography studio, he became aware of the use of light and composition. After working as a camera apprentice on a feature flm, he knew he wanted to be a flmmaker and enrolled in Centro de Capacitacion Cinematografca, a flm school in Mexico City. When he was 22, he was asked to be director of photography (DP) on his frst TV commercial, and soon afterwards an ultra-low budget feature flm. He was on his way to becoming one of the most sought-after cinematographers working today. Rodrigo was already an award-winning cinematographer in Mexico shooting commercials and feature flms before coming to Los Angeles. His frst Hollywood feature was Original Sin (2001) with Michael Cristofer. He photographed Frida (2002) for Julie Taymor, beautifully capturing the tragic life of the artist with light and color. He created a much grittier look for Curtis Hansen’s 8 Mile (2002), and he worked with Spike Lee on 25th Hour (2002). His collaboration with Alejandro González Iñárritu began in Mexico where their work on Amorres Perros (2000) earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. They continued their collaboration with 21 Grams (2003), Babel (2006) and Biutiful (2010). Rodrigo began his work with Oliver Stone on the documentary Comendante (2003) capturing the director’s meeting with Castro. He continued working with Stone on the epic Alexander (2004) and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010). His collaboration with Ang Lee on the beautifully understated Brokeback Mountain (2005) earned Rodrigo his frst Academy Award Nomination for Best Cinematography. He also photographed the noirish Lust, Caution with Ang Lee (2007). Rodrigo has continued to work with an eclectic and powerful group of award-winning directors; such collaborations include Broken Embraces with Pedro Almodovar, State of Play with Kevin MacDonald, Water for Elephants with Francis Lawrence, We Bought a Zoo with Cameron Crowe, Argo with Ben

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Affeck, The Homesman with Tommy Lee Jones and A Midsummer Nights Dream & The Glorias with Julie Taymor. He has photographed music videos for Taylor Swift, Travis Scott and Jay-Z, and worked in television creating the look on the pilots for Vinyl and Y: The last Man. But he has found a new collaborator in Martin Scorsese beginning with The Wolf of Wall Street and continuing with the pilot for Vinyl. His work on Silence and The Irishman resulted in two more Academy Award Nominations for Best Cinematography. Their collaboration will continue with Killers of the Flower Moon (2021). Rodrigo is at the top of his game photographing one impressive flm after another. He is a very kind and generous man who approaches his work with an artist’s vision and an open mind to collaboration. Despite his demanding career, he remains a devoted husband and father of two daughters.

What is your process of preparing for a flm? I frst read the script and ideas are generated, but I try not to fall in love with my ideas, just get some basic concepts. I listen to what the director has to say and maybe talk about some of the concepts I had on my frst read. Once I understand the approach the director is trying to take, I go to my photography books for visual references to come up with ideas that I can present to the director. Maybe a certain scene could have a certain type of framing or grain structure or color and I present these ideas so we can ping pong thoughts back and forth, discard some, keep some and that will evolve during preproduction. For me, that’s a very enjoyable process. Then the production designer’s research will come into play, so it’s a three-part collaboration. I try to be involved in all of it with the director and production designer. Prep is like going to flm school all over again, I try to keep an open mind and test everything that I am imagining. Then I present these ideas to the director and we narrow it down to what will be the movie. I also enjoy working with a director on the shot listing, although that doesn’t always happen.

What if a director comes to you with the storyboards all prepared and says, “I want it like that”? That happened to me only once on a movie in Mexico and I actually tried to quit. Even while scouting locations, any proposal I had about camera placement or framing would immediately be shot down because everything had to be exactly how the director planned it on the storyboard. I said, “what do you want me for?” Then he said, you can do whatever you like with lighting, but this is what I want with camera angles and framing. So, I told myself I would learn to work like this, and it was a good experience for me in the end. I try not to set myself into a defnite way of working because every director is different, so I try to be fexible and work in different ways. That movie

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many years ago helped me to work with Ang (Lee). He doesn’t do shot lists or pre-storyboarding, it comes up on set after rehearsal, he’ll stand there and contemplate. Then he will ask for the director’s fnder with a specifc lens and he sets the angle and framing. For me, that is very different than what I had done with other directors, so it wasn’t easy for me when we started Brokeback Mountain, but I got used to it. Ang has very good taste in terms of composition, and the focal lengths, so what he chooses works well for each shot. Most of the time the differences between what he selects and what I would have, has to do with camera height. Ang always wants the camera to be the eye level of the actor, no matter what. I fnd that’s not always the best angle. Sometimes I would have to talk him into the slightest adjustment. I certainly do fnd Ang’s approach very much organic with the material, the choices have to do with the characters and the story, and they are very subjective. With Alejandro (Iñárritu), we shot list together and sometimes I’ll do some storyboarding, other times we hire storyboard artists, but we sit down in preproduction. I really like the process, even if we don’t use it during production, because it gets us talking very specifcally about the scene. Of course, we use our intuition when we are shot listing, but it really provides a sense of the way each scene is covered. Alejandro has a really good sense of editing and sound, so in storyboarding we also talk about how it’s going to cut together. We shot list as if we are editing, we even make sounds, or hum fake musical cues, so it’s a very enjoyable process. Then on the set, we have a blueprint of the flm, whether we chose to use it or not.

What would the frst meeting for a potential project be like with a director? One of my frst big meetings was with Michael Cristofer for Original Sin. I really wanted to do a period movie and something totally different then Amores Perros, but I was nervous because no one knew me at the time. I try not to worry if I’m going to get the job or not, I just go in and say what I think about the script. If there are things that are not working for me, I’ll say it, even at the risk of not getting the job. It’s a way of showing that I’m honest about my feelings and I won’t shy away from my opinion. But I am not a person who will be stubborn, I just point out what I think. My second big interview was with Oliver Stone, for Beyond Borders, which in the end, he did not direct, but we did some prep work, shooting some documentary footage in Africa. I expected an intimidating interview. I found out about it the same day I went in, so I didn’t have a chance to get nervous. The chemistry was great. I felt very comfortable with him, I thought he was going to tear me apart, but he didn’t, we watched some clips from Amores Perros, and he told me about his project. I was fortunate to have good interviews like that early in my career. Curtis Hanson was interesting because he interviewed me four times before he gave me the job. He was very deliberate about the process and he wanted to

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make sure I was the right person for the project. He had seen a lot of my early Mexican movies, so he was familiar with my work before Amores Perros. I was working on a whole different style then, reacting to the aesthetics of the movies of the 70s. What I was doing was more stylized with more beauty lighting and Curtis did not want that for 8 mile and kept asking if I would fall back into that. I assured him that I didn’t do that in Amores Perros because it would not have been appropriate for that flm, and that it would not be right for 8 Mile either. Eventually, he agreed to hire me. He just wanted to be sure the look would be very naturalistic and gritty.

What attributes do you like in a director? For me, the most important thing is passion. A director who is not passionate about his or her project turns me off. That means sometimes I work with directors who will really challenge me and the crew, we might work long hours, and it’s tough, but I much prefer that to someone who just wants to get it done and go home.

What kind of visual references have you used in communication with a director or has a director used with you? Curtis said he wanted 8 Mile to look like “weeds growing out of a sidewalk” and a big part of the color palette came from that description. I also drew inspiration from Diego Rivera’s mural about auto industry workers at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.The colors he used infuenced the lighting of the flm, with the clash of cyan, blue and amber.With Alexander, I presented Oliver with a set of scanned photographs and paintings with references of color, composition, grain and lighting. I referenced photos by Sebasteao Salgado and paintings from Rembrandt and Caravaggio. Alejandro knew my past work and he was afraid I wouldn’t want to do a gritty dirty movie. I read the script for Amoros Perros and came in to our frst meeting to talk about the visuals with a book from Nan Goldin photographs that I had recently discovered.Alejandro had the same book with him as a reference and he said you may not like this, but here are some references for the movie, and I pulled out the same book, so our starting point was the same. For Silence, I thought about the images that might shape a priest’s view of the world at that time, and it would have been art, mainly religious Baroque paintings. So, for some of my lighting and compositions for the frst two-thirds of the movie, I drew inspiration from paintings by José de Ribera, Diego Velázquez, Georges de La Tour and Francisco de Zurbarán. Later, as Japanese culture seeps into the priests’ consciousness, I used Japanese folding screens from that era as visual inspiration; the overall color shifts into a more golden hue that is present in most screens from the Edo period. The novel, which Marty referenced frequently, emphasizes how the priests experience the heat, the smells, the tactile

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qualities of this foreign place, and we wanted the viewer to feel that, too. Because the priests are in hiding, darkness is important to the story. We saw Ugetsu, a Japanese flm from the 1950s as reference for some night boat scenes. The images he focused on had a magical ethereal quality that he wanted us to capture for the boat trips from Tomogi Village to Goto island at night. I tried to mix the tone of realistic lighting with slightly surreal fog effects to bridge the sensibilities of 1950s Japanese cinema to our reality-based flm. Another flm we saw was Gate of Hell, directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa in 1953. He loved the use of color on this movie, as well as the pace and use of camera. For The Irishman, we looked at a variety of archive stills and photographers from the different periods, including Chauncey Hare, Gary Winogrand, Elliot Erwitt and Saul Leiter, some of whom used Kodak Kodachrome and Ektachrome stocks. I researched old still photography emulsions that were popular during those times, and we decided to emulate the look and color reproduction of Kodachrome for our scenes in the 1950s and Kodak Ektachrome for the 1960s. I also use still photography as inspiration for lighting and composition. These photographers capture instants in real life that have an emotional impact. I try to create images in movement that have the same feeling of captured reality as seen from the subjective perspective of our characters.

Do you expect or like a director to know specifc focal lengths and understand depth of feld? It helps when they understand technical aspects, but it is not essential. When I frst worked with Julie Taymor, she had already done Titus and she had a certain language of flm, but she wasn’t very technically savvy. But in this case, it helped because she would come up with ideas that weren’t constrained by technical limitations. Then I had to fgure out technically how to achieve her idea. I tried not to limit her by saying something would be really diffcult because of this and that. I think in that case it was to our advantage that she didn’t think about the limitations. Ang Lee, on the other hand, is very technically profcient. Most directors do understand focal length, but for Ang the subtle difference between a 32mm and a 28mm is a big deal, or one flter versus another, so he’s very aware of the slight differences. If I show him a comparison between one flm stock and another, he will see the differences; other directors may not. Such is the case with Oliver Stone, he is not about subtlety, when you propose something it has to be bold and he has to notice it. I enjoy both ways, it’s just a matter of connecting with a director on a deeper level. Ang Lee has his specifc lens choices, usually he will do a master shot with a 27mm, a 25mm is too wide angle, medium shots will be 50mm, close ups 75mm, I tried to propose in certain parts of the story going with long focal lengths, as if spying the characters, and he liked the idea, but when we were

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shooting those scenes, he would select the same lenses that he usually prefers, that’s just his way of working. In Amores Perros, we used different focal lengths to differentiate them stylistically. For example, for the story of “Chivo,” the gun for hire with all the dogs, we used longer lenses because we wanted to convey a sense of spying since he stalks the people he was hired to kill.Another story was more kinetic, it was all handheld with wider lenses. On Babel, for example, we used shallow depth of feld to represent the perception of the deaf, mute character in Japan.To achieve this, we used anamorphic lenses for that story only.

Do you prefer working with primes or zooms? I prefer primes because I like that once we fnd the frame, then that’s what we’re doing. With zooms, sometimes the director may want to zoom in for tighter coverage and I prefer to move the camera closer. Sure, it will be faster (to zoom) but then all the coverage will be with a long lens, which could be fne if that’s what you are going for, but I generally prefer to be closer with the camera. The feeling of intimacy is very different with a 100mm or a 50mm or 40mm close to the actors, it really feels like you are with them, invading their space with the camera a little bit. For the audience it’s the difference between being voyeuristic and safe, looking at something from a distance or being right there with the actor. That’s why primes work better, it forces us to move in for coverage. But I like to work in different styles. If the director has a different way of working, I’ll go with it.

Do you ever feel a connection to the actors when you are operating the camera? Absolutely. I think the main reason I operate, when I can, is to feel the performance. I do get involved with them when I am looking through the camera, and the actors are feeling these emotions, I will get emotional too, several times I have cried on camera. It really is amazing, you get the front seat of the best performances of the best actors in the world, and you are right there with the best seat in the house, so it’s really special.

What are your thoughts on digital technology? State of Play was interesting because it was the frst time that I mixed flm negative for some scenes, and digital capture for others. I was going for the difference of looks between the world of printed news (flm negative) and politicians on TV (digital), but frankly, in the end it wasn’t as noticeable as I wanted. Because when we went to a print, you get the grain of the print on everything, and even trained eyes can’t always tell the difference. Which I thought was startling because we went from anamorphic lenses handheld to static cameras with spherical lenses with the Genesis. When I was doing the

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DI, it was more noticeable because on digital projection you can see it more than the flm print. For The Wolf of Wall Street, the Alexa was used for low light situations: night exteriors in particular and for some shutter effects I used for certain “drugged out” scenes (shooting at 12fps, with a 360 degree shutter for smeared images). We also used it (per Rob Legato’s request) for green screen shots. Everything else was on flm (perhaps 85% of the movie). When I tested digital vs. flm, Marty responded to the look of flm, so we chose to shoot everything we could on flm negative. For Silence, from the beginning, Marty and I agreed we’d shoot on flm. Anamorphic flm negative has a color depth that no digital camera has of yet been able to reproduce and Silence takes place in the natural world, so color nuance was important. The novel, which Marty referenced frequently, emphasizes how the priests experience the heat, the smells, the tactile qualities of this foreign place, and we wanted the viewer to feel that, too. Because the priests hiding in darkness is important to the story, we used the Alexa Studio XT for digital capture on the night and dusk scenes, including candlelit interiors, night exteriors and dusk scenes. I pushed the exposure by one stop on the Alexa to be able to shoot by candlelight and also for the noise introduced, which helped blend with the rest of the movie shot on flm negative. I did the same thing on The Homesman with Tommy Lee Jones. What I like about flm is that each flm stock has a personality. It’s alchemy: there are all these elements that are organic, chemicals, silver, these physical elements that you put together and put through a developer and something random comes up that has personality. With digital you have to build in the personality, which can be interesting and it’s a creative process as well, but you have to design it almost mathematically. On flm, I enjoy discovering what the material has hidden in its bowels when you bend it and play with it. It’s like working with a clay sculpture, you’ve got dirt and texture as opposed to say plasticine or something like that. I like that dirt. For me that is one of the challenges of digital capture: how to discover and fnd the look, rather than coming into it with a preconceived design. Part of my approach for digital has been the creation of look up tables (LUTs) that give me results I might not have expected. For example, for The Irishman we created emulations for Kodachrome and Ektachrome still photography, as well as ENR printing, to separate the passing decades in the story. We based these LUTs on deep research, allowing the inherent characteristics of each LUT to alter the color reproduction.

You have worked in quite a selection of genres, what drew you to Passengers? I’ve always loved science fction. As a teenager, I read Clarke, Bradbury and Asimov and when I started making my little Super 8 movies, most of them were science fction, complete with visual effects! But when I started out

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professionally, there were no science-fction projects being made in Mexico, so Passengers was a great opportunity to fnally work in that genre. Also, I liked Morten’s last movie, The Imitation Game, very much, and we had a great conversation when he called me in Taiwan to discuss this project. He said he had noticed throughout my movies that I was able to get very intimate with the actors with my camerawork, and he wanted that for Passengers. Even though it has the scope of outer space, it’s basically an intimate story about these two people – their faces are the essence of the story. He also wanted the movie to feel naturalistic in a way; there are fantastic and futuristic elements, but he wanted to ground them in a naturalistic style.

What format did you use for Passengers? The spaceship in Passengers is a luxury vessel designed for comfort. I thought that the air had to feel clean and the images needed to be pristine which led me to digital. What we liked about the Alexa 65 was that the sensor delivers a very high resolution and when you use it with the Primo 70s, which are T2, you can get shallow depth of feld even with wide-angle lenses due to the size of the sensor. It’s not a harsh digital image; there’s a certain innate softness to it with these lenses. I was very fortunate to have [frst assistant camera (AC)] Zoran Veselic because pulling focus with the Alexa 65, especially at T2.8 or T2, is quite a feat. Zoran made the decision to use the camera easy for me. He also worked with me on Silence.

Working on Silence was a departure from other flms you had previously done with Marty, and this was a passion project for him, what was the experience like? It was an incredible privilege to have the opportunity to collaborate with Scorsese and all the creative team of Silence to bring to the screen a story that he had wanted to do for so many years. I felt extremely honored when he invited me to shoot this flm for him. His passion was contagious, and I feel that he brought out the best of all of us that worked on the flm. He had a powerful vision for the movie, and yet he was always open to the input from his creative team. It was a thrilling and unforgettable experience.

Was Silence a challenging project to photograph? Silence presented a huge variety of challenging situations. Managing the logistics of the hard to get to locations, and the visual continuity with the sudden changes in weather patterns was very tricky. I would say our toughest location was the caves where the priests hide when they frst arrive in Japan. These caves also were the site that Scorsese picked to stage a crucifxion scene of three villagers at a spot where the violent waves met the rocks. The script called for the villagers to be engulfed by the waves

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for many days as a horrible torture that would lead to their death. The location was just too dangerous to actually put the actors or stunt people in the waves, and the government would not allow us to drill into the rock to place the crosses anyway. So, we decided to shoot on the real location everything in “low tide” with the crosses set on the rocks in front of the breaking waves, but shoot the “high tide” parts in the water tank that Ang Lee built for Life of Pi in Taiwan. This way we could see our actors being raised to the crosses on the actual location, but then being engulfed by the violent waves in the controlled environment of the water tank. Still it was incredibly diffcult for the actors, and we were all in awe of their brave performance under those circumstances. Another big challenge that the script presented was lighting the many night exterior scenes, including moonlit boat trips in the ocean from one island to another. Some of the locations had no access for the heavy lighting equipment necessary to create moonlight, so I used a combination of different techniques, including day for night, dusk for night and a variety of lighting rigs to simulate moonlight on the night for night scenes.

Going back a few years, tell me about Water for Elephants. What drew you to want to shoot that flm? I love the romantic period piece quality that you captured. What I liked about the script was that it felt like an old classical Hollywood movie, which is something I hadn’t done. It was a very romantic story set in a world that is unknown to most people, the circus. It intrigued me from a visual standpoint, to fgure out how to photograph a love story in a circus during the Depression with all the animals, it just seemed fascinating. Whenever I fnish shooting a movie, I try to do something radically different than what I had just done, which was the case going from Wall Street to a circus movie. It was a whole new world for me. Water for Elephants takes place in the 1930s, so there are really two eras, present day and the 1930s. The whole movie is a fashback of a 93-year-old man (played by Hal Holbrook) telling the story of his life in the circus. The story begins with him as an old man who is accidently left behind at the circus in the present day by the nursing home and he is in the circus manager’s offce and starts telling his story as he is looking at all the old pictures. The manager gets very interested in what the old man is saying, and it goes back into the 1930s.

How did you visually separate the two eras? We decided to shoot the movie for widescreen, 2:39 aspect ratio. For the scenes set in the past, we used anamorphic lenses, and for the present, we used spherical lenses. To me spherical lenses feel more immediate, more real in a way. I guess that has to do with the slight distortion of anamorphic lenses, particularly for the background because it goes so soft and the quality of the soft focus is different than on spherical lenses. I describe it as more liquid. Out of focus specular highlights, or bokeh, look more like a vertical oval with

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anamorphic lenses, whereas with a spherical lens they will look round, or like the shape of the iris. To me anamorphic feels more like a period piece because of the nostalgia of classic cinema. I also used a different flm stock for the present: 5260 500T Vision 2. It’s a little bit grainier than the newer Vision 3 stock, 5219 500T, which I used for scenes set in the past. In the present day, you have a little more grain and a different feel with cooler lighting. In the thirties, the lighting sources were either candles or low wattage light bulbs, especially on the train there were all these low wattage bulbs, so it’s pretty warm overall in terms of light sources. Then the train itself was reddish, so a lot of the elements felt warm. In the present-day circus, the blue plastic of the tent feels radically different than the warm canvas of the old-time tent. Most of the action happens just outside the circus tent that is lit by the metal halide parking lot lights, which give off a cyan hue.The ticket booth interior was lit with greenish fuorescents, and the offce interior scene was lit by cool fuorescent overhead light. There is a whole different feel to the color with the nostalgia of the past being warmer and the present cooler, but we didn’t play it with an overall coloration like a sepia past. We wanted to feel that the light sources naturally created the different feel. In the past, it’s oil lamps and dim light bulbs, and in the present it’s more fuorescent and industrial. I didn’t want to have an obvious camera fltration with a blueish present and amber past. So, the intention was that the light sources would create the color difference naturally.

Did you generally do much adjustment in the DI? My philosophy in general is to shoot a movie as if there was no DI process and we were fnishing it photochemically. I always test the flm stocks, lighting contrast, grain, color saturation, all the characteristics of the negative. I carefully choose the flm stock to use for a specifc scene or series of scenes. If it is digital capture, I create LUTs in preproduction and stick with them as if they were my flm stocks. For the digital intermediate, I basically approach it with points of color and density, as if it were photochemical. The DI also gives me the added fexibility if I want to adjust the contrast or saturation, which was not possible with a photochemical fnish. I appreciate that opportunity to use masks and mattes. Sometimes I shade a certain area which is what still photographers have been doing forever. Mostly, I just keep the look of the LUT or the camera negative and color grade for skin tone and continuity.

How was it working on Biutiful with Alejandro Iñárritu? You have worked a lot with color palette and with visual references on your previous collaborations; was it the same with this flm? In this flm, it is one linear story that was all handheld because Alejandro really likes a looseness and freedom with the camera. For the color palette,

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Alejandro envisioned the world of Uxbal to be sort of amber. The production design was created with this in mind, although the child’s room was blue, and the kitchen was white with fuorescent greenish light. The character’s ex-wife is bipolar, and she is very famboyant, so the production design and wardrobe of her world was pinks and purples, even in her hair. In terms of lighting, I didn’t really use any color to enhance that. The world of the guys who make the black-market merchandise in the sweat shops is fuorescent with some red highlights. But for the most part, it’s cyan. The warehouse where they sleep and the sweatshop were uncorrected fuorescent. The world of the immigrants who actually sell the merchandise is much more colorful, which is represented in the costumes and the production design. In terms of light, I mixed color temperatures much more than the other sequences; I used deeper hues of fuorescents but also mixed warm tungsten sources. I asked the production designer Brigitte Broch to cover the back patio with an overhead translucent red plastic. There is a scene where Uxbal goes outside in daylight, but the light is red because of the plastic tarp. In this movie, I think we were a little bolder in color than others we had done together, Amores Perros, Babel, 21 Grams were all relatively muted. During preproduction on Biutiful, we had tested and liked Kodak 5279 which gave us the grain and contrast that we were looking for, but then it turned out that there wasn’t enough of the stock for us to do the movie with. One week before we were going to start flming, Kodak told us there was this new stock to replace 5279 called 5260. I tested it and it was very similar to the 79 except that it had less grain. Pushing the flm in the lab gave it more grain, which is what Alejandro wanted, but it also created more contrast and more saturation. I really liked the way that looked although high color saturation wasn’t in our original intention. But when we started seeing dailies, I liked how the color saturation created a very specifc personality for the scenes with all the costumes. I also used 5219 for some of the night interiors. I found that the 5260 pushed one stop rendered black a tiny bit blue and lifted, and the 5219 handled the blacks better despite having less grain for some of the night scenes.

Was Biutiful shot in the 1:85 format? We actually shift aspect ratios, most of the flm is 1:85. There is a small sequence in the beginning of the movie that is 2:40 and then towards the end the last act is 2:40 again. The reason for that is during our discussions, Alejandro wanted the character to feel in the beginning of the movie that he wants to control everything, but in actuality his life is spiraling out of control. We felt that the 1:85 aspect ratio was a way to “box him in.” We flmed everything as real and gritty as it is happening, as with all of Alejandro’s movies, but some things that are happening are supernatural and slightly off. As the movie progresses, he accepts his death, so the compositions loosen up. We were originally going to show this transition with lenses, going from telephoto to wider focal lengths,

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but in the practical locations we were shooting in, we couldn’t always use long lenses. I proposed changing the aspect ratio instead from a tighter 1:85 to a loose 2:40. We discovered that Bad Education had done that, so we got a print and screened it. You don’t really notice it, it’s more of a feeling. For the most part, I used spherical lenses and we switch to anamorphic lenses even before the aspect ratio actually changes.

So, you were shooting in 1:85 with the anamorphic lenses? Most of the movie is spherical at 1:85, then, at a certain point part of the story, we switch to anamorphic lenses, but cropping the sides to maintain a 1:85 aspect ratio. Then, we change the aspect ratio to 2:39 with anamorphic lenses. In preproduction, I tested all the lenses from the Master Primes, Ultra Primes, Cookes, old Cookes, Panavision Primos and the MKII Zeiss in all types of situations with fares and no fares. Alejandro really responded to the MKIIs because they were a little harsher and they felt a little dirtier and the fares were more pronounced than the ultra-super speeds. So, we chose those lenses for the spherical section. The anamorphic section was shot with Panavision G-Series lenses, except for the scene at the nightclub, and the drunk scene after it, for which I used the Panavision C-Series fare lenses. It’s fun with Alejandro because I do get long preps and I get to test many ideas, so I flmed a lot of tests for that movie. There was a fun scene in Biutiful where we did this really bizarre club scene that was kind of hallucinatory. The colors I used were actually inspired from a visual reference from a photography book by Jonas Bendiksen called Satellites. There is a photograph of an old Soviet foundry lit with green mercury vapor in contrast with the orange molten steel. I used those colors to light most of the club, with green and orange lights playing against each other. I’d say that this book was a big reference for the look of the whole movie. A section of the club I lit with black ultraviolet light for Uxbal’s entrance. What happens when you shoot with ultraviolet light without a flter is that it becomes slightly out of focus, so when he comes in, it looks hazy, which is the way he feels. I used a special set of C-Series anamorphic lenses that create a really strong fare. Lights in frame create big horizontal streak and they were also kind of milky and washed out. After the club scene, he goes back to his house and he is drunk and depressed. I wanted to convey that feeling of when you turn on a light that it seems too bright, so I overexposed all the lights by three or four stops and used these lenses again so the overhead light was too bright and uncomfortable. So, that sequence is blown out and low contrast, with fares. It’s the kind of thing I get to do with Alejandro and on that movie, I allowed myself more play because of the supernatural elements to it. Subtle little things that are just a bit off, and as Uxbal gets sicker, it happens a bit more."

How long was the prep period that you had? It was actually shorter than on other movies that I have done with Alejandro, it was fve weeks and that was tight because it had to be that way due to our

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schedules. The day I fnished La Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces) with Pedro Almadovar, I got on a train and went to Barcelona and started prep with Alejandro. On top of the fve weeks, I also took three weekends when I was still shooting Broken Embraces and went to Barcelona to scout with Alejandro, I did that back and forth for a while. Because they were both directors that expected 120% from me, so it was very challenging.

Tell me about working with Pedro Almadovar. Pedro told me he wanted to work with me because of 8 Mile, which is not really a Pedro Almadovar-style movie. I would have thought maybe Frida or something like that. But he said this story was about a blind man who used to be a flm director but became a writer. So, he wanted to represent his world darker, he doesn’t need lights, he can have his curtains closed. The scenes he said he liked from 8 Mile are in the club where you could see the audience, but it was pretty dark. I was still shooting State of Play when I got the call from Pedro. I read the script in a state of sickness, I had the fu, it was really horrible, I was in bed and I couldn’t move but they really needed me to answer whether I was going to do the movie. I read it laying sick in bed, and I couldn’t tell if I was liking it or not, but then it was Pedro and I really wanted to work with him, it sounded interesting, so I said sure I’ll do it! I read it again afterwards, and thankfully then I liked the script quite a bit! There was one scene that really attracted me to wanting to do the movie and it ended up being cut out. When I read a script, there’s always a scene or two that seems kind of scary to me, and this particular scene took place in a restaurant where there was no light at all. The blind man takes his producer/ partner and her son to a restaurant so they can share the experience of not being able to see. As I read the script, I wondered how I was going to shoot this with absolutely no light. You have to see the actors and the performance because it was a pretty intense emotional scene. So, I started testing the heat seeking cameras and night vision, but Pedro didn’t like that look because it was too green and grainy, too military and it didn’t ft the movie. I found out that on the Panavision Genesis camera, I could remove the internal infrared flter. This flter is necessary for the chip not to register infrared light because it would overwhelm the sensor. If you take it off the camera, it will be able to capture infrared light. So, I thought that if we remove the infrared flter, I could light the scene with infrared light only, which is invisible to the human eye, but the camera would be able to “see” while the actors would not be able to see a thing. We used a couple of infrared LED lights that I found and that were like little brick panels. For the rest of the restaurant, I lit with security infrared lighting. Through the viewfnder and the monitors, you could see perfectly in black and white, but the set we built on a stage was pitch black. The actors were literally feeling their way around in the dark. I put the infrared lights on top and underneath the lens so they would directly “light” into their wide-open pupils, refecting off the retina. I wanted to represent that feeling

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of total darkness, which was pretty effective, but in the end, Pedro decided he didn’t need that scene. I wonder if that scene exists anywhere. Maybe in the DVD extra features?

That would be cool to see. It’s amazing how you fgured that out. That was one of my main focuses in the movie and it was cut out. The movie is very layered, and it was interesting to fgure out how to represent all of these different realities. Again, there was a format change, from anamorphic with the G-series lenses, and Kodak 5219 negative. But there was also the movie within the movie, which is a homage to Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown that we flmed on spherical lenses at 1:85, so when that section comes up, it’s a different aspect ratio. I used the Fuji Vivid 160 ASA for the movie within the movie because I wanted it to have high color saturation because that is how I remember that flm. I also used it for a section where the actors escape to an island with volcanic black rock all over the place. I wanted to be extra colorful because it’s really about these characters’ dreams and it’s a bit of a fantasy for them. Whereas for reality, especially the present, we wanted to represent it normally, so for that I used the 5219. I used 250 Daylight for day scenes. I tested all the Fuji and Kodak stocks, and we did print on the Vision Premiere because Pedro loves its color saturation. He told me that one of the reasons he hired me is that being Mexican I wouldn’t be shy about color and we are defnitely not shy about color in this movie.

Those are all amazing and challenges that are unique to each flm. On Wall Street 2, with Oliver Stone, did you screen the earlier version to match the look, or were you going for something completely different? I certainly saw the original movie before prep when Oliver told me about this project. But I didn’t emulate the look of the flm. I just decided to approach it not as a sequel but as a movie on its own. There are a lot of differences between the two flms for sure. Probably the main difference is technology. I went to the trading foors and talked to the people and it’s all about their computers and the speed at which the transactions are made which is so much faster than in the past, so a phone call may take too much time. They have these programmers who will create software that will do automatic transactions. So, it seemed to me that the brains of these guys were really numbers, fgures and graphics running through their heads. Even the way we photographed the city itself, we used the grid of the city and the buildings. I came up with this idea of simply shooting the actors through a glass that was refecting off of the monitor, like a poor version of double exposure. I started out shooting through glass refecting off the monitor, then also projecting with a separate video projector onto the faces of the traders graphics and numbers and

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having more computers behind them. You see them working as if you are inside of the computer as if that is their brains working. My intention was to use that for just one particular moment when Jake’s character learns that his stock is tumbling and he is about to lose all this money, so I created it really for that moment, but Oliver really liked it, so we used it a lot. That was all done in camera. The visual effects team (Crazy Horse VFX) took that concept even further for these montages that were called rumor mills, the way rumors spread through cell phones and computers instantly. The rumor mill montages were grids of frames of people texting, second unit shot a lot of that footage, so visual effects put it all together with more graphics and they put these images in cityscapes and moved it around. This is very different from the frst Wall Street flm. I don’t know if it was still remnants of my just working with Pedro, but on Wall Street 2, I went further with color than in the past. I came up with this idea because in the research there was this trader who said something that just struck me, he said, “Oh yeah and then we talk to each other and I tell them I have color” and I said what does that mean? He said information, so “color” means information. Then I thought, so what are the colors of Wall Street? Red and green because the numbers are red or green depending on whether the stock is going up or down, so the most obvious is a scene where there is a dinner at the Met, I had to come up with a way to show how fancy it was, so we built tables with lighting inside of them so each table was glowing. So, there was this whole room of glowing tables. The walls I lit with LED RGB lights where you can mix the three colors and come up with whatever color you want and through a computer you can dissolve one color into the other. I wanted the light to transition as the scene becomes more intense. I began lighting the walls a pleasant magenta and for the fnal scenes, I lit the walls a deep red. In the scene where Gordon Gekkos’s daughter is upset and he follows her up the steps to the Met (and we shot at the real Metropolitan Museum for this scene), I lit the building itself with LED RGB lights deep green, so it’s a startling combination of the red carpet and the green walls, and it was also the color of money. The scene was everything that Wall Street represents; the money and greed that she hates is surrounding them with the color of money and stocks numbers. I used LED a lot in the flm, for the nightclub scene and a night exterior scene which I lit with blue and green screen bulbs for a long walk and talk throughout the meat packing district. There were a lot of different moods and lighting, so I used a lot of different colors. I also used a gel for some sodium vapor type of lights that were a little more golden to immerse them in this world of color that represented money.

It’s amazing that a little key word “color” really got your mind going. That moment was crucial in designing the look for this flm because before that, I didn’t really know how to approach it. The one thing that was clear to

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me right after reading the script was that I wanted it to be very sharp. I imagined the traders to be these sharp-dressed guys on top of their game. A pristine hard-edged look, so I used Panavision cameras and Master Prime lenses, which are really sharp. I printed on Fuji high contrast print stock, and we did several negatives so that all the prints are from the original negative, all of that so we could get the flm as sharp as possible.

What aspect ratio did you shoot for that flm? Super 35mm, 2:35. I mix it up, sometimes I feel it’s more appropriate to achieve 2:35 with anamorphic if I’m going for that soft “liquid bokeh” background effect. But in this case, we wanted hard sharp edges. Anamorphic lenses tend to be a little softer and the Master Primes are much sharper.

How was it working with Oliver again, you hadn’t worked with him since Alexander right? Working with Oliver is always exciting and shooting Alexander was a great experience. Since we know each other very well there is a level of trust that works well for both of us. He allowed me creative freedom, and we designed the shot lists together. He would ask me to do a shot list the day before, so in the morning I would present to him the ideas I had for the scene. He’d come with his own ideas and we’d end up with a hybrid of what he had in mind, plus some of what I was proposing. It’s a complex story, and it was fun to have such a close creative collaboration. What is characteristic in working with Oliver is that you never really know exactly what’s going to happen. He thrives on a little bit of chaos, which is scary, but sometimes can be great. There are some scenes that I’m not entirely happy with the photography because we had to shoot so quickly. Oliver will rehearse with the actors alone for an hour or however long it takes, and meanwhile I am suffering because I’m not seeing what’s happening. Then we all come in and he’ll show us the rehearsal, and only then will we fgure out how to shoot it, but by this time it’s getting late and now I have to light it. Oliver tends to block the actors to be very mobile, he gets bored easily, so he doesn’t like them just sitting. He’ll have them moving around the room and he likes long dialog. So, it was constantly a huge challenge. I knew this in advance, so I would pre-rig some lights so I could allow for shooting 360 if I had to. Most of the time we were either covering the scene with the Steadicam or following the characters around, so I had to have every area ready to light fast because of the rhythm in which we were shooting. I knew we’d be shooting here and there, so I used a lot of top light. In some locations where we weren’t allowed to touch the walls, we foated lighting balloons with skirts around them to keep the walls darker than the characters. I had to be on my toes and ready for anything.

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You have collaborated with Marty Scorsese on several flms, how did you like working with him? Scorsese is the ultimate master of the use of the language of cinema through the use of camera, designing shots that eloquently express the emotional state of the characters. Listening to him describe his ideas, and then executing the shots he has concocted in his mind is exhilarating to me. Marty has an uncanny ability to coax the best from his team. He charms us all to do whatever it takes to give him what he is after and then some. You have to be on top of your game and bring your own artistry and ideas to expand on his plan. Even though he is a walking encyclopedia of flm, he never pretends to know everything, nor does he expect you to have seen all the movies he has. He will readily admit if he feels unsure about a scene or a specifc shot. Sometimes, I will ask him a question and he will answer with “I don’t know…. What do you think?” I feel he truly wants to hear my perspective about a scene and how I think we could approach flming a particular moment. With the actors, he creates an artistic bond full of trust and complicity that results in amazing performances. It is my job to make sure to capture those performances in the best way possible. He always has a plan on how to shoot a scene, but he remains open to whatever the actors want to try. For example, on The Irishman there is a scene at a car wash where Frank Sheeran sees his car being washed. The plan was to have Sheeran looking from a window in a hallway at the car going through the washing machines. But after we shot it, DeNiro mentioned he had always imagined Sheeran inside the car. Marty immediately said, let’s do that too! I quickly asked the grips to lay down some dolly track and we flmed him sitting inside the car as it moves through the water and soap in slow motion. He used both shots in the editing, creating a beautiful melancholic moment in the movie. It is one of my favorite scenes, and it was the result of Scorsese’s trust of his actor’s instincts and his creative approach to editing. I enjoy working with him a great deal!

Can you speak about your approach to The Irishman? One of the themes of The Irishman is the passage of time and the emotional toll it takes on the characters. We wanted to represent the past as seen through Frank Sheeran’s memory. To visually convey this recollection, we emulated the look of still photography emulsions popular in past decades, such as colorful Kodachrome for the ffties and Ektachrome for the sixties. After Hoffa’s death, we shifted the look to a low color saturation and high contrast feel that suggests the loss of meaning in Sheeran’s life. The memory we all have of old photography is not digital, so shooting on flm negative was the natural choice. But the de-aging video effect (VFX) developed by ILM to make our actors look younger than their actual age required us to capture those scenes on digital cameras. The camera that best reproduced the way our LUTs looked

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on flm was the RED Helium, so we used it for the scenes that had de-aging VFX. We created a rig we called the “Three Headed Monster” that included two Alexa Minis as witness cameras attached to the main camera. As for lenses, I did not want a modern feel, so I picked the Cooke Panchro Classics, supplemented by Zeiss High Speeds. We chose spherical lenses and a 1.85:1 aspect ratio because the main character approaches his task of “painting houses” (meaning killing people) in a methodical, practical way. It seemed to us that old glass, but without heavy distortion or fancy fares, would be appropriate to represent Sheeran’s perspective. This movie was full of challenges, but I loved going to work on it every day. Working with Marty is a real joy. He conjures a special way to tell his stories for each flm, while allowing his team to thrive creatively and bring our own ideas into to the mix.

Has being a cinematographer made it diffcult to maintain your personal life? Yes, it certainly has. It has been an ongoing challenge much bigger than any of the challenges dealing with lighting any complicated situation on set. Figuring out how to balance out my personal life and my career has been the most complicated thing that I have faced. What I have tried lately is to shoot locally as much as possible. On the other hand, it has been an opportunity for my family to travel with me and get to experience in different places and cultures and it has been pretty great in that sense. But it has been taxing and I have felt the effects of that with my wife and my daughters, it hasn’t been easy. There’s a level of guilt involved in being away a lot and I have to struggle with that. I’m trying to fnd that balance, and I think I’m getting there but it’s almost impossible to have both worlds in terms of really being home with your family and being present at the level required by this job on set. Particularly with cinematographers, but with directors there is often long periods of time between their movies, whereas crew people go from one job to another. For me a big part of choosing a project is where it is happening, the movies I did in Spain, I took my family with me, because Pedro’s movie was during the summer and for Alejandro’s flm, the girls went to school in Barcelona. But it was hard for them because they were missing their friends. They were 16 and 17 at the time. When we did Alexander, they came for the whole trip and my wife did home schooling with them and that was great. Now their friends are their life, and they are off to college and that’s it, they’re gone! I have had to turn down some amazing projects. It can be tempting to just keep going, to travel from one distant location to the next, but the price of that can be high. So, fnding the way to be with my family as much as possible

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is essential to me. The satisfaction of work shouldn’t be at odds with the joy of family life.

Any advice for aspiring cinematographers? I think that I would say shoot everything when you start. I didn’t discriminate at all, I did camerawork for TV news, I followed presidential campaigns in Mexico with a 16mm camera. I did documentaries, low end commercials… anything. My frst few movies were 16mm feature flms shot in two weeks, super low budget, crappy stories, but it was a great experience. Always approach work with your best attitude. That will lead to something else, even the crappiest thing I was working on I approached like it was Citizen Kane. I really put my heart into it. I did my best given the circumstances, but you bring your best and someone will eventually notice. You do something a little different and maybe someone will call you to do something a little better next time. I approach the flms I do now with the same enthusiasm and passion that I did in flm school. It’s just a creative process and it’s essentially the same thing. I don’t think there’s a moment when you suddenly ”make it,” because it’s always a learning process. So just enjoy that moment, whether it’s a student project, a super low budget flm, a documentary or a high-profle movie. Just enjoy that and things will happen on their own.

Cynthia Pusheck, ASC

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Cynthia grew up in the Midwest, not far from Chicago in Rockford, Illinois. The idea of a career in the Entertainment industry never crossed her mind until she started taking flm courses at Columbia College in Chicago. Her passion for working with the camera led her into the freelance world and eventually to Los Angeles, where she worked her way up the ranks as a camera assistant, operator, eventually becoming a director of photography (DP). She became a member of the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) in 2013. Her added skills as an underwater camera assistant provided a unique specialty that led to her working on flms and TV shows around the world, such as Free Willy, White Squall, Flipper, Waterworld, Alien Resurrection, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Baywatch and Sphere. She also worked as an underwater camera operator on Magnolia, Men of Honor, Abandon and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Wanting to move up from assisting, Cynthia attended the American Film Institute for a year, with a focus on cinematography. Her background coming up the ranks in the camera department, attending flm schools and shooting various projects from documentaries to narrative allowed her to develop into an experienced and compassionate leader on set. After a number of years working on documentaries such as Coachella (2006), short flms and low budget indies, such as Loving Annabelle (2006) and Three Days of Rain (2002), Cynthia moved into television as a camera operator and Unit second unit DP on CSI Miami. After a number of seasons on CSI Miami, she continued on with notable television programs including, Justice (one episode) and Close to Home (nine episodes). Her beautiful work on Brothers and Sisters (52 episodes) kept her busy for four years, followed by Revenge (55 episodes). Her work on the period piece, Good Girls Revolt (six episodes) in 2016 revealed a more nostalgic style of lighting and camera work. Her more recent work has explored a darker visual tone on Strange Angel, season two (three episodes) and Sacred Lies, season one and two. Cynthia is the frst woman to serve as a Vice President of the ASC and is very active in the society’s educational and outreach programs. She served as Co-Chair of the ASC’s Vision Committee for its frst four years. The committee’s work is aimed at reaching out and supporting underrepresented students

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and cinematographers who face more hurdles in the industry. During her time running the committee, many scholarships were awarded to the ASC Master Class. A Mentorship Program was created with numerous all-day events held to educate and bring awareness to the issues of diversity with hope that the industry, and the ASC, will continue to become more inclusive because of this work. Cynthia is also deeply passionate about environmental concerns within the motion picture industry and how to make our sets more sustainable.

What made you want to become a cinematographer? I didn’t grow up in a community where the idea of working in the flm industry was even remotely an option. You didn’t hear of anyone going off to study flm or move to Hollywood. I did know some friends who were moving into Chicago, so I decided to move into the city as well and try to fgure out what I wanted to do. Once I was there, I kept hearing about Columbia College from different friends and co-workers. When I opened their class brochure, the Film 101 course jumped out at me and I just remember feeling really curious and interested. The frst week in that class, I felt so out of my element and nervous. It seemed like everybody but me had been born with a camera in their hands or knew everything about movies. It turned out it didn’t matter since I fell in love with flmmaking in that class and was hooked. I still remember hand dying my fnal flm project with a pink Sharpie for a dream sequence. It was a lot of fun. I stayed at Columbia and eventually started gravitating towards the cameras and tech side. It was a great school where once you could prove that you knew how to handle the advanced cameras, you could check them out and shoot. As soon as other students knew you wanted to crew on projects, they would ask you to work on their movies. So, you could get a lot of experience with the gear as well as watching and learning from each other. It was a great experience for me and I’m still friends with many of my former classmates. When I left school, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a DP or knew how I’d even go about making that happen. I was working in a rental house and picking up camera assisting work. But I didn’t know anything about professional productions – big movies or TV. It wasn’t until I moved to LA and started working on sets that I started to believe I could be a DP. I started seeing other women trying to make it happen as well, which was encouraging.

How did you make the move to Los Angeles? I would have thought that would be a little daunting. To come by yourself and try to fgure it out. I had started to realize that in order to work on bigger projects and get more opportunities, I was going to have to move to LA. I didn’t really want to leave

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Chicago but on this one Friday morning my boss at the rental house said, “Quick, who wants to run a camera package down to Indianapolis for a John Cougar Mellencamp video that’s shooting tonight? You’ll also load mags in the loading room?” So, of course I jumped at the chance, even though my license was expired! I drove the van and gear down there and long story short, met some LA camera assistants who told me to stay in touch. They said, “You seem really great and if you ever come out to LA let me know.” Not too long afterwards, one of them offered me some work on a movie in the Midwest, and eventually a job in LA if I would fy myself out. He said, “You can sleep on my couch until you fnd a place.” He lived with his teenage daughter, so it was all on the up and up. So, I few out, worked on PeeWee’s Playhouse for a few months and gave it a shot. Over those months I slept on various couches, house-sat for an assistant who was on location, and quickly realized that I wanted to make the move. If I hadn’t had a job offer, along with some of the Columbia crowd who were drifting out to LA as well, I don’t know if I would’ve made the leap so fast. But with the combination of those things it just felt like things were all fowing in the right direction, so I trusted that it would be ok. I’ve found throughout my career, that sometimes I’ll resist something that I don’t think I’m ready for or that I’m nervous about. But once I stop resisting and let go, then everything starts fowing. So, moving to LA felt exactly like that. It was a fun and exciting time to be here working on bigger productions.

Was there a particular cinematographer whose work inspired you when you were looking at flms as a student or a specifc director? Is there anyone you admire in terms of their work? There are so many. When I began flm school, I was more focused on directors and movies. Everything from New German Cinema, French New Wave, ‘70s art house flms, or old classics like Citizen Kane. I was aware of DPs and read about cinematography in magazines a lot, but it wasn’t until I moved to LA and was camera assisting that my focus really shifted to paying more attention to the DP’s work rather than the director, really looking at the stylistic choices they made. It was the usual suspects from Conrad Hall to Jordan Cronenweth, Robbie Muller, to name a few. These were cinematographers who shot really visually interesting movies that inspired me and made me excited to want to know more.

Did you have any role models or mentors? In LA, I realized there were many more women working in camera departments and shooting than I’d seen in Chicago. So, I was suddenly able to meet some of these women ahead of me, like Brianne Murphy, Sandi Sissel, Nancy Schrieber, Amy Vincent, Liz Zeigler, Carolyn Chen. So, it was great to be out

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in LA and feel like, wow, there are so many women all trying to fnd their way in this industry in the camera department.

It seems that you rose pretty quickly, climbing the ranks of being in a camera department being an assistant or a second unit to moving up to becoming a DP on television shows. It felt like I was assisting for ten years or more because so much happened in that compressed period of time, but it was actually just a handful of years. That was a very busy time in LA, and I was lucky to be working with people who had no hesitation about hiring women on their crews. I also think it was a little bit of luck and timing. I often felt that being a woman could sometimes help because there were so few of us that people would remember you if you did a good job. Those who turned their nose up about having women on their crew weren’t people I wanted to work with anyway. I think if I had loved camera assisting more, maybe I would’ve tried to keep moving up into bigger movies and bigger shows. But I just didn’t love pulling focus, and I knew I didn’t want to keep doing it. It actually forced me into making the next jump. Also, some women I knew who were trying to move into camera operating were having a tough time. I think it was harder to be a female operator at that time than to be an assistant. That’s probably when I decided to just take a year off of assisting and go to AFI for Cinematography. It was that or leave the business and give photography a try. But, immediately at AFI, it was like, “Yeah, this is what I want to do.”

Can you tell me a little bit about the underwater cinematography experience? I was lucky to meet underwater cinematographer Peter Romano, ASC, on a commercial in the Bahamas early in my career. On the commercial he saw that I was a hard worker, so he started hiring me and we worked together off and on for many years. He’s always been a big supporter, mentor and friend and I really learned a lot working with him. What was so great about those frst years working for Pete was that I got to travel a lot to work on movies and commercials in great locations. I learned how to dive and have a lot of fexibility in my schedule to do my own traveling and photography. After AFI, it was also really helpful to pick up jobs with Pete in between my low budget shooting gigs. That helped during those lean years when I was building my reel. When I had decided to stop taking any more assisting jobs, Pete asked me to work on the underwater unit on Tomorrow Never Dies in London. I told him, “No, I’m trying to shoot,” but he dangled the carrot that he would let me operate the “B” camera for a few days. So, I went to London and assisted all

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summer just so I could operate for those few days when they needed a second camera in the water. And it was so worth it! Robert Elswit even gave a compliment about one of my shots during dailies, which was quite the confdence boost. So, those underwater experiences and skills helped so much when I started shooting. Pete would sometimes throw me “leftovers,” just small jobs that he couldn’t do. “It’s just a little Jennifer Lopez music video for one day…. You want to go do it?” “Yes!” Those jobs helped me build my reel and ultimately get more work. Underwater cinematography is such a good specialty to have, but I don’t really do it much anymore because it’s just too diffcult on a TV schedule to be the one who jumps in for an underwater shot or sequence. It’s better to have an operator or split it off as a separate unit. I even got to hire Pete for a sequence on Revenge. But I do still dive and if there was a longer show or something with a bigger underwater unit, then it’d be fun to do it again.

How did you continue to move up to becoming a DP? During the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was building my reel by shooting shorts, indie movies, docs, early reality, underwater, everything I could just to keep inching forward. I decided to make a lateral, or backward, step by picking up union operating work since I was feeling stuck in the low budget world as a DP, not able to really move forward. So, it was great when Amy Vincent hired me to operate B camera on the second unit of Biker Boyz. I wasn’t very experienced working as an operator for someone else at that time, so she took a risk in hiring me. But it was a great confdence builder when she and the director were both happy with my shots. It was a blast operating on all those motorcycle stunts and trying to keep them in frame as they came fying off ramps. When that ended, a friend called me for a one-day gig operating B camera on CSI Miami, season one. That one day turned into fve weeks, the end of season one, and then three more seasons after that. So, it was an amazing one-day call that turned into a great opportunity that changed the direction of my career. From season two onward, they would often leave me behind at a location to shoot B roll, like outside a prison, or do a small chase scene, or just clean up inserts and shots of bodies in the morgue. On season three, they asked me to take over the “A” camera operator position, but I said I really wanted to be the second unit DP. And they agreed, which was amazing. So, I did that for two seasons. During the fourth season, Eagle Egilsson was bumped up to direct an episode and he asked me to DP his episode. This is something that’s great about TV production. Once they like your work, you can get opportunities to move up as the seasons go on. So, that step backward I took into operating really helped propel me forward and allowed me to have some great shooting experiences and learn a lot from other DPs and gaffers on the way.

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Of the television shows you have photographed, Brothers and Sisters, Revenge, Good Girls Revolt, I’ve noticed that all have very distinctive looks to them visually. Thematically, how were you thinking about the way you wanted them to look? Brothers and Sisters has kind of a hyper-reality soft, warm glow. It feels cozy and nice and almost a feminine feel to it too. Revenge is a more hard-edged reality, darker and more noir. Good Girls Revolt feels amber and warm and nostalgic. Am I in the ballpark with what you were thinking? I took over Brothers and Sisters on season two, so anytime you take over a show it’s your responsibility to be true to what’s been established, unless the producers are looking for a change. But little by little, it will evolve as you start adding your own taste and choices into the mix. B & S was a really great show for me to have and I learned a lot about how to shoot a dozen characters in a party scene or around a table, or how to light women with very different faces all in the same scene. Sally Field looked great with a certain kind of light that made her eyes twinkle, and Calista Flockhart looked great with a different kind of source. So, you’d learn each person’s face and also have to build their trust in you, knowing that you’d make them look great. With Revenge, I was looking at what they had done for the pilot and I spoke to that DP, Chris Manley, to hear his thoughts and intentions. That was the starting point, and then you read the scripts and dive into fnding the look. Basically, a sunny, bright summer in the Hamptons with beautiful people, but with a dark underbelly, flled with deceit and corruption. So, that was the visual motif for the show – rich and poor, light and dark, lies and corruption. I like to say it was a show about White people, wearing white clothing in white rooms. You can’t scare me with a white set after that show. Good Girls Revolt was a period piece that I really wanted to shoot, so I pushed my agent to get me an interview. They’d already hired their DP, but after meeting with the producer, he decided to add a Co-DP spot and alternate episodes. So, I felt very lucky and got to work with Steve Fierberg, ASC, on setting up the show. Again, there was a pilot that we built off of and great production and wardrobe design that helped us create the style and palette—a soft, nostalgic feel. We used a lot of smoke on set to add texture, and the actors were also smoking on camera, which looks great but stinks and the crews hate it! We had tried to shoot 16mm since it would have been the perfect feel, but in TV production that can sometimes be a hard sell. I’m still really bummed it was cancelled. But certainly, with each show the look really does come from the script.

Working in television like that, how is the pacing, the day? Were you shooting single camera or multi camera? Were there other DPs? When I was the only DP on season one of Revenge, it was a really brutal schedule. Season one of many shows tends to be tough because everyone is still

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fguring it out, so there’s a danger that your days can go longer then 12 hours which is hard on everyone and can make things tense and stressful. Trying to stay on schedule in TV is a tough grind and there’s a lot of pressure on the DPs to make your days, do good work and keep the producers and studio happy. When I’m the only DP, I also spend a lot of time on weekends meeting with the next director so I can have some prep time with them before walking on set the frst morning. On Revenge, we went to two DPs from season two onward, and it’s a much better set up for everyone and I think it saves the show money and time. You can come in much more prepared with shot design and blocking ideas, along with seeing the locations and planning out your lighting and camera needs. Although I prefer it, sometimes you can’t help but be a little sad or jealous when you read an episode and you’re like, “Oh, man they get to shoot that!?” But, the big plus is you actually make your episodes better when you get to prep, and you get more sleep. That’s an important thing over the run of a season. For Sacred Lives, I did season one as the only DP and it was a pretty tough schedule. We shot in Vancouver and had a lot of work out in the woods dealing with the cold and rain, as well as shooting a lot of nights. Even though it was a short season, it was pretty diffcult, and I got really sick mid-season during one episode, which just sucks when you can’t replace yourself. So, season two they chose to hire a Co-DP. I think producers do understand that it can save a lot of money.

What is your approach to lighting? It’s specifc for each show, for example Brothers and Sisters was naturalistic, but it was also very important to keep our world soft and inviting, and to keep the cast looking great. So, you weren’t going to necessarily just embrace whatever natural light was in a location. You knew you’d have to kill all the overheads, for example, and bring in your big units to create the look. That dictated the lighting to a certain extent. In contrast, for Sacred Lives, part of the desire was to allow the characters to look real. The show’s creator said, “I want our teenage girls to look like real teenage girls. I want a young girl watching this show to be able to see herself.” So, that meant letting our cast’s blemishes show, and not going for an overly pristine look. We embraced that and didn’t overly glamorize our characters – unless it was serving the story. A big part of the season was set in juvie, so I started with the lighting in there being a bit harsh and green when our lead character frst arrives. She walks in and is overwhelmed, surrounded by all these tough girls. So, the lighting leaned into that and wasn’t very fattering for anyone. But, over time she makes friends, learns to read, starts to heal and blossom, then I started to soften up the lighting to show that change, making it less harsh as her reality of the place changed. Similarly, in the fashbacks or the woods, it started out magical like a fairy tale and over time went darker and moodier because her world and life in this cult had gone dark and horrifc. The lighting really came from the story and the character development.

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But sometimes the lighting needs come from the demands of the producers saying, “We have this actress and we want her to look gorgeous.” Okay, then you’re going to be embracing a more polished lighting approach. And hopefully that can serve the story as well.

So, the lighting is being motivated by the story, which underscores the theme of what’s going on. Part of prep is asking a lot of questions and fnding the look with the rest of the creative team. You sometimes hear people say, “We want this to be really edgy.” But then the minute you start showing your version of something edgy, they say, “Oh, we don’t want that! That’s too edgy.” So, it’s important during prep that you nail down what exactly is meant by the words and phrases thrown around. What do they mean by naturalistic? What do you mean by going colorful? You work with the production designer as well to make sure you’re both in sync on the mood and style to avoid surprises or disappointments, “We didn’t know you were going to do that!” That’s why prep is so important and a time for everyone in the creative team to come together and defne what the show will be before you’re on set.

I have noticed that some of the younger women cinematographers are also directing. Do you have any thoughts about directing or do you think the younger generation of women are kind of using cinematography to get into directing? Yes, I think some women want to be directors and that’s their ultimate goal, but maybe they started out as DPs because that path allowed them a faster or better route, rather than coming up as a director. For producers, I think DPs are the low-hanging fruit to pick since most of us have years of set experience, know how to block and stage a scene in a way that can be shot effciently, and we’ll make sure it looks good! Also, some producers may feel that it’s a safer choice to have a female DP who’s been working in television bump up to direct rather than hiring a woman who’s only done one or two little indie movies. They may not really know the episodic world and the speed in which you have to work. Since many shows are working hard to increase the number of women in the director’s chair it’s become a good opportunity for female DPs who want to jump into directing. It’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve been asked if I want to direct. It wasn’t as common years back. I know a former DP, who’s a very successful director now, who had to push really hard to get a chance to direct an episode. If she were coming up today, I doubt it would have been such a struggle for her. The industry really is trying to change, and that’s great and has led to a lot more opportunities. For women who have kids,

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it can mean more money and less hours on set, which is pretty important if you’re raising a family. I have a few friends and producers who’ve said, “You should do it because you might be surprised that you love it.” But right now, I just don’t have a burning desire to direct since I really love what I do. I’ve worked with some wonderful directors who can walk up to an actor and give one small note that changes the whole tone of a scene when it wasn’t working. I’m like, “What did you say? That was awesome!”. So, I get inspired by those directors and I love how much they care about the nuances of performance and story. I could probably be a decent director, but I don’t see myself being as good as the directors whom I really admire. That’s how I feel right now, but who knows? Maybe the next time the opportunity presents itself I’ll go for it and love it!

Do you get the opportunity working in television to have those collaborative moments with a director that you get to have in feature flms? The coming together of two minds? The biggest difference for me is that on a feature, the director is the ultimate boss, and everybody is making their movie and in sync. Also, you all spend so much more time prepping and making sure you’re all on the same page. In TV, it’s a different game of balancing all of the needs of the producers, the director, the network and tight scheduling issues where you don’t have that same relationship with the director being the ultimate decision-maker about everything. Unless they’re also the show’s producer and have a bigger say. In TV, some directors really lean on the DP and the rest of the team to help them do their job well and let them concentrate on the performances. Often, it can be a very short prep period, or the script came in late or the director just fnished a different show the previous week and is having to shift gears quickly. So, the smart directors utilize the show’s team to help them have a strong episode. We’re all there to do the best work we can for the director, but we’re the ones who probably know more about the show’s style, cast, sets and what the producers want, so we’re a great resource that they can depend on. That’s very different from features and can create a different dynamic. So, it can be a really fun collaborative playground and the guest directors bring in new ideas which you need on a show to freshen things up over a season. But you also need to protect them in case they start to veer too far off course. For example, if you are on a show that never does handheld and you have a director come in and say they want to do the entire show handheld, you might need to modify that a bit so the producers don’t freak out! ”Well, maybe we just pick one or two scenes where handheld would be a great ft, but not the whole show.” I try to take the energy they bring and use it, but also protect them and our show, if needed, so that the everyone will be happy with the episode. I love that for every episode a new person shows up with a whole

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different personality and style of directing and I have to fnd a way to dance with this new partner. I think it’s one of the best things about TV.

Do you aspire to do more feature flms or are you happy working in TV? I would happily go off and do a feature. I just don’t seem to get offered them, partly because of schedules and partly because of who I work with—directors and producers who all work in TV. I’ve had a couple directors over the years with feature projects who’ve made offers that, “If this feature goes, I want you to do it.” So, it’s always a possibility. I think it’s easier for younger DPs who are starting out and doing both flm and TV work to keep that mix. But I’ve been working in TV for so many years now that I’ve gotten pigeonholed, which happens quite a lot in this industry. But honestly, I’ve been working on shows I like, with people I like, so I’ve been having fun. I don’t feel like I’m missing out, but if a flm dropped in my lap, yeah, it’d be great to go movie.

What would attract you to a project? What kind of flm would you be drawn to want to do? Usually, I fnd I’m drawn to things that are different from what I just fnished. After Revenge ended, I really wanted to go fnd something that was a different style, different mood, less glamorous lighting, different challenges. That’s why Good Girls Revolt was such a great next show. Shooting a period piece is a lot of fun. So, looking for variety is important to help keep you inspired to push yourself to try new things. And the script. I love to fnd projects where the material makes me excited or makes me care about the characters. I love when the visuals start jumping off the page as you’re reading the script. And it’s the creative team. It’s important to feel that it’ll be a good ft and that it’ll be a well-run production. I no longer don’t want to work with screaming producers! Life’s too short for that kind of abuse on set and I’m happy to see that it’s becoming a thing of the past. We all work hard, are away from our homes for long hours—so it’s important to like the people you work alongside.

Is it an issue of you leaving for six months or nine months with your family situation? No, my husband and I have done really well in ten years of fguring out how to not be apart too long. I’ve defnitely taken my foot off the gas a couple of times in those years so that I could travel to see him on location. I’ve turned work down so I could stay in town when he was here working. That’s been a priority. But we’ve been good at fguring it out. When we frst started dating, he was a camera assistant and since then he moved up to operate and he’s now

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a very successful DP. So, it’s been great to be with somebody in the industry, but there has been a give and take to make our schedules work together. When I was younger and dated somebody out of the industry, they were always like, “What do you mean you’re leaving town again? What do you mean it’s a job you can’t say no to.” They didn’t understand that I might not know my schedule ahead of time, or they’d be angry that I had to miss events or would work until all hours on a Friday night. So, that was diffcult. It seemed better to try and date somebody in the industry who understood my career, but that’s tough because now you both have crazy schedules!

It is a lifestyle that’s diffcult and I’m seeing female cinematographers today being able to have a family and work even while pregnant. But women of our generation may have felt that they had to sacrifce that because it was not something that was acceptable. Or they thought that they couldn’t effectively balance both worlds. What are your thoughts on that? Maybe if I’d had a partner when I was younger who’d really wanted a child I might have said, “Yeah, let’s have a baby, let’s fgure this out.” If I had met my husband when we were younger, perhaps we would have made that choice, and tried to have careers while raising a child. But, 10, 15 years ago, it was challenging enough to get people to consider that you could run a set and a crew, let alone show up pregnant on top of it. It just wasn’t as accepted as now. Uta Briesewitz, ASC, was the frst woman I knew of who made it happen, but she’s always been very frank about the cost, You can do both, you can focus on your career and have a family. But if you do both, you just have to know you’re going to give up a little bit here and there. Are your kids going to resent you in the future? Are you going to have to give up a show you really want to do? It’s not bad to want and to do both, but don’t fool yourself and think you’re not going to have to make some compromises. So, I never fgured out how to do it because I was working so much and not with the right partner, but also, I’m not sure I wanted kids enough. At one point I thought about adopting, but I just didn’t feel like I was that driven to have a child on my own in this industry. And even though I don’t think I was meant to go the kid route, I do like that the younger generation of women are fguring out ways to do it. Good for them. I think the bigger issue is that we need more family leave, not just about parental leave. We need to fgure out how people can work in this industry and still have a good quality family life. We need to be able to take personal time off in order to care for our partners, or kids or parents. I think some of the younger people are pushing that conversation, which is great.

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I joke with friends saying, back in the eighties and nineties, we were all foating around on our own separate little rafts out in this big ocean of a flm industry trying to stay afoat and paddle along. You couldn’t really do that much to help each other since you were just trying to survive. But now there are so many more women we can come together and join forces to fght for these issues and other issues, make changes and give support to each other. We tried to talk about all these issues back in the early ‘90s at the union but we didn’t have the numbers yet to make any headway. I am glad to see that’s changing.

Have you ever had moments where you were condescended to you or you felt a lack of support from the director or producers you were working with, or have you not experienced that? I have, and there was one really awful situation that has led me to be more careful about who I choose to work for, no more screaming hot heads! But years ago, I always felt that if I spoke out about the problems of being a woman in the industry, that I was giving it more power. I felt it was better to just keep doing the work and pushing ahead, ignoring the negativity or challenges that were thrown at you. I’ve worked with a lot of people who hired me with no care that I was a woman, so I’d rather focus on that and not the negative. It’s a hard industry for everyone for different reasons. So, you just have to want it bad enough to push through the tough times. Some younger women I’ve talked with complain about what’s not changing fast enough or about how hard it is to be a woman in the industry. I get their frustration and I usually say, “But it’s so much better than it used to be!” Don’t give the negative stuff so much of your energy. I do think there is some backlash going on right now where a lot of guys are feeling that they’re being attacked or seen as the problem when they feel they’ve been supportive. I certainly know my career wouldn’t be where it is now without a lot of male allies who hired and mentored me. Sure, I also had some guys say they didn’t want to hire a woman or they’d say, “We’ll think about hiring you if all the male assistants we know are booked.” But at the end of the day, I got where I am because I worked with a lot of really great guys who didn’t care that I was a woman.They cared that I was good at my job.

Do you think that some women in the industry were not as supportive to female cinematographers as they could have been? I had a female producer on a very low budget flm who was not supportive of me at all throughout the whole prep, but I was the director’s choice. Then at lunch on day one, she walked up to me and said, “I want to apologize to you because I didn’t think you could run a crew of guys and have them listen to you. But that’s not the case. So, I just want to apologize for not being

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supportive of you.” Maybe because I am a bit soft spoken and not a big, loud personality, she didn’t believe that I could do the job. But when I’m on set, I can be very strong, assertive, passionate and get the work done. I have no problem running a set. In her defense, she’d just never seen a woman in that job position, only men. But yes, sometimes women aren’t always supportive of each other. Sometimes it wasn’t easy to be supportive of each other due to the politics of the job. In the early ‘90s Sandi Sissel was shooting a TV show that my friend was a second assistant camera (AC) on. I day played a couple of times. Sandi said to my friend, “I’d love to hire more women on my crew, but they’re already looking at me funny because I have two women in the camera department. If I bring in more women, it just focuses more attention on me.” Of course, no man was ever worried about having too many men on his crew. But female department heads have had to be careful about being biased towards hiring women. Thankfully, this has changed a lot.

I think the attitude of young men working in the industry is defnitely supportive of women today. They don’t mind working with women and they may even prefer it at times. I’ve found that a number of grips and electricians love having at least one woman in their crew because it changes the dialog and the chatter on the radio. It brings the testosterone level down a notch and it’s more fun. So, I think you’re right. It’s just nice to have a good mix of people on your crew because it changes the dynamics. Our sets should look like society.

Can you talk about your approach to prep in television versus feature flms? It seems you have much less time to think about prep in television or establishing a bond with the director. If I’m the only DP on a show, many times the only prep I get is a quick lunch meeting here or there or using my personal time on the weekend to meet the director for a couple of hours. Sometimes I’ve ended up with no prep with the director and we just meet in the morning of day one. It’s like “Good morning —here we go!” So, that’s the worst case. The best is when you have at least seven or eight days of prep, depending on the show. On a feature, you’re going to spend weeks, if not a couple of months prepping and having time to really get into the material, watch flms together, test shoot and get to know each other, which is great. In TV, you really do need to cut to the chase and try to pull from a director as much as you can, as fast as you can. Whether that’s sitting in the van talking about what movies they’ve seen or what TV shows they’re watching. You’re trying to get to know them and their taste and style. You want to try and fnd out how they like to work on set, what things they visually respond to

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at a location, how confdent they seem with staging and blocking, how much input they want, or need, from a DP. All those kinds of things so that when you get to set, you are as much of a team as possible and that can speed things up and allow for better work. Less time wasted trying to fgure out what they want and how you’ll make it happen.

What do you think the future of cinematography looks like? Because it has changed so much in our lifetime of learning with a Bolex in your hands to now everything’s digital. Where do you think it might be going in the next 20, 30 years? How can we go beyond 8K? Yeah, and do we want it to? I mean how much detail do you want to see in someone’s face? Even now we’re trying to use older lenses to break up the image and bring some personality, texture and favor into this crisp world of our capture mediums. I think the biggest change is going to be the continuation of online streaming and people watching things on their phone, and the show lengths getting shorter to accommodate that. Everyone is becoming less focused to sit down and actually watch a TV show for an hour and that worries me, that sense of not having time to fully tell a story and create a mood. Film is far from dead, but it’s going to become more and more specialized, as it already is and not because of the cost factor, but because of the speed we’ve all gotten used to. You can go rent a 16mm package, dirt cheap and with flm and processing the cost might balance out to what a decent digital package with monitors and accessories would cost. But what we’ve all gotten very used is the speed between shooting something, immediately seeing it and having editorial start cutting it, all in the same day if needed. The genie’s out of the bottle on that one, so it’s hard in TV shows to go back to flm. But for features that’s a different story. Our camera choices are really great right now and there’s some amazing work being done. I think it’s really about keeping the DPs involved throughout the project because so much can change on the look of a show in post or in video effects (VFX) work when the DP isn’t involved. Just because everyone can walk around with a camera in their pocket doesn’t mean everyone is a DP with a vision or knowledge of how to tell a story with the visuals. I think it means cinematographers really have to work harder to stay involved from preproduction all the way through the post process.

In color correction because so much is happening there. Yeah, you can fip it. The look and the style can all change on you, so it’s about communication and staying part of a team. With more and more VFX work, high dynamic range (HDR) and streaming options, the DP needs to be involved in those conversations. It’s going to be a tricky time as we all continue

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to navigate ownership of the image. I also think there’s a bit of a glut, how many more years can we handle more and more material? Can the networks and studios afford so much original content or will they start trimming the budgets and cutting back on shooting days? Wanting more and more for less and less? But it’s also an exciting and great time because there are a lot of interesting projects out there to shoot.

Yeah, there is a lot of content. But can we sustain that? For the bigger picture, I worry about our planet. How are we going to sustain our planet? That’s not this conversation, but I worry about what can we do on set to make flm production more sustainable with less waste. Recycling or reusing the sets more, switching to green generators, reducing the food and plastic waste and many other things that production cities like Vancouver have started doing. Making our industry more sustainable will help our production cities lower their carbon footprint. Small things like talking to our producers about why it’s worth spending more money on renting LED lighting units since it will save electrical and cooling costs can add up to a big carbon savings, and actually help you work faster on set. I hope our DPs, who manage three departments, can be leaders on set to keep these discussions going and make real changes. I’m worried about what our future will be, so I think we all have to do more.

Do you think that there’s been progress made in the archival aspect of digital image creation? If there is a future, will digital imagery survive? I haven’t heard a lot about the archive issues in the last few years. It was kind of the elephant sitting in the corner that nobody was wanting to address for quite a while. Everybody was saying, “Digital is great!” But we can’t guarantee the archival aspects. But I haven’t heard it discussed much lately. I think there have been some improvements, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to speak on that.

I had talked to John Bailey about it and he sent me “The Digital Dilemma” and I read that, but I’m not sure what has progressed since then. But it is a concern because I remember hearing that things that were shot at the Sydney Olympics have already deteriorated. Drives aren’t booting up anymore. I don’t think we’ll realize how much we’ve lost for a while.

Do you take any pictures or are you a still photographer at all? I used to do a lot more, especially when I traveled around the world, but I don’t do it anywhere near as much as I used to. If I go on a trip, I’ll bring my camera,

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but it’s not like I run around LA and shoot. I’ll have my camera on set with me and try and take some pictures, but often with the speed we work, I fnd I just don’t take the time to grab shots. When I shot flm, I would often take my digital camera on set and do quick little references as a fnal check. What I found was it often allowed me to slow down for a quick second and look at the whole image and see how it worked, or what seemed off in the ratio. I loved that and I used it a lot. But when we switched to digital, and I was looking at a reference monitor and waveform, I stopped running out to grab those references. When I was an assistant, the DPs would pull out their Polaroid and take black and white shots to check the contrast and exposure right before we rolled camera. I should try and get back to taking reference pictures more than I do because it’s still a great tool.

Do you have a format that you prefer working in? Is there a format that if you had your choice that you’d love to shoot? Less of a format. I really love working with the Arri Alexa, and I’ve been shooting with it since it frst came out. Occasionally, I’ve used other cameras, but I’m very comfortable with the look and workfow of the Alexas. It’s probably like back when I shot flm and I’d get used to a certain flm stock and trust what it would give me. That being said, there are so many great cameras and I wouldn’t be unhappy doing a show on a different system. It’s fun to play around with new tools so that you can keep learning and pushing yourself. I would love to do a show on a large format as well, but I haven’t been able to do that yet. Sometimes the budget just doesn’t allow the newest tools, so you have to balance out what things are the most important to you when putting together your camera package. One thing I really love is working with gaffers because they always end up showing me new lights or approaching something in a different way. I think all these things are what keeps it fresh in TV, where you have to work so fast. Sometimes I look at my key departments and say, “I don’t know, what do you guys think we should do? We’ve shot in this room a dozen times. What do you want you to do?” That can allow them to have more creative input as well. It’s important to motivate each other. What’s great in TV is when you can move people up, “We’re going to have an extra day and I’m going to bump you up to operate on that camera.” All of that is what keeps your crew excited because TV is tough, a tough grind.

For somebody who wants to be a cinematographer, what kind of skills should they possess? What should they focus on? Besides the technical and just knowing your job, I think it really is about communication, collaboration and patience. If you’re working in television, you’re going to have all different types of directors coming in and you really need to

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learn to be adaptable and be able to think on your feet. You also need to get a thick skin and learn how to roll with the punches. I’m still a believer that it’s great to come up the ranks and learn from those ahead of you. I think that’s less common these days because people are coming out of flm school saying, “I’m a DP.” I worry sometimes that we’re not passing skills and know-how on as much as these days with fewer DPs moving, coming up the ranks or being trained by those who’ve done the job for years. For me, on top of the technical knowledge I gained, I felt I learned a lot about the politics and protocols of the job by watching how other DPs managed things. That really served me well when I got the chance to start shooting. Also, if you’ve done certain jobs on set you have a greater understanding of the challenges that your crew faces, and how hard they work to make you look good! Sadly, I’ve heard friends and crew members complain about some younger DPs and say they just didn’t have enough knowledge to handle all the aspects of the job – from crew management, to understanding the various cranes and tools, or even knowing how to work with the production team to manage your day. So, I hope those who choose not to come up the ranks really try hard to learn as much as they can about all the other aspects of the cinematographer’s job. Well beyond camera and lighting. It will only help your career.

I think the ASC is a wonderful organization and I see them being such a mentoring and guiding presence for aspiring cinematographers. If I had that in my twenties, I would have been in heaven. I read you were one of the frst female vice presidents of the ASC. Do you feel kind of a responsibility to encourage female cinematographers by being a visible mentor? Yeah, I defnitely feel like I didn’t have a lot of mentoring or guidance back in the day from places like the ASC. I didn’t even know you could visit the clubhouse unless you were a member. Then later, when I did start to go to the open houses, it was a very intimidating place, and there weren’t a lot of women or people of color in attendance. Now as a member, I’ve worked hard to help be active and do my part to help make the ASC a more approachable and inclusive society. We have a lot of ASC members who give very freely of their time and volunteer at events and talk on panels to students and other flmmakers. But most of those members don’t feel that they need to show up and “represent.” But for those of us in underrepresented groups, we defnitely feel the need to represent. That’s why I try to attend as many events and student panels as I can so that women who show up can see someone who looks like them. Johnny Simmons and I started the ASC Vision Committee in early 2015 with the goal of doing more outreach and fnding ways to bring the subject of inclusivity and diversity to the forefront of our society. From simple

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things, like reminding our members to not say “cameraman” when speaking, to educational panels to much bigger things like scholarships, outreach and events. The frst big event was an all-day women’s event in 2016 and I was really proud of how that day turned out. Watching so many women say, “Wow, I had no idea there were this many of us” was fantastic to witness. There was a sense of energy and excitement, and a feeling that maybe the tide has turned. It’s not where it needs to be, but it’s certainly better. There are strong support groups within the industry that will continue this push for change. To me, the bigger challenge has been trying to help more men and women of color get a foothold in the flm industry. The race gap in this industry is far worse than the gender gap. And it’s a trickier one to fgure out because I can call “Women in Media” and say, “Hey, we’re having an educational event, can you throw this invite out to your members?” Or I can post a notice on a dozen Facebook groups aimed at women in camera or flm. But we haven’t found it as easy to reach out to people of color or those in lower economic circumstances who may not have an easy time breaking into the flm industry. We did hold a fantastic all-day event called “Changing the Face of the Industry” in 2018 along with a couple of training days (at Panavision and CineMoves) and we’ve been giving out scholarships to the Master Class and offering a Mentorship program. But, trying to fnd ways to do more outreach and support people of color making their way into the business has been a big focus for our committee the last couple of years.

Harris Savides, ASC

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Harris Savides has worked with some of Hollywood’s least conventional directors with frequent collaborations with Gus Van Sant on Restless, Milk, Last Days, Elephant, Gerry and Finding Forrester. Gus Van Sant’s collaboration with Harris on the narrative flm Milk earned him an Academy Award nomination. The flms Harris shot with David Fincher captured the edgy dark spirit of his vision on both The Game and Zodiac. His respect for Noah Baumbach as a writer attracted him to share his unique vision on flms such as Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg. As a fan of the independent spirit, he stepped behind the camera with Sofa Coppola on Restless and sadly the last flm he was to photograph, The Bling Ring. His unique eye for the unconventional perfectly suited these directors’ original storytelling styles. It is no surprise that he was nominated for fve Independent Spirit Awards. Harris who is often referred to as “a poet with light” has also worked with acclaimed auteur directors Woody Allen and Ridley Scott. Harris began as a fashion photographer and transitioned into the world of music videos working with major recording artists such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Chris Isaak, R.E.M. and many others. He received three MTV awards for Best Cinematography in a Music Video. Harris Savides was a respected cinematographer who remained a native New Yorker. He was a generous mentor to another New Yorker, Sal Totino, guiding him into the world of music videos that helped to catapult his career as a cinematographer. I had the rare opportunity to meet with Harris in Hollywood while he was working on the Woody Allen flm Whatever Works (2009). We met in the cocktail lounge of the hotel he was staying in. He seemed a little shy at frst, unsure that he was giving me the information I wanted. But after a while, he opened up and we shared a very open and honest conversation about photography, movies and Hollywood. Afterwards, he said he would be happy to meet with me again to discuss more, and I wish I had taken that opportunity. He was a visionary cinematographer who I know is severely missed.

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Did you go to flm school to study or apprentice? It was almost a fuke that I started in the Film Department at NYU. I wasn’t that interested in the flm or cinematography at the time. I minored in still photography. I just fell in love with images. I got excited about photo books. I’d look at them and not even understand why; I just loved what I saw.

Were you inspired by a particular photographer? When I was young, I liked the most outlandish kind of stuff that would attract a person who’s new to that art form. I think when you’re frst seeing images; it’s the broad strokes that attract your attention. So, I was always fascinated with commercial photography. I didn’t even know about fne art photography until I was studying it in school. When I went to flm school, I just wanted to make flms. I didn’t want to be a director. I just wanted to be a maker of flms, whatever that meant. To me, that meant getting together with people and just making a movie. So those for me, those years were like “I'’m getting into debt and I don’t'’ care. I will pay it off later. Let’s go to school and see what we can do.” But it was so frustrating to me that there was no money for the productions. We had all this youthful energy and there was all this talk and then nothing happened. Then people would talk about a movie that was coming out or is out and we’d all go see it. We would be amazed by it and talk about it and then nothing else would happen. I’d go on these very unsuccessful shoots that would keep me up all night long. We would just pile lights into a camper without any regard or desire as to what we needed them for. We would say, “there'’s a 2K, get a 2K.” Or, “there'’s a 5K, get a 5K.” I didn’t even know what they were; we were just piling this gear in. It was just this random kind of “We need fags, get fags.” But all that work and all that time didn’t produce results that were satisfying. I was very young and all the silliness and triteness of it all was fun. I had this one photography class that really got me hooked. Mainly, because I could shoot pictures and see results immediately. I didn’t have to call fve friends and make sure they were going to be there. It could be just me and my girlfriend, or me and the little kid from downstairs. I would set up shots that were a tabloid type of staging that was always based on stories. It was stupid things, but crazy things. I remember once I took the little kid from downstairs and I posed him with a knife. Why, I don’t know. But I guess there was tension there. There was a little kid holding a knife.

You were creating a provocative image. I used color gels too. It was one of the frst rules of flm, it’s meant to shock. The few photographers that I liked were all commercial photographers like Helmut Newton. I loved fashion magazines because at that time they were more story based. There was something going on other than a girl wearing

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clothes. I just loved it. It was exciting. I knew nothing about fne art photography. It was this weird combination of wanting to tell a story with images but not understanding what I was doing. My parents didn’t know what I was doing. They were simple working-class people. But they kind of indulged me.

How did you segue photography into working in cinematography? It took a long time. I became a photographer’s assistant in New York and at that time, I wanted to become a fashion photographer. I worked for a long time as an assistant. Then, as most people did at that time, I went to Milan and then Paris to live and try and become a photographer.

So, you really went for it. Oh yeah. I had no money and I lived from credit card to credit card. I did that for a year and three months. It was really good for me because when you’re impressionable and young, you are the product of everything you love.And you copy everybody you loved and everybody that you’ve worked with.You don’t have an identity yet. My portfolio was a document of people that I worked with or those I admired and copied their style. Or books or magazines that I saw and I wanted to do something like that.When I got to Europe, one of the frst portfolio interviews I went on, the magazine editor took a liking to me. He said, Look you come back in a month with pictures that show me what you can do and I will hire you. Right now, I turn every page of this and I don’t know who you are. But, if you come back and I know what Harris Savides can shoot, I will give you a job. That one dialog with that man changed everything. I focused and I found a point of view, I was honing my craft. But I ran out of money and had to come back to America. I didn’t think I was ever going to work again. I was in a lot of debt. I thought the whole thing was a failure. I dropped my book off at this seedy agency with many other portfolio books. There was no room to walk in there and I was late and the last one there. I found a place for my book and I left there devastated thinking, “Oh my god look at that. That was crazy. There must have been over 200 portfolios.” The next day I got a call, “Come in I want to meet you.” I thought, “Wow, all this is working?” Then I started shooting fashion stills in the States.

I guess it’s good that you were late. I did that for a while, but it got convoluted, that point of view I had was what people liked. It seemed to be what people wanted to talk about, but it was

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never what they needed to do in magazines. The shift in editorial fashion was very conservative. I eventually became very frustrated and I didn’t like what I was doing. I had to work all the time because of the debt that I was in. But at the same time, I was getting work from the record companies. A&R Records was hiring me, and CBS Records wanted me to do some work. Some of the very young artists liked my energy and liked the interaction that we had together. When it came up that they should do a music video, they asked me if I would shoot their music videos. I was like well I went to flm school a while ago, so I could do that. So, out of fear and out of a need to make that money, I started making music videos.

So, what was your frst feature flm? I hired some directors of photography (DPs) to shoot something for me. I would show them stills from my portfolio and ask them if they could do something like that. They would say, “Yeah, I could do that.” Then I would get the results and it would look nothing like what I asked them to do. Eventually the producer said to me, “You could do this. I’ll hire the crew and you just tell them what to do.” I said, “Are you sure?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah.” So, I shot some of the things that I directed. Then I noticed that people were calling and saying, “Who did that? Who did that?” This one producer, who had hired me, hooked me up with a commercial agent and I started working right away. But it wasn’t really the success I wanted. Work came to me in the cinematography world only because I knew how to manipulate light and flm. I was young for a cinematographer, but it was because of my still photography. It was really funny because without any conscious design, I found myself in the perfect place for me. When I started shooting for someone else, it felt like this is what I was meant to do. I’m taking photographs, lots of them, 24 frames every second. It’s a story. The directing thing I didn’t like. I didn’t know I didn’t like it, I thought that I was making flms. But I could solve these problems for this person who is asking me to do this or come up with ideas and I liked that much better. I was like, “Wow.” I remember going home and telling my wife this is pretty cool. Motion picture images are more complicated, and I liked the challenge. I liked that it moved. I liked that there was sound. I learned about making movies through working on movies. The fact that I was given movies was ludicrous. I mean I don’t know if people just liked me or what the deal was, but I was just offered things. It was crazy. I did things that looked good. Like those early music videos, people saw them and said, “I want a guy that can give me this look.” I started working on flms and doing projects and just living the life of working on commercials, music videos and features here and there. But I still had blinders on. It was all about making things look good and what stylistic lighting could I do. That was my big picture at the time. Now, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach work.

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At this point in your career, what attracts you to a project creatively? What makes you want to say yes to it? It’s a number of things. Either wanting to work with a director because I’ve liked what I’ve seen them do, or liking the material and maybe not knowing the director and just falling in love with the material, or the challenge of just trying to take this thing and make it into a movie.

Is there a particular genre you fnd yourself attracted to? No specifc genre. I just did two comedies this year, one for Woody Allen (Whatever Works). Real life is funny and sad, if you can laugh during a drama it makes it a “dramedy” to me. It’s different when working with directors. Like some directors are writers, so their words are important, almost like literature. Especially someone like Noah Baumbach who is a really talented writer, so every word is really important and well written and meaningful and there is a subtext in everything that he says and in everything that he writes. But I think what I like more is a cinematic approach to movies. I feel like cinema is more powerful when it’s a visceral presentation. The visceral absorption of images is more important than listening to dialog. I have a greater sense of accomplishment when I make a movie that is more visual in the matter than its approach.

So that the visuals are telling the story more than the dialog is telling the story? Yes. I don’t like it because I am a cinematographer; I like it because that’s the best way that cinema works.

Stylistically, does Woody Allen still like to use long shots and single takes so the audience is more focused on the dialog? I think he’d like to. But this particular project was very wordy, so we had to fnd a way to shoot it so that he could cut a scene. That’s very hard to do. You can stage your own desire and want to do things in one, but there is a performance there too. I don’t like cutting at all. I feel like cutting dissolves and dilutes tension in a scene. I think it’s much stronger without any cutting. I enjoyed that aspect of Woody’s approach to the work, his desire to do it in one shot. I think he knows that cutting within a moment is not the greatest thing. I think he tries to avoid it. But in comedy, you can’t. He said to me in the beginning, you have to cut to the joke. I found that enlightening because I had never worked on a comedy before. He said there wouldn’t be time for cinematographic moments.

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What attributes do you like in a director? Did you like working with Woody? Everything was there. He was the writer, the director, creator of the project and the decision-maker of the project. He works with an editor but I’m sure he’s very specifc about what he wants. On the set, he’s thinking about what he needs to tell the audience and what shots he wants. He’s making the decisions and not shooting any redundant coverage or unnecessary angles. If he feels he has it, he has it. If he feels he needs to go closer together, he’ll do it. I love that security and that confdence.

It comes from making a flm a year for over 30 years. It’s pretty amazing.

It’s truly amazing. You have done a lot of flms with Gus Van Sant. He must have a very interesting style. Yeah, he’s also very confdent. He’s very simple in his approach. Hardworking and humble and very specifc about what he wants and what he walks away with is very specifc because of that. I really enjoy working with him. I’ve grown to not like a lot of takes and a lot of variations. I like it when everybody understands what the tone of the scene is. I think there is a great sense of accomplishment that is generated by working that way. This is what we’re getting and we’re moving on. When you work on a flm, there is a management aspect that people don’t even consider half of the time. The management of a large group of people or a small group of people, even if it’s four people, they need to keep working and move forward and climb this hill. If there’s meandering, the momentum gets lost. The momentum could stay with the person that meanders. But those other people who are the support system, dissolves. I don’t think that movie-making is a selfsh endeavor. You need other people to help make a movie. But you need to consider them and be a leader and maintain a sense of movement, progress and accomplishment. So often on sets, that doesn’t exist and it’s like beating a dead horse.

On the shoot that you’re on now, what kind of hours per day are you putting in now? Like eleven- or twelve-hour days.

Eleven- or twelve-hour days, so that’s manageable, right? It’s manageable, but I don’t think that it’s a life.

That’s a long day. So, fve days a week? Six days a week? Five days a week. Normally, people work eight, nine, ten hours a day. In this business, we work really long hours. I understand why it’s common, but it’s

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not my ideal world. People should have a balance between their private lives and work lives.

It seems like every cinematographer works constantly and it must be stressful in multiple areas. It is stressful. There’s a price that is paid to be a working, successful cinematographer. I try to minimize what that costs to my personal life by not working all the time. I will turn down movies. I will be upset about it too because I will see the movie come out and think, “I could have been on that movie.” Then you see the accolades come out. But at the same time, I want to nurture my personal life.

What about when you were working with Ridley Scott? He seems like a director who likes to cut to the chase and then move on. Yeah, he’s like that, he wants to try and get it all on one set up. If he could get it all in that one take, he would be happy. But he’s very hard on the cinematographer, he demands a lot. It’s interesting; there were times when I would think, “This is so crazy.” But, I would pull myself up by the bootstraps and go, “If this is what he wants, then he deserves no less.” So, we would try and give it to him. I mean, he’s Ridley Scott, he’s royalty, so we can only do our best and that’s what he deserves, and he expects no less.

You’ve been fortunate to work with some great directors. What is your process when you receive a script? I like to talk to them about it, I just ask them questions. So, I’ll read the script and I’ll call them and tell them how I feel about it. But, always from the perspective that I just read their story. I have nothing to do with it. I’m not putting anything on it. If I’m interested, I may say, “Look I’m interested. We should sit down and talk.” Then I sit down with the director and see what their point of view is. Based on that, if I’m asked to fgure out what it looks like, I will do that. If they want me to make it look like something, I will do that. But I will also want to mandate anything from where I feel that script is about. The story frst and not what I could do. So, it starts with a conversation. Some people will have visual references and others don’t. Some people don’t know what they want yet, so I just say, “We will fgure this out together.” Other times, it’s just an intangible process to fgure out what this movie wants to look like. It can be easy to say this is a movie about the Second World War and this is a period piece and conjure up something. But I feel like it takes more time and is more of a process in the developmental stage to really come about. The look of the movie is not a broad stroke. It contains many elements coming together that ft well. Then it becomes that movie, that script. I think that when it’s successful, the visual form of the movie is telling the story the way the director wants. Then it becomes that specifc movie, it doesn’t become a genre look.

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I recently watched Milk and I thought it’s not stylized, but it feels like you’re there watching the story unfold like a documentary which makes it very unpretentious. I approach every scene with the question of what do we need to tell the audience? That’s all you need to do. It’s so simple. It’s funny because I have been watching things on this movie and sometimes they will talk about the shot and I will walk away; with all due respect, I will see the camera move in and pan out and it will have the artifce of money in it. It’s like why are you doing this, just because you can? That’s the artifce, the technology and everything we have in Hollywood. You do what you have to do to tell the audience the story as simply as possible. Then after you fgure that out, ask yourself do I need to make it more dynamic? Will it help this moment if we are moving? I still don’t understand the “how to light it” problem as well as I’d like to. I am ultimately there to work for the director.

What would make you pass on a project? Unrealistic expectations or material that I am not interested in. Sometimes I’ve passed on a project even though I loved the director, but it seemed like they were sending us to the moon with half the fuel we needed. I know how to make a movie for no money. The “don'’t worry that the horse is blind, just load the cart attitude” is not something that I can do anymore. I am too aware of certain things. I just don’t want to be part of that process. I like to go towards the ring and get in and understand how to get it rather than be thrown around and hope that we get it.

In preparing for a flm, do you like to sit with the director and decide shots and angles in preproduction? Or is it something that comes more organically on set while blocking the actors? It’s different with each director. With some directors, I will spend a lot of time with them to go over the script in a lot of detail and talk about it. Even if we’re totally wrong, to just sit down for a week and say this is the scene, how should we do it? How would we tell this information? But in that situation, we are normally not on set and usually at a dining room table just hashing it out. I love doing that because in our heads we’ve kind of gone through it once so I’ll walk onto the set understanding what that scene is. I think any preparedness that you have on a flm is just money in the bank. It helps you get through without bankrupting the bank of time. All movies take on their own tone and life. When the actors are in the space and in costume you think, “Oh god please don’t walk over there. It’s not lit or I don’t know how I am going to do that.” You try to give them what they want and they eventually support it. You also

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try and give the director what he wants. What I want is to be the last person on the list. I hope that I can sway them to make it all work.

Do you operate the camera or are you working with an operator? I work with operators. On almost every movie now you use two cameras. If I do a single camera show, I would like to operate.

Are two cameras used mostly on the bigger budget flms? Not always, there are some low budget flms using two cameras. Two cameras are good when there is so much dialog that you get the scene in one shot. The tone is the same; it’s identical when they are bantering back and forth. If you want to do one camera and then turn on the other camera, the emotional level might not be exactly right. I wish it wasn’t like that. I wish I could be selfsh and just shoot one angle and make the other one perfect because there’s always a compromise to lighting. But, then again, I am also in this head where I am trying to get away from perfect lighting. That harkens back to my feelings about the audience not being able to see the artifce of the flm. The Road to Perdition is a beautiful movie to me, but the photography is so strong, it almost overwhelms the story.

I actually pulled a still from it to put next to an Edward Hopper painting for my book and it looked more like a painting than the Edward Hopper painting did. Yeah, it’s really interesting and beautiful and needs to be studied. But, when you have an audience in a dark room and you’re trying to tell them to believe something, you can’t wow them with that stuff because then they are out of the story. You start noticing the photography. Things look best in photographs when they are back lit and when there is atmosphere and moodier lighting. But that’s not necessarily the best way to tell a story. Bladerunner was, to me, one of the most amazing movies, and still is. But I saw it recently when it was re-released and apart from its beauty with all due respect to Ridley Scott, I was out of the movie.

Is that because you’re watching lighting that is too stylistic? That was a movie that kind of propelled me when I saw it while in school. I thought, “Wow! That is something.” But there are other things that are beautiful that I also love, like the work of Sven Nykvist. He always does beautiful stuff, but it always feels appropriate. I watched Fanny and Alexander and it was just so unbelievable looking and there is all that fabric to the story. It is appropriately beautiful. The scenes of the children in the bedroom at night were exquisite.

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Sometimes you want to give things a certain look because the moment is right for it. But to me naturalism is the best thing. Unless the look invokes a feeling that needs to be sustained throughout the movie. For example, of the stuff I’ve done, Birth has a look that I think works well with what’s going on, it’s a somber, soft light look. I think it’s stylized, but I also think it’s natural. I thought it was appropriate for that movie. But it’s a strong look more than a natural look. Having said that, I think The Godfather is natural looking. I don’t think there is anything unnatural about it. That movie is very beautiful.

With the top light. The world is top light, you know.

The world does not always provide the light. People don’t walk around with beautiful light on them.

Do you like working with prime lenses or zoom lenses? I used to think that primes were better because there is less glass that the light has to go through. But there are zoom lenses that have gotten so good that it doesn’t matter. I do like the convenience of changing things. I think if I had my choice, I would want the zoom. I love what the zoom does, and I feel that it’s truly a tool of cinema. There is no zoom anywhere else. There is nothing that does what a zoom does. I love using it and I love the long, slow creeping kind of zoom. In the right moment, it could be the best way to describe a certain beat of the flm. But I’m not a stickler to one or the other, nor am I stickler to any type of equipment. It’s like my attitude for lighting, if it’s right for the job, I’ll use a whiskey glass as a lens.

Some people are very opinionated about their lenses. I think it serves a director more specifcally when I say, “Do you want to go wide? Do you want to go with the 10mm? Do you want to go with the 12mm?” And then I pop it on and they say, “Oh let’s go with the 12.” And, I think they learn about focal length and depth of feld by asking for a specifc focal length. Yeah, that makes total sense. I understand that.

Do the directors you work with call specifc focal lengths? No, not usually but Woody knows his lenses. Ridley certainly does. A lot of them kind of sit back and see what I’m going to do. I think they want to see what a cinematographer is going to suggest. Often, I will watch the blocking

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with a director and not do anything or say anything, just watch what the actors do. Then I can see where they are headed and see what lens will do what it needs to do. Then I kind of go to where I think the camera should be to tell what we need to tell and then we will look at lenses to see if they are too wide or too close. It’s just this process that happens. There used to be a lot of stress at the blocking phase for me, an inordinate amount of stress because everything was an option and everything was possible and I’d think, “Why am I here instead of there? What if that'’s better?” And now I don’t do that. Now, I just kind of go okay this is good, and it just kind of falls into place. I’m sure it’s not the best sometimes, but there is that momentum thing and I think it works best for that. And I’m pretty happy with what I’ve been seeing too. When I was at SVA, the photographer Duane Michals came to speak to us. He spoke about Zen in the Art of Archery, which is this great book about what it means to become an archer. It’s the point where you forget about the process. You’re not thinking about taking the bow out of the thing.You’re not thinking about taking the arrow out of the little pouch.You’re not thinking about the little notch in the string and pulling back.You’re not thinking about anything. And after a certain amount of time you get to that point, and I think that I am there now. They say it takes ten years to get good at something. I have more than ten years’ experience as a cinematographer. So, from that boy that didn’t know what he was doing, now I’m at a place where it just feels like I know what to do. I look through the camera and instinctively move it to the right place. I’ll get taken out of the scene if someone asks me why I did it. If I have to explain why, then it just doesn’t feel right. It just happens naturally. It’s like I’m in that state in the book where I’m just doing it.The same happens with lens selection, it’s not an intellectual process; it becomes something else, more instinctive.

What about your thoughts on color palettes? I have no thoughts on color palettes personally; I don’t like extremely vivid garish colors, only because I think the flm that’s made now represents a very saturated and very dramatic color. Unless there is a reason to do that within the narrative, then the color doesn’t exist in the real world. So, why do it unless you’re making a movie like Speed Racer or one of those kind of genre movies that needs that kind of circus color to work. If you need to sell reality to an audience, you don’t want that. Color is like lighting. You have to use it right and it’s all about taste and making the right choices to tell the story. So, if color works for that, then use it. If not, then I tend to keep things subdued and tercentenary. I always ask the art department to use primary colors or very strong colors but use them subtly or use them as accents. If you want to use it, then let’s talk about the scene and maybe you’re walking into some crazy person’s apartment and it’s the wallpaper, then I understand.

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A lot of flms are de-saturated now. Yeah, I pull (process) a lot of movies because I want to de-saturate the colors. I just feel that the flm stock is just too vivid.

It has become fairly common with certain flm genres to de-saturate. Yeah, I noticed that too. But that’s when the movie has a specifc look going, like the heist scenes, the cop things.

Yes, handheld with blown out windows. I understand what they are doing but I just don’t subscribe to that. And I think that it could do that without that. That’s an easy way to tell the story.

Sometimes there are three different storylines and they are intertwined and there may be subtle differences between each storyline. I’m always afraid that I am going to be asked to do that and I don’t want to do that. I did it a little on The Game, when it was a fashback and I think it worked, but there was very little of it. I dread the day when I get asked to do a fashback of a little girl that needs to be done in bleach blonde, and the future where it is a very stark black and white. I don’t want to do that. It takes me out of the movie and if it takes me out of the movie, it’s going to take the audience out of the movie too. But I would do it if it was right for the movie, if it worked. I think certainly that Bob Dylan movie that Ed Lachman shot (I’m Not There) was successful in that way. That worked.

That was all de-saturated and had three different storylines and each one had a different look. I think it was because each Bob Dylan was played by someone different, a woman or a little kid. That’s one instance where I can really see them working. But these other things I don’t see them working very well. And it just comes down to the feeling that I have of wanting to keep things simple.

Realistic. Natural. Right.

Do you do much testing before you shoot? I like to do a lot of testing because it just puts me into the right space. I understand my flm. If I decide not to do movies for a while and get into the commercial world, then I’m in a different color space. The attitude of flm has

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changed because of the way that they transfer it and use it and what I am asked to do. It kind of really screws with you, then I need to get back into it, so I test. I do make-up and hair tests; I fnd ways to make it all happen and ways to justify it all. I think that make-up and hair tests are really invaluable because you learn so much about what angles people look good in and what side is best. When all that’s done, then I do testing just to see where I need to take the flm; how bright I can go or how dark I can go? I’ll set the print numbers in a broad sense. I’ll never mandate them with the lab, but they’ll have them and they’ll feel good about them. Lately, because of all this DVD stuff and the lack of printing that’s going on, I’ve been doing a proof mat as well. On every set-up, I will shoot 10–20 seconds even with the standards right before we go, then I’ll send that to the lab and just watch it on print. I won’t go see the movie or I don’t see the DVDs of the other HD elements unless there is a problem and they want me to look at something. Because it’s not a true representation of what is on the negative.

So, most of the flms you’re doing right now don’t have flm dailies? Well, I have been unduly lucky. Milk was the frst digital intermediate (DI) I ever did. Zodiac, I don’t want to count as a DI because it had a digital element. So, Milk was the frst DI and we had flm dailies. American Gangsters, we had flm dailies. With Woody Allen, we certainly had flm dailies.

With the experience that you had with Milk, what did you think about the DI? I liked it a lot. I liked that the people that were around me were amazing and the facilities were amazing. But I don’t think that it’s there yet. Or it’s there in certain terms. But it’s not completely there. I want it to be flm and it’s not flm. It’s a digital color space. Red is not the red that I know that flm can produce. Green is not the green that I know that flm can produce. Film has a subtlety to it that the digital system doesn’t have to it yet. Having said that, it has some merits and some tools that are good to use. As I was shooting this movie and having the experience of having gone through the DI, it isn’t dissimilar to doing a commercial, I am shooting with the DI in mind. If I see a certain thing and we’re under the gun, I’ll just say let it go because there’s all these little tricks you can do. I kind of feel like it’s unfair because it’s like working with very powerful Photoshop, so what is cinematography? I feel like there should be two Academy Awards. One for the DI print and the other one for the photochemical print, because it’s not fair. I’m not going to talk about the names of the movies, but there was one year where a very low budget movie was nominated for an Academy Award and it was exquisite. That same year, a big studio movie was done that was nominated for an Academy Award and they probably spent half the budget of this

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lower budget flm just on digital effects and that one won an Academy Award. That’s like fring a tank at a kid with a BB gun. You know, it’s not fair. But it’s our reality.

The one that you’re doing right now with Woody Allen; is the DI is a given? I felt like Gangster was the last movie that I could fnish photochemically. Then I went on to do Woody’s movie and I don’t know how long he’s going to be doing photochemical. The timers are going and the young guys don’t see a future in learning color-timing photochemically, so they’re certainly not trying to learn it. As the guys retire, we are seeing the print service market getting smaller and smaller. It’s only in the big media centers that we can even generate prints now, and sometimes that’s problematic. They have all their assets, all their revenue pushed towards other things. It’s a reality of the art of commerce of what we do. On Gangster, they were happy that we were doing a photochemical fnish because supposedly, we were saving them a lot of money. But when the distribution got involved, it was problematic. The pipeline now for distribution is really geared for having equal elements.

Because fnishing with a DI is a neat little package that can be easily delivered. It is easier, it’s the art of commerce thing, if it’s easier, that’s the way to go. It might not necessarily be better. I still feel that a photochemical print is the best way to present a movie. But I can’t guarantee that I will get 50 good photochemical prints. I mean there is all this stuff going on and slowly the pendulum is swinging towards the DI end. So, I’m trying to do this movie, I’m trying to do DI. I want to make it work for them.

How does Gus Van Sant feel about the DI? I think we both felt that a photochemical fnish would have been better on Milk. But there were some things that wouldn’t have looked as good if we hadn’t done the DI. But then there were other things that would have looked better if we had done a photochemical fnish. I think we are still wondering why we did the DI, especially, with the use of all that stock footage.

What do you think, at this point, about the longevity of flm? It’s all gone. I think if they just take the lead from the still photography world, those are the biggest image makers in the world and it’s almost all digital now. Once that technology starts drifting into the 24 frames per second technology, it’s over. I really believe it’s going to go that way and it may not be because it’s the best thing; it will be because it’s the cheapest thing.

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What are your thoughts on the higher end digital cameras? You did Zodiac digitally with the Vipercam? I don’t know. At the time, I thought it was a good camera, but I also wondered why we were doing it. If we were making a presentation that day and it was like “Hey guys, let me show you. Let’s compare this thing called Viper with Kodak flm stock. Let’s go look at them. Come on. Come on, let’s go look.” I’ll tell you what will look better.

Film. So, then why are we doing it? Just because it was new, because it was different? It goes back to how we serve our story. I still think that the digital imaging process has a certain amount of artifce with it as well. When you are presenting your flm to an audience, they need to believe in the reality that you’re presenting. If now you show them these moving images that look different than what they expect or have seen before, it’s one more thing that they have to get through to be pulled into the story.

True. When you look at something shot digitally and say, “Something’s missing.” And the audience may not know what it is, but it’s grain. The grain is missing. It’s too sharp. It’s too crisp. There is a harshness to it that flm doesn’t have when they are used to watching flm. And the highlights are blown out, the color and the shadow detail are different. It looks like a sepia color print is being projected and that’s not what I know flm to be. But my daughter is going to know that’s what flm is. And all her friends will think, “That’s flm to me.”

The digital images. And the body of work that I grew up loving; the flms that I loved the way that they looked are going to look like these strange old relics.

That’s our generation. We learned flm. When I was in flm school, everything was tangible You were constantly touching your flm, editing your flm, negative cutting your flm, going to the lab. It was so tangible. Now, it’s like you shoot it, you touch it once going in the camera, it’s off to lab, it comes back in a DV cam or a HD format, it’s in the computer. When do you ever see the negative? It’s weird. The frst day of flm class I bring in an old piece of flm and say smell this. It’s celluloid, you may never have the opportunity again. I often tell people that I have been fortunate to have been around some very good people that I have learned things from them. The one thing that I see

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happening is that people aren’t looking at flm anymore, they are watching these DVD dailies or digital internet dailies and you can’t judge performances in a movie unless it’s projected in a dark room, sitting down and the lights go out and you see a movie, otherwise you don’t know what you’re seeing. I’m sorry. I don’t care what anybody says but you can’t watch it on a laptop. You can’t watch it on your TV at home. Unless you’re going to make your movie play on airlines or on TV at home. Once again, if the horse is blind just load the cart, because it’s cheaper, it’s easier but in the end, we are making a flm. We are telling a story and it doesn’t matter if it’s easier or cheaper or less of a hassle because I don’t have to go to the lab.

What is your favorite format to shoot on? My preferred format is 1:85. I don’t know why, I just like it. It just feels right. It feels right given the amount of elements that someone needs to generate and how things are ultimately viewed. If I were to make a movie only for the show print, I’d love to shoot in wide-screen anamorphic, which causes its own set of problems when you are shooting in small spaces.

Does Woody Allen usually prefer to work with 1:85? No, for this particular flm he asked if we could shoot 2:40. We didn’t even look at anamorphic because I knew that we wouldn’t have enough time or space because I saw the locations. We chose to shoot spherical 2:40 on Super 35. I did The Game that way and after that, I wasn’t a big fan of Super 35. But this time, I am doing it and I fnd it interesting. I wanted to shoot this particular flm on older lenses because I didn’t want that color or that sharpness. But I found that some of the old lenses weren’t sharp enough for the blow-up. The image was soft. I actually took the frst test and I insisted that everything looked great in the lab. Then when I took it to DI, they said it wasn’t going to work, so I said we should take this and we should screen it in the biggest theater that we can get. So, we went to the Egyptian and it looked soft. When you shoot Super 35 and you’re going to do the DI, you need to shoot with really good lenses.

There is still a lot of controversy and debate regarding this digital transition we are in, from the digital cameras to the DI. The stuff that I have liked the most is still the photochemical stuff. Movies can do this thing that nothing else can do, where you can be watching this powerful thing with sight, sound and emotion presented to you. That’s very powerful, those three elements. You know the orchestra can’t do it. The painting on the wall can’t do it. But movies can do this awesome thing that a book can’t

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do. We’re all different, but a movie can bring it all together. And when it works, it’s huge. And the images that I have done that are the most powerful have always been photochemical. I fnd that it just works.

Of the flms that you have done in your career, which one do you think that you’re the happiest with at this point? I can’t look at them, I want to, but it takes me a couple of years. If I catch something on TV, then I’ll go “Ah” and it will be like okay and I’ll start warming up to it and watching it. Then it’s like a movie that’s on TV and it looks like a movie. Whereas before, it is this deconstructed series of problems that I still see. As soon as I think, “Oh this was the day that happened,” then there is no movie. Sometimes some of the movies were so strong that I didn’t have that issue, such as with Elephant. I went to see the frst print projected and I was not watching my work; I was watching a movie and that was great. My favorite movie and the one movie that has a special place in my heart is Gerry (2002) directed by Gus Van Sant that maybe three people in the world have seen. I just like it. It’s simple. I think it’s a great study in simple storytelling.

A student told me I needed to see Elephant and it was very haunting. You should see Gerry because Gerry was the frst flm where Gus started using those long haunting takes. There is just something about Gerry, you will get sucked in and watch it. That’s the one movie that can empty a movie theater in 20 minutes. But there are certain movie theaters that will hold the crowd. It’s just good, bare bones cinema. I learned a lot doing that flm and I was surprised by what I was learning because Gus knew what he was doing and it was deliberate. But I was afraid, I was like “Are we really going to shoot a 1000 foot mag uncut?” And it was great.

Nancy Schreiber, ASC

17 Nancy Schreiber, ASC

With a degree in Psychology and a love of art history, Nancy began her career as an electrician and gaffer in New York City. She was the frst woman gaffer offered membership into the union, National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) 15. She transitioned to working behind the camera and became a cinematographer, seamlessly shooting documentaries, feature flms, television, commercials, music videos and short flms for the past four decades. She was invited into the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) in 1995 as the fourth woman to join the esteemed, predominantly male membership. Nancy has been a regular at the Sundance Film Festival for her numerous contributions to independent cinema, including her work on the stylized low budget Sundance hit November in 2004 where she won the Sundance award for Best Cinematography, directed by Greg Harrison. In 1998, she photographed the critically acclaimed Your Friends and Neighbors for Neil LuBute, followed by Book of Shadows: Blair Witch Two (2000) for Joe Berlinger, American Gun (2005) for Aric Avelino, Born Killers (2005) for Morgan J. Freeman, Loverboy (2005) directed by Kevin Bacon, The Nines (2007) directed by John August, and A Beautiful Life (2008) directed by Alejandro Chompski. In 2009, she moved away from the edgier subject matter to photograph the comedy Motherhood with Uma Thurman, directed by Katherine Dieckmann, Serious Moonlight (2009) by Cheryl Hines, The Six Wives of Henry Lefay (2009) by Howard Michael Gould, Every Day (2010) by Richard Levine, It’s a Disaster (2012) by Todd Berger, Between Us (2012) by Dan Mirivsh, Just 45 Minutes from Broadway (2012) by Henry Jaglom and A Short History of Decay (2014) by Michael Maren. She photographed Miss Virginia (2019) for R.J. Daniel Hanna, Moving Parts (2017) for Emilie Upczack, Silver Skies (2016) for Rosemary Rodriguez, Keplers Dream (2016) for Amy Glazer, Folk Hero & Funny Guy (2016) for Jeff Grace and Fugly (2014) for Alfredo DeVilla. Her work on Mapplethorpe (2018) directed by Ondi Timoner, re-acquainted her with the super 16mm format in a digital age. Nancy has shot a signifcant number of documentaries, including one of my favorites, Visions of Light (1992), the quintessential feature length documentary

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on the art and craft of the cinematographer. The Celluloid Closet (1995) directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Freidman, earned her a nomination for a primetime Emmy. She continued her collaboration with Epstein and Freidman with And the Oscar Goes to… (2014) and Linda Rondstadt, The Sound of My Voice in 2019. She was behind the camera on Funny You Never Knew (2019) directed by Andrew Hunt, Eva Hesse (2016) directed by Marcie Begleiter and Tab Hunter Confdential (2015) directed by Jeffery Schwarz. In 2009, she photographed Huxley on Huxley, directed by Mary Ann Braubach and Letting go of God (2008) directed by Julia Sweeny. She was also the eye behind the lens on Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust (2004), directed by Daniel Anker, Breathe In, Breathe Out (2001) by Beth B, The Source: The Story of the Beats and the Beat Generation (1999) by Chuck Workman and others dating back to 1980. For television documentaries, she photographed Dreamland (2011) and two episodes for American Masters; Woody Allen: A Documentary (2011) and Robert Capa: In Love and War (2003), Warner Brothers 75th Anniversary: No Guts, No Glory (1998) and The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful (1996). Her work in series and episodic television includes P-Valley, Station 19, Julie’s Greenroom, Better Things, The Family, Judgement Day: Prison or Parole, The Client List, Lauren, Blue, In Plain Sight, Cathouse, Heartland, The Ghost Whisperer, Art in the 21st Century, The Comeback, The Babysitters Club and Monsters. Nancy has been behind the camera on over 100 commercials and music videos for recording artists such as Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Reba McEntire, Van Morrison and Sting. She was the director of photography (DP) on the HBO/Amnesty International World Tour Film starring Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel and Tracy Chapman. For her tenacity and ambition as a freelance cinematographer, she was honored in 2017 with the prestigious American Cinematographers Presidents Award, acknowledging and celebrating her contributions to the art and craft of cinematography.

Is there a flm that you recall making a huge impression on you because of the cinematography? A flm where you were like, “I really love this movie. I want to be DP”? Or just one of your favorites. Seeing Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen when I was young captivated me like nothing I had ever experienced, the visuals were so powerful and emotional, but I could not express why I was so moved and certainly did not know what a cinematographer was. That movie stayed with me for a very long time. When I was in college at Michigan, getting my psychology and history of art degrees, there was a flm course in, of all things, the speech department, because there wasn’t a flm department back then. I audited the class and fell in love with the storytelling and communication possibilities of flm. I ran a movie theater with Jay Cassidy ACE, who I know to this day. He was my projectionist, but he had much more of a knowledge of flm history than I did

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at that time. We put together an amazing package of flms and From Monday through Thursday, we would show mostly foreign and underground flms from the Nouvelle Vague like Godard’s Breathless and Truffaut’s the 400 Blows, and the flms of Ingmar Bergman and many other European flmmakers. It was a really great education. On the weekends, it became a blues club. I saw Muddy Waters and BB King perform there. What a time in my life. I had a few more classes left to get my degree, but I ran this movie theater just before I moved to New York. Years later I saw The Conformist, and that movie really inspired me to pursue cinematography. I still look at it today for inspiration. Those two flms in particular as well as the looser style of the nouvelle vague for my hand-held documentary work, continue to inspire me today.

Did you shoot much still photography? I did when I was younger. One thing that really infuenced me visually was being an exchange student in Holland just before my high school senior year. My Dutch family lived 20 kilometers east of Amsterdam and I would take the bus in to the Rijksmuseum, and I was mesmerized by the lighting of the Dutch Masters. There was no Van Gogh Museum at that time, they were all housed at the Kröller-Müller Museum on the other side of Holland. I would live in the museums. I think this is why lighting came so easily to me. I had a really fast start in the electric department because it just came naturally to me to see in light and color, and framing came from the photography I had done early on. I was shooting stills when I was a senior in high school. Recently, I ran across prints from the riots in the summer of ‘67, just before I went to college. I’m still looking for those negatives.

Great historical documentation. I’m fnding that in talking to everybody that the majority of us were photographers at one point or really started there and then something catapulted it into wanting to shoot movement. Well, I was in the Women’s movement in Ann Arbor and we all belonged to the Women’s Film Collective, and then we started making small flms. That was really my introduction to being so close to a motion picture camera.

Is there anything that sticks out in your mind as a moment where you had to struggle while you were coming up? I came up in New York in the electric department. There was a union at the time called Nabet 15, which was formed for people who were not sons or daughters of the Union, IA (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, IATSE for short) members. We had every category in this local 15. There was camera, grip, electric, sound, props, script, all in one. We were

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a dynamic force back in the day. Really doing a lot of work. We were younger and hipper, and the producers loved us in New York. Then Reagan came into offce and started union busting and for survival, the IA had to swallow up Nabet 15 and we all became IA. But coming up in Nabet, I moved from electric to gaffer to DP within the same locale. I do remember when I went up for my electric test, one of the guys said, “Well, how much do you weigh?” That was one of the questions. It was a long time ago. But generally, I had much less trouble getting work than I did when I started shooting. I mean, I was accepted in electric, even though there were no other women. I remember there was this French director coming in to do a music video. I remember exactly the restaurant, I come in and the producer introduced me to this director who said, “Well, what do you do?” I said, “Well, I’m the DP.” And he started laughing. Another time, I remember going down to Florida to pick up a local grip electric crew and on the frst the morning of scout, these big old guys, they’re looking at me like, “Whoa.” Within an hour, when I clearly showed them that I knew what I was doing, we became best buddies and it was fne. But there was a lot of suspicion of a woman working in that capacity. Even fve years ago, I would go on set and people in the cast and crew of different departments would say, “You’re the frst woman DP I’ve ever worked with.” This was shocking because there are a lot of us now, but they’re breaking through in television and they’re very few, except Rachel, that are American that are breaking through in feature flm, so we are still limited in that area. Many women are still struggling in low budget and need a break.

Can you talk about the collaborative relationship between director and cinematographer, what would be the ideal situation for you? My best experiences are when the director has a clear vision and inspires me to do better than my best work. During pre-production, I really like to get into the director’s head and try to understand what they’re thinking. Sometimes, it’s a tricky collaboration because my job is not just about how the flm looks, it’s also about making sure I’m communicating visually what the director intended, because in the end it’s still the director’s flm. I just try to just remain a partner. I’ve worked with a lot of frst-time directors and those collaborations can be really wonderful because they don’t necessarily know all the rules, so they break them and challenge me to look at my own practices and beliefs which shakes me up a little. They’ll ask things and you don’t want to say “no” so instead you say well let’s fgure out how we would do this. So, it can be exciting. When I frst spoke to Greg Harrison, he was so enthusiastic, intelligent and passionate that there was just no way I could turn it down shooting November

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for him, even though we were all making $100 a day, from the personal assistants (PAs) to DP, everybody was getting the same. It was really a lot of fun. Greg is very technical, and we were using this tiny little digital video camera. But he really liked the fact that we were pushing the medium beyond what it was supposed to do. So, that was a great collaboration. I’ve also worked with directors that are not so technical or organized but are great with the actors, then I have to shoulder more of the responsibility of the blocking. It’s so much more exciting when directors understand my world. As a cinematographer, it is my job to fnd out what the director’s strengths and weaknesses are so I can be of service wherever needed. I’ve worked with directors who know focal length and may say, “let’s use a 35mm or 27mm” and I’ve worked with directors that I have to make look through the lens just to see what’s happening.

What would a frst meeting with a director be like? Ideally, you hope that you both are on the same wavelength. In that frst meeting, we talk about things that have nothing to do with the look of the flm. It’s more about the chemistry and maybe some visual reference materials that he or she might bring in, or that I might bring, whether it’s other movies, photographs or art that might be appropriate. Usually, the director wants to hear what you’re thinking visually, so you have to be careful because it could be nothing like what they are thinking. There’s always that fne line between trying to ask them what they want to do and making suggestions. There are so many talented DPs out there and it’s just like any relationship. You also have to also ask yourself, could I work with this person intensively for the next couple of months?

What attracts you to a project creatively? Why would you take on a project? I usually start with the script. If it has some emotional confict with the characters, whether the main character is going through a change or whether the situation of the main characters is evolving. Then, it’s the director’s vision. I like projects that will change the human belief system. I was happy to do a period flm like Mapplethorpe because I like historical material, especially if it helps relate to present day and people can see that. If there’s something that’s quirky and light, but still has some kind of political or social meaning, I’ll shoot because if it’s satiric comedy, it still has a message. Situational stories certainly like P-Valley, where it shows a lot of poverty and change in the south, but still the rich versus the poor, because it contains social issues that interest me. Then, hopefully, the director knows how to handle the material because some of them have written the screenplay and others haven’t. I also like to

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know what actors are involved. I’ve worked with some unbelievable actors who relate to the material, which is why they may work way below their usual fees. I also look at the production side with my eyes open so I can get enough information before it’s too late to know whether there’s going to be respect for the decisions I make, be it crew, equipment or the format.

What would attract you to working with a director, even if they were a frst timer? Passion as well as the ability to get me excited about the project. You know sometimes the scripts may be great, but the flms don’t turn out that way. You just don’t know. Other times I read a script and don’t quite get a handle on it and it turns out to be a really great flm.

Is there a difference between preparing for something you’re doing for television versus something you’re doing for an indie flm? If it is frst season, which it was on P-Valley, it’s very much like a flm. There’s a look book, I was happy to be there from the beginning with our showrunner Katori Hall and the frst director Karena Evans who came out of music videos, and the look book was incredibly extensive. Pages and pages of color references and framing, we printed them large, so they hung on the walls in the production offce, where I would envelop myself in the world we had created. Likewise, on Mapplethorpe, Jonah Markowitz, our production designer, did something similar. His department printed out the images that Ondi, Jonah and I had worked out for the color palette and the look of three decades, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, of Robert’s life, and there was a shift in color. There was this one room in our production offce that had a door that closed, I would go in there, and all these images were on the wall. I would just sit in there for hours and soak it in. When you’re joining a series like I did with Station 19, ABC, there’s already a look in place, although there was a new showrunner and we toyed back and forth with changing the look. The main change was that we did a lot more handheld and a more imperfect framing and coverage. I was happy to alternate with Daryn Okada ASC, he had been on the show the year before. Most of the crew had been as well. P-Valley, being frst season, I could handpick my crew and I also got a lot of diversity. My camera department had more women than men and people of color. You don’t necessarily think about diversity being present. We were able to really keep a very diverse cast and crew. Well, there was only two White people in the cast. But one was a dancer and everybody else was either mixed or African American because color was a big theme in P-Valley.

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You shot the pilot on that, so you could design the visual look to it, correct? It’s not called pilot anymore, it’s 101. It’s the frst episode, which you can fnd on Starz. The production designer was incredible on P-Valley. Jeffrey Gordon Pratt, he had to design the whole club, the locker room, all the VIP rooms. It was fantastic, really, and of course, the poles had to be very secure. What is interesting about P-Valley is that it is supposed to be in a small town in Mississippi, but we were shooting it in Atlanta at Tyler Perry’s new studio, which was fantastic. Brand new sound stages and a huge campus. It had been a military base. I don’t even know how many acres, but enormous. He brought in an old diner on the property. There were all these places you could shoot. But P-Valley is supposed to be this down and out town on the Mississippi, and this strip club is like a blight to all of the White religious people that live there. But there’s this history of plantation owners. The brothers are trying to sell the land that he is farming now, so they’re trying to get a casino in there. We couldn’t really ever use any lights that were fancy. Same thing with the production design, it had to be a little funky and things that could be bought at Home Depot or found used somewhere. We took these old park cans and ft modern LEDs inside of them, so we had DMX control. But if you looked up, once the lights are on you can’t see anyway, but for Katori it was important that it not look too fancy. We could never use moving lights. You can do more with composition, camera movement and framing when there’s an emotional story going on and you’re trying to choreograph the look of the flm or the series according to the emotional ups and downs of the main characters. I am grateful to be working in television. The big difference from Mapplethorpe or Miss Virginia versus any of those series, whether it was The Family with Joan Allen, and Alison Pill which was such a treat, and shooting in New York was great, or Station 19 about frefghters. They are all very different, and yet, in order to work the schedule of television, I had a full-on rigging crew, and they would come on the tech scouts with me. We would report to the gaffer and the key grip, but it was important to have an amazing rigging crew that would rough things in so that when the company got there, things were already well along in terms of power run. Units would be there that we needed, in certain areas. It was really an effcient way to work, and in Indie movies, you don’t always have the money to do that.

What kind of visual references have you used in communication with a director or that they have used in communication with you? There was a period when Edward Hopper was a reference for many flms. For Your Friends and Neighbors, I used Hopper as a reference, especially for the color palette and framing. We shot widescreen even though there was not one exterior in the whole movie. The production designer Charles Breen and me

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looked at a lot of Edward Hopper paintings when designing the visual look of the flm. But there have been other movies where references were specifcally used like Piggback directed by Morgan J. Freeman, who had previously done Hurricane Streets, a big winner at Sundance. I was s the DP and operated but that flm never really got out. He is really a great actor’s director and gave me a lot of leeway with the visuals. We talked with the production designer about William Eggleston photos as a reference for that flm. When I asked Howard Gould for references for The Six Wives of Henry Lefay, he suggested old flms, so we looked at Harold and Maude, which was much more stylized. We also looked at The Sunshine Family and early Jonathan Demme movies. One of the favorite flms that I shot was one of my frst, called Chain of Desire, the Venuzualan director was Temi Lopez. He came over to my loft and said one of the reasons he hired me was because he saw all the art books on my bookshelf, and he related to that, which I thought was interesting. I’ve always been surrounded by art and before I go into a meeting, I’ll just sort of look at my library and thumb through to get inspiration.

Do you think there’s a preconceived look regarding lighting for specifc genres? I think in Hollywood there is. But what’s exciting today is that anything goes and it’s exciting to be able to do something beyond what’s expected. Particularly with comedies, they don’t all have to be so fat and boring. Tastes are changing and people are accepting a much wider range of style. In some of the bigger movies, directors are getting into some exciting visuals. But what bothers me are directors who are totally exploiting style without substance. I think there’s a lot of fear when they’re starting out that they don’t know how to deal with the actors, so it’s easier to focus on the visuals. I try to gain the director’s trust so that I can give them the space to learn how to work with the actors and to have that sacred space and time with the actors. I always like to light the actors so that both eyes are lit. I feel like no matter what the subject matter, the soul of a person comes out through seeing both eyes. I love the human face and I really make it my business to make sure these actors shine on screen. I’m a bit of a soft light freak. My crew is saying, “Ok, Softer? Are you kidding?” But yeah, I like softer. I’ve gotten a little bit more conservative on how I light women as I get older.

Do you like or expect a director to know specifc focal lengths and to understand the concept of depth of feld? They might not understand the exact focal length, so I bring a director’s viewfnder when we’re scouting. When we’re setting up, I often look at rehearsals

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through the fnder and then show the director. I do think that it’s important that the concept of depth of feld be understood.

How specifc do you like directors to be regarding composition or do you prefer to compose yourself? Well I guess I’ve been lucky, because I usually compose myself. There was one director I worked with who was very specifc about the shots he wanted, although he didn’t necessarily know how to communicate what lens focal length. But in that case, I’ll put up a lens and he’ll say yes or no, or maybe “I want a little wider.” I try to fnd what’s in his head. I hope that next time I work with him, I’ll have a clearer idea of what he wants before we shoot. But I haven’t worked with too many that are composition specifc.

Gordon Willis talks about turning off the lights, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” Ok now you’re sitting there in the dark and he goes “yeah this is good.” It’s funny because I am not known for turning off lights. I actually use a lot of lights. I was working with a crew in Connecticut and the assistant camera (AC) said, “You really like to light, don’t you?” I always see light and I do have a passion for it and I’m always trying to fnesse it. Having said that, in these days of shooting digital, I use so few lights because the cameras are so fast. But I love to light and I’ll do it as long as I have the time, it’s what I thrive on.

In terms of lenses do you like to work with primes or zooms? Do you have like a preference? When I was doing very small movies both in New York and LA, in the early days I would use Panavision Primo zooms. I couldn’t usually afford all the Primo primes, so I would get super speeds for my night exteriors and I would live on my zooms as variable primes; they’re so sharp. I also use Arrifex Optimas and beautiful Cooke primes and the master primes, there are so many choices now. It’s often about where the relationship is with the producer. I don’t always have my choice which house to use. For a number of years, I just stayed with Panavision and then when they put so much of their research and energy into the Genesis, I felt they fell behind in the 35mm world. Then Arrifex came out with the ArriCams and it’s like wow! My ACs were like “you should start shooting with these.”Those cameras are defnitely twenty-frst century.

How much thought do you put into the color palette? I put in a lot of thought. I often don’t have an unlimited budget, so I try to do everything in camera or do tests at the beginning. I never know how much time I’m going to have in the digital intermediate (DI) suite. For example, on Piggybank I did a lot of skip bleach. On Loverboy (2005), I didn’t have a DI, that

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was the Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock flm, unbelievable cast, Campbell Scott, Marissa Tomei. I had an optical fnish. I took a lot of chances on that flm, but I did tests, I shot at 12 frames for all this dream sequence stuff with heavy fltration. I did a test and Kevin liked it, the producers said fne, we didn’t have a studio really and we didn’t have the money for a proper DI. On American Gun, there would have been no way to do that movie without a DI. I had to de-saturate the sequence in Oregon; we went for very little color in the sets and in the wardrobe and tested and then drained it in the telecine dailies, so we knew what we were doing by the time I did get to the DI. A Beautiful Life that was shot with super 16mm for exteriors and digital for the interiors, I was using extreme color and when I went to color correct this tiny, little movie on a 30-foot screen at Laser Pacifca with my usual timer, Mike Soa, our motto was “green is good.” Because I have the monitor, I can show the director, which makes color palette decisions very easy on digital. On The Six Wives of Henry Lefay, my goal was to make everybody look fantastic. It’s a comedy, so our close ups weren’t nearly as close as a lot of other movies I shoot and we were shooting widescreen and there were so many people in the movie, so we did a lot of two shots and it ft the 2:40 frame quite well. I constantly used two cameras the entire movie. The cameras are always moving in A Beautiful Life. Most of the movie is handheld, except for the safe haven of one warehouse where these – the runaway girl, the illegal immigrant ends up living. Then I moved to the dolly and it’s very fuid. I spoke with Alejandro, the director, about the difference between the chaotic world outside which is all handheld and a little frenetic and then this safer, more elegant world inside.

What about the color palate for November? There were three sections, blue, golden and white light. I did that with white balance and color gels and there were fuorescents in the store where we did not do a pure white balance. We actually took a white balance outside that had a mix of mercury vapor and sodium and some other cool white fuorescents that were out there. I remember when we were scouting at this little store in Buena Heights, we had the camera with us so I white balanced and then I showed it to Greg and we liked it because of the skin tone, although it was on the green side, it still had a little bit of color; it wasn’t a monochromatic green. We were going to shoot in three days, and I was so paranoid that it wouldn’t hold the white balance over the weekend. But it did and then I had to match the B camera to it, and it worked.

It must have been fun shooting Mapplethorpe on flm again, old school style? It was great to be shooting flm again, such a pleasure. The director, Ondi Timoner, was a well-known documentarian being the only person to ever win the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance twice. This was a big deal.

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Mapplethorpe was her frst narrative and we both felt that it had to be flmed on Super 16mm. We really had to fght to get that and lost a day because of it. We shot the movie in nineteen days instead of twenty, which for a period flm in New York City, was insane, but we did it. The only reason we were fnally able to shoot flm was that Kodak had just opened a lab in Long Island City. I also had to concede to use only one camera, because we couldn’t afford the additional flm stock. We did have another package with us, and we tried to get a “B” camera whenever possible, because with only nineteen days you want to get coverage. What made it quick for me and so fuid, was that I operated. I had a female frst AC, the second AC was a woman, the loader was a woman. I mean, we were powerful.

Did you shoot on the 416? I had used it when it frst came out, and then of course, everybody went to digital and Alexa. Yet it was so terrifc because it’s small and I could just jump in a car because Robert was often in a car with various lovers. The other gift to shooting Super 16 was how bad the video tap looks because they were never upgraded to be HD in any real sense of the word. People were not congregated in the same way around a video village. We did have one, but it was really to see performance and to check continuity, not lighting.

Do you like working in television or independent flms? What is your preference? I’ll do what interests me. The television schedule can be a little rough, but with alternating DPs, it’s not as bad. I don’t have any children, so I could have worked in television full time. But instead the choice I made was to work really hard for short periods of time on a feature flm and then have time off. I would like to do bigger movies with more time. I would love to continue to shoot TV 101s because you get to design the look of the show. I’ll do small flms but when they don’t have distribution, it’s really heartbreaking. Like The Nines, which had Ryan Reynolds and Hope Davis, a really good cast and John August who’s a well-known screenwriter. Even though we didn’t have the longest release we got some great reviews, but there just wasn’t the money to get behind the advertising to let it simmer and word of mouth. Although they got a good release on DVD, we always want to see our work in the theaters. It’s always about box offce; IMDB Pro is scary because producers are looking at the box offce numbers for DPs! It’s ironic because the bigger the budget, the easier it is for the DP because there’s more time, more equipment, more crew, it’s just ironic.

Of all the flms you’ve photographed so far, do you have one that stands out as a particular favorite? Either in terms of your experience on it or the way it came out. Going back to 1991, one of the frst flms I shot, Chain of Desire, I am still amazed that we made that flm for so little money in New York back in the

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day. I got a Spirit Award nomination. I’m very proud of it to this day. I took a lot of chances. I still like that movie and I also had a great time. When I moved to California, I got a movie called Lush Life, that was about New York session musicians, starring Jeff Goldblum and Forest Whitaker. It was amazing because we had Lennie Niehaus doing the music, big bands, and we had very little time to shoot it, but we made it work. I know that one reason they hired me was they thought I could make the Paramount lot look like New York. I also got a lot of movies in the desert, which was such a great experience for me because I grew up in the Midwest, then I lived in New York, and to shoot these desert flms was so exotic. When I came to LA, I was doing one movie after another. They were all small, yet one I really enjoyed was called Nevada. It was about a bunch of women in this little town because all the guys had gone off to the mine during the week. The cast was Amy Brenneman, Kirstie Alley, Gabrielle Anwar, Bridgette Wilson and Kathy Najimy. This really cool group of women. We shot in the summer and it was hot as hell. I remember I did a lot of handheld on the Panafex, yet it was balanced, unlike a lot of the digital cameras today. So even though it was heavy, I was fne. Because the crew were all out in the sun and we never went into air conditioning, we adapted. But the actors would come in from air conditioning and they wouldn’t last very long because they were melting. There were so many women in the cast and one of my ACs was a woman. But nobody in electric in those days. I did pretty well for a while. started doing more documentaries, which I also enjoyed. Another great job was the Amnesty International World Tour, Rock and Roll Tour with Sting, and Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and Bruce Springsteen. Weeks around the world. It was an amazing experience doing something good for human rights, for amnesty, and so much rock and roll.

Has it been more diffcult being a woman cinematographer starting out in the 1980s? I never really liked talking about being a woman DP, because I’m a DP and I happen to be a woman; however, there is a lifestyle issue. It was very clear when I was moving from gaffer to cinematographer that I had to be available to take projects that would be anywhere at any time. That said, I couldn’t imagine how I would have raised a child. Even today, there are not a lot of guys who want to be with a woman who is on the road a lot. But women are very used to their guy being on the road in our business, some are lucky enough to go with them and that’s what keeps the marriage going. But there is a very high divorce rate because people are separated for long periods of time. So, not being able to raise kids is a sacrifce that I had to make.

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It is so gratifying today to see these women with children who are able to have partners who understand the career as well as co-parenting. My generation? Oh, God. I mean, my boyfriend of seven years back then was pissed off when I brought a cat home. That cat has come on the road with me since he was four-months old. He’s been everywhere, and now he’s 17. So, I’m of a generation where it was not an option that you would be able to be on set pregnant or that you would be able to have a child. It seemed like if you wanted this career, that was the sacrifce you had to make. It is amazing that the women DPs today keep working while they are pregnant, which shows that there is more acceptance. But accommodations need to be made for them, such as a private place to pump breast milk. I had a woman camera assistant who was extremely talented, but she made the decision to go back to school, she’s since had three kids and really changed her life. She was one of the best camera assistants I have ever had, really intuitive focus puller and we would do these huge multi camera shoots. I remember we did a Pink Floyd show and she was in charge of all the cameras. I wondered if she looked at me and saw how hard my life was and made the decision not to do it. It has always been rough, at every level, and that’s not so healthy for a marriage with children. I’m a lot more relaxed about it now, I can’t force people to hire me and I don’t want to be hired where there is any discrimination in their heads, where they think women can’t do it. I happen to think that women have incredible eyes (for light and composition) and women in the theater have always been the most brilliant lighting designers right from the beginning. Why not in motion pictures? I don’t know. Women have always been great on the set.

It’s very diffcult for women directors to compete with men, but why is it that when women do get in positions of power that they don’t support other women? They don’t always, I don’t know why. But I do have to say that I have worked with some wonderful women, Cheryl Hines and Kathryn Dieckman for example. There was one movie I did before Motherhood where there was a woman director, but in all the previous years that I’ve been shooting, there were none. I see a lot more women directing now, especially in television. There are some women that really like that camaraderie, women producer, director, DP.

Do you have any interest in directing? It seems like the doors are opening now for more women directors. I have not been offered the chance to direct in television, I would like to be.

I’m surprised. I am actually trying to do a short, so I have a reel.

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After all the shooting you’ve done, you need a director’s reel? I used to direct when I frst started shooting. But I had to make my own flm because when I came up in New York as a gaffer, it was all commercials and narratives and most of the work at that point was documentary. At that time, I didn’t have a documentary that I’d shot, so I made my own, and it was very successful. I got into New Directors/New Films, which is very prestigious. I was hired to do an hour-long PBS documentary on women artists. I also directed and shot a very arty black and white dance flm. But people were confused, especially back then because if women tried to do more than one thing, we were considered dilettantes. My true love was in the visual arena, so I stopped directing. Today, I could do both, but back then, I just remember there were certain people, women I knew, that were shooting, and then they were making their own flms. They had a rough time getting work because people didn’t think they were serious. We also had to compete with the guys.

What advice would you give anyone wanting to be a cinematographer these days? What do they need to know? They have to know that they will have to sacrifce their personal life and they must never take no for an answer. If they feel there is some kind of barrier to them getting work, they won’t get it. If I didn’t think I could get the work, I wouldn’t still be doing it. This is my passion in life, to create images. When times are slow, you still have to live and live well. Do all the things you didn’t have time to do when you are working, go to museums, go to concerts, go to the movies, read books, see your friends and enjoy life. I know I will work again but there are many people that are insecure, so they can’t live without anxiety when they aren’t working. If you are one of those people, you really have to think twice because it’s not going to get any easier. If every time you look through that camera you are so excited and nothing else makes you that happy, then you will just do it and fnd a way to make it work. I walk into a room and I see in light, I’m a very visual person, in fact I can visually remember where I put things even in a mess. It actually helps when you go through a rehearsal, I would write notes of things that I want to change, but I don’t because I have a visual memory. When you don’t get a job, it’s usually not personal, you have no idea what’s going on in the producer or director’s mind or what the situation is; that is the downfall when you are repeatedly rejected you just have to keep going and know that the right project will come. There were so many interviews I went up for, but never against a woman, it was always a guy and he always got the job. I would hear from the producers who would say, “Oh, they loved you, you were the second choice.” A few years ago, right before I did The Family for ABC, I started going to career counselor-type therapists because I was having a lot of problems getting

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into decent-size movies and television again. It was ageism, besides the sexism. I remember that therapist said, “Well, okay let’s work out a plan B.” I said, There is no plan B. I am not going to give up. Even if I have to do low budget again, I’m going to do it because that’s my comfort zone, that’s what I love, and I will work no matter what on whatever I can.

You’ve become a role model and kind of an iconic fgure as a female cinematographer. You’ve been an inspiration for many women because you’ve sustained your career for a long time. Do you have any advice you would like to share? Well, one of my great pleasures has been to mentor young women. I do a lot of seminars, certainly during COVID, I’ve done a million of them. I want to encourage women to not give up. It is so much easier today. They can build a reel because shooting digital is a lot easier than when we were trying to build a reel with flm. It makes me so happy to see the numbers of women growing in the ASC with these young, talented women. I want the studios to hire them. They will do so much better work when they’re given a budget to work with. A director friend of mine said, “Can you help me fnd a woman DP?” Because I wasn’t available to shoot for her, so we looked through a ton of reels, and she said, “You can tell these women have talent, but they have nothing at their disposal in terms of gear and situations where the guys have fgured out a way to have a much slicker reel.” That hurts us. My words of wisdom. Don’t give up. If there is no plan B, fnd a way to pay the rent, but make it always your plan A, and you will fnd the way.

What are your plans for the future, just keep working? Oh, I hope so. I used to say I was going to drop dead on the set when I’m 100, but I moved it up to 104 because Olivia de Havilland just passed away at 104. If I keep working out and eating healthy, getting sleep, going to museums when we can go again. If I keep opening my eyes and ears to music and nature, I don’t see why I should stop. If I can still stand on my feet, I will be working.

John Seale, ASC, ACS

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John Seale is a prolifc cinematographer who initially caught my attention with a series of flms he photographed in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, including favorites such as The Dead Poets Society, Rainman, The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Mosquito Coast, Witness, Lorenzo’s Oil, Gorilla’s in the Midst and City of Angels, just to name a few. As a flm student at the time, the beauty of the images in these flms lingered in my mind. The natural quality of his light and how it so effectively wrapped itself around each story stayed with me long after the flm was over. His more current flms captured a whole new audience with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). He also photographed The Tourist (2010), Poseidon (2006), Spanglish (2004) and The Perfect Storm (2000). It is no surprise that John has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography fve times; for Witness (1986), Rainman (1989), The English Patient (1996), Cold Mountain (2003) and Mad Max; Fury Road (2015). He took home the Oscar for the beautifully photographed The English Patient. He has worked with an impressive list of directors such as Peter Weir, Anthony Minghella, Rob Reiner, Brad Silberling, Wolfgang Peterson, Lawrence Kasdan, James L. Brooks, Ron Howard, Barry Levinson, Michael Apted and Sydney Pollock. John began his career in Australia working as a camera assistant with aspirations to work for National Geographic shooting documentaries. He began his collaboration with Peter Weir as a camera operator for Russell Boyd on The Last Wave (1977) and Gallipoli (1981). In 1986, Peter Weir brought Seale to the United States to shoot Witness. His collaboration with Peter Weir continued with The Mosquito Coast (1987) and The Dead Poets Society (1989). He began his Academy Award-winning collaboration with Anthony Minghella with The English Patient in 1996 continuing with The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Cold Mountain (2003). John also shot two flms with Rob Reiner: An American President (1995) and The Ghosts of Mississippi (1996). With Wolfgang Peterson, John beautifully photographed two big action flms: The Perfect Storm (2000) and Poseidon (2006). As a fan of his work, I was shocked when I got a call from John saying with his classic Australian drawl, ‘I’m driving

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down La Cienega and I’ve got some time.’ I dropped what I was doing to meet with him for this pleasant conversation in Santa Monica.

You have worked with a variety of directors and have collaborated with Anthony Minghella several times. What aspects do you like in a director, like Anthony Minghella for example? English Patient was the second flm Anthony did through American money. I think he’s brilliant as a writer. People used to ask me what are you doing next? And I’d say it looks like we’re doing a book called English Patient and they would say, ‘Oh my god that’s fantastic but who would write a script out of that book? It’s such a beautifully written book,’ and I said, Anthony Minghella is writing it, he’s really quite brilliant. In the end, I do think we made the flm that he wanted to make. A couple of directors have said to me, ‘I go through your resume and fnd that directors have used you again, there must be something in that.’ Some of them I would have loved to work with again but I only ended up doing one flm because of other commitments. With Ron Howard, I did one little flm with him in New York (The Paper in 1994) and then he rang and rang and rang for the next two flms and I couldn’t do them because I promised I would be home to see the kids through their fnal year exams of high school and of course, Ron went off and found another cameraman. You get very sad about it and you move on, but I’d still love to work with Ron again. I think the key is to set out to make the flm the director wants to make and even though it’s the same director the look of the next flm should be new. You have to wipe the slate clean from what you did on the last flm and start a new one as if you never shot a movie before. That’s why I like to take three to six months off between projects to try to have a quality of life and to clear my brain and recharge. By the end of four or fve months, I’m ready to go back to work. Let’s have a look at a new flm and start from scratch.

What would the frst meeting be like between you and a potential director? What would you bring to that meeting? Not too much, I read the script and I know that the director has thoughts in his mind of what it will look like. One very big director in particular said to me, ‘you don’t say much do you?’ But I do a lot of listening to get on to the director’s bandwagon. When I start shooting, I try to be an asset to him and the flm. In pre-production, the director and production designer have already done a lot of talking and I’ve got to catch up with that. I do a lot of listening until I think that I’ve found the track they’re on; then I can start contributing. Some directors are very elaborate as to what that frst meeting is, they go through the entire script, I’ve seen one cry at the emotional scenes and they do

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a little acting and I’m sitting there thinking this is going to be intense. Others don’t do anything. There was one director I couldn’t get any meetings with at all, so I couldn’t fnd the wavelength; then much later, we fnally went to lunch and I thought oh good now I can pick his brain and see what he’s really thinking, it was an hour and a half lunch and nothing was said about the movie. Just before he was going to leave, he gave me a book and said have a look at this it will give you an idea of what I’m thinking. It was quite thick, a coffee table book of still photographs of interiors of coffee houses in Europe. It was a gorgeous book and that’s all I got. So, we went off and shot this movie and it was academy nominated.

What was the movie? Rainman.

How do you feel about collaboration with a director? What is the ideal situation for you? Every flm should be approached as a collaborative effort with the director to create the look he has in his mind’s eye. When the director writes or reads a script he conjures up images of dark and light, maybe just broad brushstrokes, but often a director will say I always saw this as dark, not necessarily photographically dark, but there’s a darkness to the scene as an overall mood. So, it’s hyper critical for the cinematographer to do a lot of listening to the director in pre-production. The production designer comes on board much earlier than the cinematographer and may have already come up with sets, so the mood is starting to come through with the colors of the walls or a selection of a house. There are a million little things that you can observe from what the director and production designer have been talking about. It’s imperative that the cinematographer pays attention because if you blaze into something and you’ve got your own ideas and are fairly adamant about those ideas, then you’re not serving the needs of the director. The cinematographer has to jump on the director’s bandwagon; the director doesn’t jump on ours. I think that the cinematographer is really the servant of the director, not in a master servant way but in a collaborative way, so the director may go to you and say ‘so what do you think?’ and you bandy it about but you end up with an understanding that the director is the boss and it’s best to strive for a nice professional relationship. I would bring in the production designer as well because there are actually the three of us involved (the director, cinematographer and production designer). This power changes as you move towards production, the production designer starts out as the #1 right hand man, then the cinematographer comes in and starts shooting the flm and he becomes #1 right hand man, then the production designer drifts back a little bit, until the flm is fnished and the cinematographer joins the production designer and

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the editor when the pick-ups are being done. The director has all the sergeant majors to help him make the flm that he wants to make. I don’t think the cinematographer should be any more powerful in his demands or in his contribution than the production designer, the editor or the soundman. We are all little cogs fying around this great big center, the director, who is the boss. We’re all spinning around trying to make that one flm.

What attracts you to a project creatively? I like to get the script and clear everyone out, fnd a little spot in the sun if it’s winter and read it all the way through. Because to me it’s like sitting in the movie theater, the time you take to read the offstage lines and directions and dialog, if you read it all the way through, that’s generally how long the flm will be. If I start getting fdgety three quarters of the way through or I feel like it’s dragging a bit, that’s not a good sign. Once I fnish reading the script and close it up, I think to myself, would I pay $15 to sit in the theater and enjoy this movie for two hours? Basically, if I say yes to that, I’ll do it. For me, it’s not hinged on the visuals, they come later from conversations with the director. But if it’s something like Gorillas in the Mist and we’ll be deep in Africa crashing through the jungle with leeches, bloody lions and all of that, quite exciting. Shooting it documentary style that does come into it of course. With other flms, I think if we’re going to be on the sound stage at Sony for eight months, not that exciting, but if I enjoyed the script, I’ll do it. Of all of the flms I’ve done it was because I liked the scripts. I didn’t do them because of what I was going to gain from it photographically. I just want to make good flms. If I can sustain a good flm with cinematography, that’s great!

What personality traits do you like in a director? I like a director who is a collaborator, one who feels that you (the cinematographer) have something to contribute to the flm. So that when we get on the set, there’s a continuum and the director continues to include you in their creative thinking. There are some directors who just say ‘this is what we’re going to shoot.’ Others are very collaborative and others who don’t have a frm idea of what they want photographically, so in that case I nurture them along as best I can and try to make suggestions they can relate to. Since I’ve been around awhile, I think about how the editor will cut the shots and I try to give them good material to cut smoothly. This one director I worked with would get lost and I’d make suggestions on how to cover a scene to have an editorial buildup. If I take the director out of their safety zone, I don’t mean to, cinematographers can lead the director to where to go, photographically and editorially. There are a lot of cameramen who feel they could be the director, but I don’t agree with that. If I sense I have started to lead a director down my path, I stop immediately so they get back on their path; otherwise they lose control.

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When you read a script, what kind of notes do you make for yourself? Once I’ve read the script and decided to do it, and the negotiations are done, then I start to break it down with ideas I might have. Early on, I still don’t know what’s coming up with the director or the production designer and what they’ve organized, so I make my own notes and I generally get a bit critical about continuity. I’ll go through the script and break down each day. I like to know where one day fnishes and the next one begins. Because sometimes I have found on a script that one day can last 48 hours and I think what if that scene was dusk into night, it’s got a nice rhythm of light and it also breaks up a long visual day on the screen. It’s also a chance to move into a different lighting style. Little notes like ‘cut in at his arrival at the apartment and I could light for dusk and get him inside and we could do that day for night.’ But you don’t want to muck up the frst assistant director’s (AD’s) schedule either. I am loyal to frst AD’s schedule because that was my early training in Australia. You never went over schedule, you never went over budget, you never went into overtime, there was no money, you just shot the schedule. I can’t get that out of my brain, so I try to work things out on a technical basis to get a change in visualization that I think might help, but try to do it within the schedule. I’m not throwing a night shoot in for that one scene that you could do at dusk, maybe split days. I just write notes and little odd thoughts. Generally, a lot of the time once you get on the set, you may fnd the script has all been re-written and you’ve got to start again. But that’s all part of it, often you’ve had this dream photographically of a sequence that will look lovely and you fnd it’s been cut out. That’s why I don’t worry too much about the photography. I like to organize in pre-production because the only way in my mind to make things look reasonably good is to fgure out 95% of the problems before you get on set; that way 5% of the problems can be absorbed very quickly and easily. If the director suddenly says I don’t want to shoot that way, now I want to shoot this way at night, you are ready. I’ve learned little tricks like always carry black drapes and always patch in some lamps for sun replacement; then you’re ready so you can keep shooting. It’s a disaster to stop things for two hours to light something you should have lit during the daytime.

In pre-production, do you like to sit down with the director and work out shots and angles? Do you like to storyboard or do you prefer the director come to you with all of that worked out? In a flm like Perfect Storm which was special effects-driven you have to lock it down, so there are storyboards and everybody knows what the shots are for the placement of machinery, so the angles have to be decided in advance. In a way I’ve always hated that, I love it to be a little looser, but you can’t on a movie

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like that because then you are out of control. It would take you three hours to move something around because you suddenly decided to shoot it a different way, so you can’t do that. With Wolfgang (Peterson), he is very concise and goes through the storyboards and tells me what he likes, and it may change again, but by the time we get there to shoot, it’s locked. So, every night when the guys ask me where everything needs to be for the next day’s shooting, I can tell them the four wind machines need to come from here, and the boat needs to face north and I’ve got all the directions right and all of that technical stuff for the special effects, so that sort of flm needs it. Other flms like Rain Man, or English Patient or Dead Poets Society are what I call the ‘What ifs’ hey what if? If you’re ready, you can do it because it hasn’t got machinery, there are actors and a camera so you can jump from one thing to another quite readily.

The English Patient is a great example of the use of very specifc complimentary colors between past and present, was this a conscious choice for you to choose the blues for the present and the amber colors for the past? That was a preset pre-production idea of the fnal flm; the memories in Africa were always warm and yellow because those memories were fantastic times of love and adventure in the desert. When we come back to the present in Italy, theoretically the Germans have come through and bombed everything, so Anthony would say these Mediterranean pines are dark green almost black, the soil has been turned over by plows and it’s black, so we have a dark countryside of post war, and we put little fames in the distance to give the feeling that this was still happening. Anthony’s fear at any given time was that he would have to put in title cards back and forth ‘meanwhile back in Italy,’ and he didn’t want to do that, so we tried to think of a color to separate the two stories without any subtitles. I was considering de-saturating Italy, but it’s a wonderful thing because in pre-production we thought we would de-saturate and trim a little more gold into the desert, but in hindsight it just happened. When you have already thought about it, your brain is already going in that direction.

What kind of visual references have you used in communication with a director? Or what have they used with you? For Witness, Peter Weir referenced the paintings of Vermeer and many people see the flm and see Vermeer, left to right window, single source reference light and that’s exactly what we did, copied Vermeer. We went down to the Philadelphia Art Museum and Peter bought the book on Vermeer and that was a big reference for the flm. Peter Weir is very visual, he had a whole board pinned with photographs, pieces of material he thought might be nice for her

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coat, sometimes he’d put in extra boards, keep pinning things up on storyboards, a clipping out of a magazine would be there, so you could go peruse that for his references. Sometimes we steal from other flms, a director might show you clips from other flms on their computers, they’ll go look at this, love this, so you think okay we’re going to copy that? And they go, well it’s not copying, it’s inspired by (laughs). But everything is a reference as far as I’m concerned. For each individual flm, the director and you bounce ideas and then you start expanding them in your own mind. That’s what I call jumping on the bandwagon. Every flm is different because of what each director brings to it. One flm we were going to de-saturate for an hour almost down to black and white and then run for about 18 minutes total black and white and then when they found the cure, come back to full color. It was a wonderful visual idea starting out in color, boy gets sick, starts to deteriorate and it goes down to black and white, so when he’s rock bottom and they don’t think they can ever pull him out of it, it’s black and white. (Lorenzo’s Oil), but then it never went out that way, because back then with chemical grading and wet gate printers trying to de-saturate with the black and white, it was complicated.

So, it was a concept that was never really executed. It was never done, in three months of timing I think George got to reel 2, so it would have taken a year and a half to do the entire flm the way it was going. He rang me and said John I can’t do it, the studio is pounding me to fnish the flm, it was such a shame because it was such a great visual idea, so it went out in full color. A funny little thing happened on Witness, I was like everybody else back in the eighties, every scene had to have smoke; it was the best flter you could get. Then Kelly McGillis started coughing like crazy and blamed the smoke, so Peter said, ‘John can we go without the smoke?’ From that day on, I never used smoke again. Except in a flm like Poseidon where I used it all the time because the situation would have smoke in the air from all the rubbish burning and I needed it for the torches. But on Witness, Peter questioned the smoke due to Kelly’s coughing, but the thought that it would look like everybody else’s flm at the time was also true; if everybody else uses smoke, then they will all look the same, so I haven’t used it much since.

Was that an eighties stylistic thing to use smoke for atmosphere? It came out of the Australian flms of the 1970s and into the 1980s. In America, it was Blade Runner and that was full of smoke and looked amazing. I look at the flms now and I think, what do you do that for? Although on Lorenzo’s Oil a very interesting thing happened, George (Miller) called me over and said

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Johnny this is the music for the hospital scene, do you want to listen to it? It was so ethereal and I thought I know he’s going to do a long dissolve here and I said that music is so beautiful, if we put a touch of smoke in that corridor, we can pick up the shafts of sunlight. I knew when the sun would be there from the surveys, so he said, ‘okay do it,’ and I said ‘it will be very light, just so the scene has an ethereal look.’ So, a visual reference can come out of music as well. Basically, you are using everything you are seeing and hearing, whatever moves you creatively.

How do you approach specifc genres? Do you think there is a preconceived look to genre flms that should be adhered to? A happy flm should be a brightly lit flm because your mood changes with the density of the photography. I feel that some of the boys are doing something that may be a bit heavy, too obvious a genre flm. I don’t like to take the audience out of the movie. If you walk into an offce and suddenly fnd it’s so dark and you can hardly see the people, it’s ridiculous. I go to movies and think, that’s too dark, it’s not logical and I’m a bit boringly logical. I like the logics of continuity and I like the logics of lighting the situation. But as soon as you go period or futuristic, you can do anything you feel because nobody’s been there. I always tell the color timers when we are coming out of a dark night scene, make the day scenes bright so the audience feels like they need their sunglasses, because that’s life, and they go really? One guy said to me the other guys tell me to bring the day scenes down so it’s not so jarring. I say give me the jar! Because it’s like pop, now it’s day.

Do you think that it’s possible to go against genre, how would you change the preconceived idea of the genre? Say with a romantic comedy? I haven’t really done any Hollywood romantic comedies, but I know that the guys say they have to light it bright. The producers and the studios say this is a romantic comedy and I want to see everybody and everything. To go against it would be to light for reality, to go even further against it would be to light it as though it was dark, and they don’t let you do that. There is a whole edict in Hollywood, you’ve got your leading actor and leading lady, people are paying $20 million dollars for those actors and want to see their eyes, so you can never cross light them. Producers say there’s $40 million bucks up there and I want to see their eyes. There’s a lot of things you have to play with and balance out to get what you and the director want and not get the studio on your backside telling you to reshoot it because they want to see where their money is going. I don’t really think you could go against the Hollywood genre of bright, airy, glossy, colorful for romantic comedies.

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So, there is a preconceived idea of genre flms? Yes, I think so, but what I love about watching the flms of today is that they are fghting that a bit. I think there’s a gear change going on in Hollywood right now. Maybe some are going a little too far with hand-held camera, available light, dark, moody and out of focus, to me it doesn’t always work. If it’s not written and you haven’t got a decent bloody story to start with, then energizing the photography or hand holding or double printing still doesn’t make it a good flm.

It also makes you very aware of the process and the fact that it is a flm. Some would say how was that flm? The camera wouldn’t stand still, it was so deliberate. I have done that but it was in the rhythm and the fow of the story, such as in Poseidon, we started off with a traditional Hollywood style, tracking shots nice and steady and level, then in the second act, it started to get a little wobbly with the camera, like what’s going to happen? Then in the third act, we tried to wind the whole flm up. I think it worked; I think I actually could have gone a little further. The camerawork and movement have to ft into the performance and the emotion, that way the audience won’t notice it, but the energy is all there.

Do you operate your own camera? I love operating because I always use a zoom and if I think I know what the director wants out of the scene and the actors are giving it, I often zoom past somebody and into the other actor because I think they are coming on and I turn them into #1 by simply just driving gently past the other. Then I’ve got to race back to the monitor and say ‘I’m sorry, it’s a terrible thing I did there but I just got so carried away and I just pressed the button’ and Anthony (Minghella) would get this wry grin on his face and say ‘I loved it lets get his reverse now.’ All the little ideas, everything talked about comes about in little ways as you make the flm. When you are close with the director, you know what they want photographically. I love the emotion of the camera, how it shoots the actors, it’s so fascinating. The operating could be handheld and rough at times, but if you can lull the audience into sitting back and being totally absorbed by the flm, then I think you win. You can also drive them out of it by doing something technically wrong one might say, or suddenly change gear, but I love that. I dislike movies that go along at an even visual or editorial pace. Lately, I’ve noticed some flms are handheld and you get to a scene where there is important dialog between two people and they can’t keep it still! They have to walk around them in circles and think that it’s visual energy; I disagree. I think in a movie with a lot of action, that’s where you move the camera, that’s where you get your visual energy. But when you have to record plump lines, why not stop gently and listen, so the audience has to listen too, then you can do anything you like.

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A flm should have waveforms and either too many flms are way down there and have slow waveforms that they dribble along and just stop and you think what happened to that? What was I watching then? Then others are so high energy, such high visual energy that they roar along on the top and then they stop, and you think what happened there? I love movies that have waveforms, peaks and valleys. That’s why I love operating because I feel in a way you have control of that and working in collaboration with a director, also being the operator you can say, ‘do you think maybe we should be still in this scene and just be listening?’

Do you like when a director knows focal length and depth of feld? No, hate it. I’d rather they didn’t. I hate directors’ viewfnders, it’s so 1930s. I just like the director standing there saying ‘this is nice, I’d like a bit of the wall there and about this wide’ and I love it when they say okay set it up. Because I always use zooms you see, I don’t use primes; to me they are 1930s as well. I get into some arguments for that, but I noticed that some of the guys are swinging over now using high-speed negative, which I’ve used for twenty years. I haven’t used any other negative for twenty years. I always use the high-speed negative and zoom lenses. I care about the quality. I used to get in so much trouble, they would say but the zoom lenses don’t have the quality and I’d say yeah but it’s consistent if that’s the look of the flm all of the way through. The audience will get over it in the frst three shots if it’s not as sharp as they are used to. Then you get people who use prime lenses and shove a bloody flter in front to take away the crispness. I love the change of focal length. I’ll do it in the middle of nearly every shot I operate on; you’ll see the corners of the frame moving. It’s called the imperceptibles, you just slightly push in and adjust. You can see it with your brain, but you can’t see it with your eye, I just love it.

Could you talk about the utilization of color palette within a flm? I’ve never done a bleach bypass. You can do a skip bleach in a digital intermediate (D)I now and you can also de-saturate in the photochemical process, it goes a little blue because you have to get through the red to get to the blue, so it’s not a true de-saturation, but its subtle and if you have a good timer, that can just do it all the way through. I found that was good enough. I tried using softening flters on a movie once and I got two days into the dailies and I just hated it, so I hauled them out. Since I use zooms and super 35mm flm, which gives an automatic softening, by adding flters you’re exacerbating that look. I say let’s just shoot it and we’ll worry about it later. I read in the magazines that some of the guys use three different negatives and Promist flters and bleach bypass and I think what does all that mean? I

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talk to assistants and they tell me we had twenty magazines with three different negatives, and we had to swing everything over from one negative and back to the other negative. And I think why? Just put the high-speed in and shoot it. I get all these questions by experienced cinematographers asking me what did you do on the beach at midday? I used 500ASA flm with an 85ND12 that brings the speed down to 40ASA, slow speed stock! I’ve found that by having the same negative, you’ve got the same contrast ratio all the way through, the same color palette off the negative and the same grain structure. Back in the old days when grain was a big factor on the high-speed negative, we used to have to fnd the moment when we’d swing over from a high-speed negative to the daylight negative so it wasn’t noticeable. After a while, I thought why fght it? I tried high-speed negative all the way through and it was fantastic. I had the one flm stock with six magazines full of it. It also does wonderful technical things like when shooting at midday then matching dusk, changing the color of the flters, getting the red out because it’s all going down to tungsten, reading it with a color temperature meter of course, but every time you pull a bit of red out the ASA (speed and sensitivity of the flm) went up, so by the time you got on a really red night like out in the desert on The Hitcher, it would be tungsten so there was no 85 flter at all and I’m up to 500ASA right at the end of the day when you need every bit of stop you can get. I’d be at 500ASA ready to go and those other poor buggers are trying to change magazines, reload to high-speed stocks, yell, yell, yell, you know, I’d just say pull the 85 out, pull the NDs out, force develop past there, open the shutter a bit, you’d be shooting when it’s nearly dark. That’s a system I use. I love the naturalness of available light. Deliberately trying to bend color unless it’s for a specifc purpose say like for English Patient where the Italian stuff was cooler to me may be heading towards making the look of the flm more obvious than the flm itself.

Did you prefer working with Kodak or Fuji flm stocks? I used Fuji on Mosquito Coast, that’s when I frst swung over to the high-speed flm stocks, we did full tests with all three negatives. Peter Weir wanted a dirty jungle, he wanted it to be ‘black, dark, greasy and uninviting.’ He didn’t want the audience to feel that it was paradise. He wanted Ali Fox (Harrison Ford’s character) to be the only one who saw the paradise in it. I wanted the audience to feel they would never go there; it’s ugly. We tested all the negatives; Agfa loved the greens. The Mission was being done about the same time and they used Agfa on that, and it was beautiful. Eastman (Kodak) was clean and cold and blue and at the time the Fuji was dirty. So, we went with the Fuji. That’s when I thought why don’t I use the high-speed? It’s a tropical jungle with a heavy canopy of trees and with zooms at midday you’re shooting wide open, because no light gets down there. I fgured I’ve got to use the high-speed negative and then I thought why even bother with the slow-speed negative?

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Do you do much pre-production testing? I used to. In my early days, I would test flters and try to color match all the lenses and you can get pretty anal when you’re beginning. But I don’t do anything now as long as the camera boys are happy with the focus and the quality matching. I do get them to do a color correction test on paper just to make sure they are in the ballpark, because two points of printing light can change everything.

Do you think there is a time of day that is hard to recreate on a set? What would be a real challenge? Creating any type of daylight on a set is a challenge. Shooting on sets is hard even though you’ve got full control. You have to bring in your visual mind’s eye to recall all of the things that happen in natural light. I remember shooting a car traveling shot on a sound stage in Malaysia and I lit it to match what the second unit already shot and I’m looking through the camera and I’m thinking this doesn’t look real, but I couldn’t quite work out why it didn’t look real. I’m wracking my brain trying to fgure out why this doesn’t look real? I’ve got the sun where it should be, we’ve got people rocking the car, rear projector is going so we’ve got the road in the background but it’s not real and I thought what would be out there while we were shooting that we haven’t got here? Then it suddenly dawned on me, the windshield was angled, and the hot sun would always refect in the windshield. We’re always trying to get rid of that refection, but you can’t, so you live with the sun going through the trees. What we did was put in a little piece of natural light that bugs the hell out of you when you are out there and I deliberately put it in on the soundstage but I was able to put it where I wanted it and we put tree branches and leaves through it so it was sparkling and suddenly the energy of that frame not only became a lot more real but energized because of that fickering bright light down on the bottom corner created a whole energy, it gave movement and reality. For The English Patient we were on the stage when Juliet Binoche is in the monastery upstairs. I was desperately trying to get reality in it, we had painted backdrops, which are always hard to light to look real. I asked for pigeons because in reality they would be there. They thought I was on drugs, but the production designer said ‘I’ll put all the bird poo down the wall.’ I said could we have the pigeons boxed in so they could sit there quietly? Then everybody thought I was crazy, but I loved it because immediately it’s a little thing where people would say it’s got to be real because pigeons are there. It’s a way of schmoozing the audience into relaxing and believing that it’s reality.

Is the camera movement something that you think about in pre-production or more organically on set? I like to use movement more organically on set. In the early days, we had these great big Titan cranes. We used one in the desert on The Hitcher and it was very

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exciting because you’re 27’ up in the air and crane down and the kid walks out of the door and you crane down more, but when you boil it down, the editor is going to sit there and say the top shot is great because it’s the desert and the kid is walking out and then starts that interminable drop and the editor is waiting and he’s snoring because it’s boring and sure enough chop, chop he cuts the whole middle section out. You’ve got the top of the shot when the camera starts to move and cut, then the bottom part where there’s movement again. As you go through life, you watch your flms and you think you’ve done this 155’ foot tracking shot, and you fnd there’s only 10’ of it left in the movie. If it’s not going to end up in the movie, you shouldn’t shoot it! On The English Patient, Anthony (Minghella) said to me, don’t ever crane higher than eye height because no one can do that. His visual reality was that no one can crane higher, you can’t just elevate to a crane shot. I thought that was interesting. Then you hear the stories like Roman Polanski who would never use a cameraman taller than himself because then you put the camera at Polanski’s eye level, a taller cameraman might put it higher and he couldn’t reach it, it’s not his point of view of the world for that flm. It’s an interesting psychological way of interpreting images. I just hate movement that I know is going to end up on the editing room foor. That’s why I try desperately as an operator to say to the director if I lock this off out of frame, I want to do the pan and see all of that, but if nothing is happening, the actors are not talking and you know the producers always want to shorten the flm, so snip, snip they’ll cut the middle out. It’s a lesson that I feel is hard learned and long learned. Sometimes you have to sacrifce goodlooking shots at the shooting stage because they may not end up in the movie.

Do you have a preference for dolly or Steadicam? I’ve used the Steadicam, it’s a great tool. But it’s not the be all and end all. Most of the directors I’ve worked with recently dislike it immensely. I’ve had to argue with the Steadicam operators about putting a 50mm lens on, he’d say no a 28mm and I’d argue nothing shorter than a 50mm or it won’t cut, this wide foating shot. This is not going to make them look good, they’d rather put the 21mm on and foat through the room like a helicopter. But that’s why directors don’t want them; they don’t want the camera looking like a helicopter inside the room. When I was operating on English Patient and Cold Mountain, I used a mini jib, it’s a little tiny jib, about 6’ long and you put the camera on that and I go anywhere on that, swing down and up and around. I used that in practically every shot in Cold Mountain, even inside I’d punch a hole in the wall and have this little crane I could gently move and swing it around. Anthony said very nicely at the end of the movie that that little piece of machinery gave him a 20% better flm than he would have thought. I like to use the camera as a viewfnder, that’s why I like zooms because you can just change the focal length a little bit.

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On The English Patient, when they are in the car and being buried by the sand, I had set up for an over the shoulder shot of Ray for Kristen and I could hear this tapping and I thought what is that? I’m looking through the camera and I started to pan and her arm was going out of frame and she was going to look up at him, I found her fnger tapping on the window like that, so I just gently stopped there and I knew that Anthony was watching the monitor and came back to the over the shoulder and I heard his voice quietly say, let’s start there. So, I started on that, and when I saw the fnished flm, it was phenomenal what they did with this tapping on the window with this really slow dissolve with Ray in the monastery and then slowly, this hand tapping on the glass which came right over his face and then they were back in the desert. So, that was one of those lucky mistakes. I tell students all the time you’ve got to search for the story all the time, you’ve got to know the script and know the story, and search for little things that happen. Because that’s what makes the flms you know?

If you were to pick a format what would be the one that you would suggest? A lot of people push us into shooting in the anamorphic format and I used to shoot with anamorphic lenses but they’re so damn slow, they’re 4.5 and it’s a constant battle to get interiors lifted up, you can do it of course. I resisted Super 35mm for a long time but then I shot a flm where I had torches and low light levels and had to have 2.8 so I went into Super 35mm. In the old days, super 35mm had a prism that optically converted Super 35 to anamorphic and everything was fne up to that moment and that prism was the failure. The end print result for the cinemas in full anamorphic squeeze were a disaster, so I resisted using Super 35 for that reason. Then they solved the prism problem, so I swung over. But for English Patient, Anthony and I sat down for a long time and talked about format, why would we go anamorphic, why wouldn’t we go 1:85? Because 1:85 is an actor’s format, you can get a nicer single out of a 1:85. But anamorphic is a whole different bag in terms of coverage, so Anthony and I went back and forth, no studio was there to tell us what they wanted, Harvey Weinstein had footed the bill and he wasn’t hammering us about format. We mulled it over for a long time and fnally, we decided on 1:85 because it’s a movie about people in the desert, not a desert with people in it, so we shook hands on that. A lot of people argued deserts are a fat format that anamorphic fts perfectly and we knew that, but we also argued against David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, it’s fantastic, unbelievable, but we didn’t want to do that. Anthony said, I will never want to start on a beautiful mountain range and come down and fnd the movie, we’ll always cut to the movie and I had to remind him a few times when he’d ask ‘could we start there and come down?’ I’d say ‘no we can’t Anthony, the camera is not programmed to do that.’ Because you end up

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cutting those shots out in the end anyway, so we worked very hard to set up a shot that had that in the background so then the cars or whatever would bring you right into the movie. I think it helps keep the pace up, but the majesty of it is still there. I like that because it’s making the movie frst and the cinematography comes second.

What do you think of digital technologies and working with the digital intermediate? I love the DI. It’s one of the greatest tools we’ve ever had. I always have an appreciation for the actors’ problems, that they have to maintain this emotion for four or fve hours, so I’m trying to help as much as I can by going as fast as I can with the relighting. What I’ve found with the DI is if suddenly the sun goes in and its gone black, you think gosh I’ve got to peel that ND off the window, but the actress is crying and she’s ready, I just say okay I’m ready because I know I can roto scope the window, pump it back up and put it in again. The DI means that the actress can do her thing and we’re not slowing her up. There are lots of little things you can do to make a better flm. Not necessarily to make us (the cinematographers) look better, but just to make a better flm. I always try to put a pin prick of light in the eye, a little inky way, way down that doesn’t light them but refects the eye, or a little glint down here, because you can’t see the eye but you know it’s there and to me it just makes all the difference. When we were doing Cold Mountain, we didn’t have a DI and I said that’s okay, but when we got to the battle scene I said, uh oh, I’m in trouble here, we’re tilting up and down from the edge of this crater and I can’t get the grads in, so Anthony said all right, how about I go and push for a DI for the battle scene and I said thank you very much. But thank goodness we got it for the entire flm. Because you are able to trim little things, it’s like the fnal brush strokes. The basic thing for me with a DI is you speed up the set and that’s where it helps everybody. I’m a great believer in staying on schedule and budget.

The DI just helps you to keep shooting faster, you aren’t shooting differently necessarily, but you are shooting more economically? Exactly, you know it’s like a hot wall or something and the gaffer will say that wall is hot should we knock it down or something and I’ll just say DI. He’ll say I can do it and I’ll say how long 20 minutes? He’ll say yeah? I’ll say no, we’ll roll; just DI and we can track it out as the camera pans, fantastic. I don’t know what the guys who want to stay true blue (traditional photochemical process) are thinking, whether it’s just simply because they want to put it all on the negative and it’s my negative and nobody can change it. But the studio can change it anyway.

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I had a terrible DI once, that was a disaster, because of the control the producers can get, what they can do with the image that I had created on the negative, where I feel it was just a polishing thing but they were changing the whole concept of the visuals.

So, that’s the whole downside of the DI. It is and it is going to continue to be a downside for all cinematographers. There are some terrible stories, like directors not telling the DP that they are doing a DI, and he does it himself. Or the power-hungry executive producers who do their own DI, this is a true story, the director is doing a DI in one room, and down the hall the DP is doing his DI and unbeknown to him the execute producer is upstairs doing his own. It’s frightening what can happen, what will happen. At the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), we get together and talk about how to retain authorship of the image, but studios are all about power. The Hollywood flm industry is a frightening place for everybody. The actors are the only ones who can get away with it, three mobile homes, $28 million and they all say yeah, because they’re the box offce, the crew below the line are butchered, I can’t stand the way they nickel and dime the crew, yet they are all feathering their nests with money, residuals. I love the crew; they work like dogs and get beaten up all the time. Production managers tell them you can’t have that, you can’t have this.

What are your thoughts about digital cinematography? It’s the future; I’m not frightened of it. On Poseidon, I deliberately went for digital dailies. I heard so many guys complaining about them, so I thought I’d do them because I never had and I kind of liked them better than the flm dailies. I better watch my mouth around here (laughs). I’ve talked a lot with Dean Stemler and the guys who have used digital cameras and they are not averse to them at all. I’ve always believed that digital cinematography was simply another style. I was over at Panavision one day and they had done a comparison with and I couldn’t tell the difference, I mean boy it was subtle, too subtle for me to worry about, once again I fgure the audience will be used to it in the frst three shots and after that, they just watch the movie. To me, it’s not a problem. It is the future and I think people need to bite the bullet and realize they are not going to be the DPs we used to be, the magic man who walked around with the cape saying ‘spot that, food that,’ nobody knew what you were doing. It’s gone. Because now they all watch the monitor, nobody has to go to dailies because they know what they are getting. If it’s a properly color-corrected monitor, you just light for that monitor and that’s what you get. It won’t take long before a smart producer will say get rid of those DPs, put a good operator in and the lighting could almost be done by committee.

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I thought it was frightening when they frst brought monitors on set. I hated that because suddenly, they would say, oh you had a bump in the middle of that shot, and I’d say ‘yeah but I don’t think anybody will notice it with that performance going on.’ ‘I noticed it,’ they’d say, sorry about the bump and go again. But the years of never having monitors or playback or anything, the director would just stand by the camera. In the old days, it was always, cut it and the director would turn to the operator and ask, how was it for you? Because he was the only one seeing the movie, the operator would say ‘good,’ then the director would say, ‘okay print that, we’re moving on.’ That’s how responsible the operators were, how much trust was between the cameraman and the director.

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Sandi Sissel is one of the pioneering women to step behind the camera and assert herself as a cinematographer. With the intention of doing political documentaries, a great deal of her career was spent working on flms with issues that interested her but were often passion projects. To make a living, Sandi learned the game of working in Hollywood and became established as a solid second unit director of photography (DP) on big budget flms such as The Mod Squad, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged me, Exit Wounds, Rock Star, Black Knight, Stealing Harvard, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, New York Minute, Cellular and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. She also worked in television shooting The Wonder Years, Drug Wars: The Camerana Story, The Class of ’96 and The Flash (pilot). She shot numerous other network television movies, mini-series, HBO and Showtime features. In addition, Sandi shot a number of commercials and music videos. Her narrative feature flm credits as a DP include Salaam Bombay (1988) directed by Mira Nair, No Secrets (1991) directed by Dezso Magyar, The People Under the Stairs (1991) directed by Wes Craven, Drug Wars (1992) directed by Brian Gibson, Dragstrip Girl (1993) directed by Mary Lambert, Camp Nowhere (1994) directed by Jonathan Prince, Barney’s Great Adventure (1998) directed by Steve Gomer, Passions Way (1999) directed by Robert Allan Ackerman, Meet the Browns (2008) directed by Tyler Perry and Karaoke Girl (2013) directed by Visra Vichit Vadakan. But Sandi’s love for documentary remains undaunted as she continues to photograph projects all over the world. Some of her documentaries include Free Angela & All Political Prisoners (2013), One Heartbeat: Bobby Bowden and the FSU Seminoles (2010), The Lord God Bird (2007), Roving Mars (2006 in IMAX), Going Up River: The Long War of John Kerry (2004), Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004), The Endurance (2000 in IMAX), Heavy Petting (1989), Calling the Shots (1988), A Stitch for Time (1987), Mother Teresa (1986), Before Stonewall (1984), El Salvador: Another /Vietnam (1982), Chicken Ranch (1983), Seeing Red (1980) and The Wobblies (1978). Sandi was the Head of Cinematography at NYU Tisch School of The Art’s Graduate Film from 2001–2016 where she shared her knowledge and experience with students for many years while continuing to shoot. After retiring as

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head of department, she taught at NYU Abu Dhabi over a three-year period as they inaugurated their media production BA. Speaking with Sandi reveals the early struggles women cinematographers went through to pursue their craft. With a Texas drawl and a wonderful sense of humor, she revealed her unique journey as one of the frst female cinematographers invited into the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). Sandi now lives with her family in Tasmania, Australia.

How did you become a cinematographer? I had no desire to go into narrative flmmaking initially, what I really wanted to do was work on documentary flms. My father was an Associated Press photographer, so as a kid I hung out in the darkroom and watched him work. He gave me my frst Kodak camera when I was six. I later became obsessed with live political television coverage as a teenager. I attended university in the mid-1960s. I actually didn’t realize there were so few women in the flm area until I arrived at flm school and discovered I was the only woman in the program. I thought “maybe I should be a reporter” and transfer to journalism instead of flmmaking, but after taking a 16mm flm production course, I gravitated rapidly to camera. I also studied editing which proved invaluable when thinking like a director. At this time, the Civil Rights Movement was continuing, Vietnam war protests were at a height, the Women’s movement was emerging, a lot of political issues. When I graduated in 1970, I found a position interning at the local ABC affliate in Dallas. I then quite swiftly decided to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin. I wasn’t really sure what other avenues might be open to me in those days. During my studies, I met visiting flmmakers Jill Godmilow and Shirley Clark who both lived in NYC. After my studies were completed, I moved to Manhattan. My roommate dated Ravi Shankar, so the parties were divine. I had all kinds of jobs transferring sound at DuArt Film Lab, production assisting (PAing) on flms and if lucky, working as an assistant camerawoman on small documentaries. There were also opportunities opening up for me to shoot because of affrmative action. I was invited to join the east coast cinematography union in 1975 as a part of a class action lawsuit so in many ways it was lucky timing for me. My frst real paying union cinematography job was shooting broadcast news for WNBC in NYC. I learned an enormous amount shooting flm fve days a week. I also learned an enormous amount about the underbelly of New York City. I knew that was not what I wanted to do forever so after a couple of years, I saved up enough money to buy a 16mm camera so that I could go back to shooting documentaries full time. I still often worked by shooting 20/20 for ABC and 60 Minutes for CBS. I also shot a lot of Schillers’ Reel for SNL. My passion was political documentaries and that took me to all corners of the globe

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and every continent including Antarctica. During this time, I photographed in three different war zones. New York in the late 1970s was a time when things were changing rapidly in the narrative flm business. European DPs were being allowed to come to the States and work as ‘visiting artists’ but the union would force a local ‘standby’ DP to be on set. I was willing to be a standby for such talented cinematographers and I learned so much about the running of a big set. Many of the DPs let me operate the additional camera in addition to watching what they were doing with lighting. This began a gradual shift into narrative flmmaking for me. I was soon able to cross over from shooting documentaries into operating features for amazing DPs like Robby Muller, Haskell Wexler, Mario Tosi, Michael Seresin and Fred Elmes.

What attracts you to a project creatively? Boy have I learned a lot over the years. Certainly, everything begins with the script. Often, when I read a script, the ones I love the most are so low budget that I know that I can’t do them without certain pieces of equipment and certain people on the crew. Those lower budget flms offer the DP a decent salary, but then they have virtually no real money left for the crew or specialized equipment. If there is not enough to hire at least keys that I want to work with, then I just can’t do that flm. I still fnd myself mostly attracted to projects with a political twist. I like characters that I can relate to or at least well-developed characters. There are an awful lot of scripts that I have read, and even shot, sadly, with vapid characters that I cannot relate to at all. I also like to work with directors who actually embrace the style in which I work. That creates a certain kind of security and shorthand. The work becomes a joy. At this point for me, it’s not about purely making a living. Now it’s more about wanting to do something I feel passionate about and enjoy working with the director. I am less concerned with whether it be a narrative flm, television program, documentary or commercial.

Do you think having the position at NYU and the experience behind you took the pressure off the projects that you select? I don’t feel I have to do everything that comes along in quite the same way as I used to. I think that when all I did was DP, I lived and breathed everything about it, just as much when I wasn’t working as when I was. To be a successful DP in this business is a 100% full-time job of selling yourself and I don’t do that as much as I used to. When I lived in LA, I did that 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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While at NYU, I had the opportunity to return to documentaries that I care deeply about socially, politically and personally. I am in the process of raising money to continue shooting a documentary that means a lot to me about the adoption of my son from India in 1987 and his journey as a young man. I have also had the opportunity to judge at numerous flm festivals, offer workshops and master classes.

What attributes do you like in a director? Could You talk about directors you have worked with in the past? What I really like in a director is someone who knows what they want. They don’t have to know how to get it but I appreciate a director who either sees something in my work or sees something in me that they feel is going to help them to express their vision, someone who can trust me. I’ve always enjoyed directors who love actors, who love getting wonderful performances out of actors. Mira Nair, Mary Lambert, Michael Mann, Robert Allen Ackerman and Peter Weir left me speechless with the way they worked with actors. It doesn’t matter to me whether the director knows the millimeter of the lens they want. I prefer a director who talks about how they see a scene, how they feel a scene. I really enjoy directors who want me to be at rehearsals with them where we watch what the actors do. I really love story and I’ve always felt that I am foremost a visual storyteller. I’m always telling young cinematographers that their most important asset is to be a good team player and a good collaborator and to work with the director. I learned that over a long career and only wish I had known that from the time I started in 1970. Mentors are so very important. Earlier in my career, I felt that my job was simply to make the most beautiful images and on occasion that might have even been at odds with what the director wanted. I think some of my favorite relationships with directors have been with theater directors who just love actors. They didn’t know that much about visual storytelling but it was such a wonderful collaboration.

Do you think it’s easier for women wanting to be cinematographers today or are there still issues that make it diffcult for them? I think there are still enormous issues but my goodness, the world is wide open to women now. I know it’s easier than when we were young. No one wants to go back to the 1960s again. When I started out as an intern working part time at WFAA television in Dallas I had to wear a dress to work – you couldn’t even wear pants in those days. As a woman getting into the business, it wasn’t always easy to be part of a team because for many years, I worked almost exclusively with men, so I felt like I was often trying to be part of ‘their’ team rather than them accepting me. I wouldn’t say that is true anymore, certainly not for me at my age.

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For many years, in the beginning, I only worked with men years older than I was. Then there was a time I didn’t want to work with men my age and older because I felt like they were from a different generation…a generation before women were commonly in the workplace. They didn’t have working mothers and it wasn’t a given. Whereas I noticed that the younger men, maybe ten years younger or more, who had working mothers had a much more natural sense of a woman’s place in the workforce. I had a remarkable thing happen to me when I was doing The Wonder Years, there was a woman director named Arlene Sanford who said to me, “I always thought that I was one of the guys until I saw you working with the crew and you ARE one of the guys!” I remember very clearly, in the beginning, the need to have a male crew because it was such a big deal that I was hired that I didn’t want to push it down production’s throat. I felt like I needed the best AC (assistant camera), the best gaffer, the best operator. But eventually, I realized I’m as good as the men are and therefore, I can work with a woman as easily as a man. And that was a light bulb moment in my career. I started long ago to work with a female gaffer, female ACs and operators. I’ve never worked with a female key grip although I would love to. It took a long, long time for production to trust my decision in this area. Because people of a certain age just weren’t raised that way. I know it’s totally different now. Imagine someone telling any of my sons that a woman can’t do a certain kind of job. Beginning my career in the early 1970s was a very different world than it is today, so I don’t think I always knew what the best thing was to do. There were a number of documentaries in the 1970s in particular that wanted all women crews, so that was hilarious. I used to be very good friends with the all the women cinematographers back then, there were this many (holds up one hand). Now it’s countless. I don’t think that being a DP is a man’s job, but for many years of my career it was thought of as a man’s job. In a sense, I had to take on the same responsibility that was traditionally thought of as a man’s in society as well. A woman’s place in the flm business has changed completely. Today, it’s much more natural for women to go into cinematography, but I try to be very careful to say, also learn to be a director, also learn to be a writer, also learn to be a producer because I don’t think being a DP is necessarily all they can experience throughout their careers. Film schools, at least good ones, teach students every aspect of the industry, including working with actors.

What I think you’ve done amazingly is to have a solid career as a cinematographer, an educator and a mother. How have you managed to do this incredible juggling act? Well, I don’t know, you have to talk to my kids – nobody went to jail so that’s good (laughs). I have three older boys who are in their forties. My son Bernard

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is now a father to my granddaughter Maya who is in high school. And then my youngest stepsons are in their early twenties. So, I’ve been juggling being a working mom since my twenties and it hasn’t ever really stopped. I don’t come from a really big close family, so it’s been wonderful to create one. I talked about needing a community when not on set, I think most DPs go to therapists to deal with this syndrome of going from ‘hero to zero.’ But when you’re a mother, you are never a zero. There was something about being a mother that changed my priorities and taught me something about giving back, but it really affected the jobs I could take. I may have been less selective just because I was looking to work at that time in Los Angeles where I had moved in the mid-eighties so that I could be home with my boys. I remember one summer when I had all three boys with me in Santa Monica, at the time, they were between the ages of 12 and 17, and I was offered a wonderful flm in New York. So, I was going to have to go from LA to NYC with the kids for the summer, it was an independent flm, so there wasn’t a lot of money. I was also offered a TV movie and a HBO movie in LA. I ended up doing the HBO movie, it was a horror flm, lots of fun. But the independent flm that I turned down in NYC turned out to be a huge success. I would say that one of the things that happened to me during the years that the boys were in school and needing a lot of mothering was that I did a lot of TV. Because TV in those days was in town and I could be in LA. In those days, once you got into TV, it was diffcult to get out of TV though and back into flm. A lot of the male DPs that I know are married with kids. That has always seemed normal. Now there are so many women in the industry with kids. The diffculty is not in being a mother, the diffculty is being a single mother…and that’s another story.

I’m sure it is very encouraging to see a woman cinematographer as a mentor for the women taking classes today. I know I didn't really have that. I didn’t either. I think it’s important for the women but I also think it’s important for the men. I didn’t scare anybody; the men were comfortable talking to me and women were comfortable talking to me. We all need to see ourselves in the people who are our mentors. I would have given anything for an older female mentor. I will say that both Robbie Muller and Haskell Wexler were invaluable in helping me instead. Haskell taught me that the DP has to be the general on set. Robbie was my idol when it came to ‘naturalistic’ lighting. I had two close female friends, slightly older, who were cinematographers when I was younger, Judy Irola, ASC and Joan Churchill, ASC who were both doing documentaries. I didn’t have anyone to talk to and share when I frst got into the union though and it was really hard working on all those crews with

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men. I didn’t have anybody to talk to when men’s careers were fourishing faster than mine was. I didn’t feel like women directors had the opportunity to support me because they were busy trying to make it themselves, they were often required to work with men. When Mary Lambert asked the studio for me to be her DP on Pet Semetary, the studio told her that a woman director and a woman DP working together was not doable. They might as well have said, “What if you both get your periods at the same time!” I was actually able to be more successfully supported in the beginning by men, specifcally by Black men. There was a good long time where there were maybe seven to ten of us (women DPs) around the world who were making a living. But then there was a fall off for a long time because a lot of young women realized it was grueling hours with such long odds that they didn’t want to do it anymore. I just loved it so much that I never considered anything else. There are a few of us still shooting from the old days.

What are your thoughts on the changes from working in flm to primarily digital? This is such a loaded and complicated question. I’ve learned so much about it and I can tell you that people over 50 learn digital really slowly because you have to unlearn to be able to learn. Whereas young people just naturally get it, my own kids for example have always been on computers. I didn’t even have a computer or an email account until I was over 40, so it’s a different mindset entirely. But that said, I now absolutely love the digital cameras. I think the freedom of doing documentaries where you can shoot as much as possible is really a wonderful thing. I sort of laugh at some of my earlier documentaries shot on 16mm where we would take these old lowel lights and bounce them off the ceiling just to bring the level up enough to shoot 100 ASA. The other thing that I fnd somewhat frustrating is that with flm there was such a respect for rehearsal, for getting the light right, for getting your focus marks right before you rolled. In documentary, it was important to wait and watch and listen before you rolled. Now it’s just roll it and that’s true in narrative work, actors end up doing too many takes, sometimes we roll before we’re ready, I think we roll too much. In documentaries, if you are the cinematographer, the directors have you roll so much that you just become numb and at a certain point you just stop listening. I used to think that the listening was as important as shooting but if a director wants me to start rolling at 7am and we just keep rolling 30 minutes after 30 minutes, I’m not listening anymore; I’m just shooting. It can be wonderful in some ways, but I also think you lose a lot.

Do you think that flm is on the way out? I think that shooting on flm is an artistic and fnancial situation. That said, development money is going into digital cameras and not into flm cameras.

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I used to do exposure with polaroids. On Salam Bombay, we didn’t get dailies or process the flm until we fnished shooting, so I had to shoot that whole movie in India without a monitor for the director and without ever seeing dailies. I used to take black and white Polaroids and talk to the director about the light and composition and that’s how we communicated and worked for the entire production of the movie. Imagine directors working that way today. But I still love shooting flm, I love teaching flm, exposing flm, I love the smell of developing fuid. I still own an Aaton 16mm camera and an Arrifex 35mm camera. What I love the most about flm is nobody on set other than my gaffer understands the fnal look but me! One of the more diffcult aspects of working digitally now is with the monitor on set, everybody has something to say about the lighting or the composition. This makes things move slower. What I think of as the magic of flmmaking has changed. I feel a little bit sorry for young people going into the business now because it’s a really different business today. It’s much more of a community effort doing a shot than it used to be, it used to be two or three people deeply involved and then the next day you saw dailies and it was magic, it was art. Now there’s still art but it’s more of a group effort between a DP, gaffer and the digital intermediate technician (DIT) and the producer, director and the script supervisor in a way that it didn’t used to be.

Have you worked with the HDSLRs1 like the Canon 5D? I frst started working with those cameras as still cameras. When I was doing second unit on Master and Commander down in Mexico, my gaffer David had a Canon HDSLR and he was taking stills and it was huge for me, because we were doing these massive setups. I had eight cameras most of the time, I was almost overwhelmed. It was also a period piece, so it was supposed to be natural low light on the boats. David would show me stills of all of our lighting set ups. He’d download everything on his computer and then we would do prints and send them to the lab at Technicolor. I guess that was around 2003, so I began to use my Canon 5D as a light meter supplement. By the time people started using them for motion picture, I was already familiar with the quality. I think digital cameras are fantastic, you can buy a great camera, in some cases with lenses, anywhere from $5–20k, so it makes it more egalitarian. I think people with good ideas can still make flms this way. I was a musician in university and if I wanted to practice or go play with friends, I could anytime. But when I started working in the flm area in order to go ‘play,’ we had to have $1000.00 for ten minutes of flm. So now with digital cameras if you’ve got an idea and you can get things together, you can shoot it. Maybe sometimes that terrifes me a little because it’s too available and folks don’t take it seriously. I don’t think putting a flm on YouTube makes you a director necessarily. I still think people need to learn the process. It is an industry where you need

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to have a mentor, you need to intern, because you learn from professionals. When I was frst on set, I wasn’t quite sure what the script supervisor did, much less the best boys. If I hadn’t operated on features with talented DPs and seen how they worked with their crews and with the frst assistant director (AD) on schedules and how they got things done, I don’t think I would have been as good or have grown the way that I did. I think if people just start being DPs and working on crews too young, then they become the ‘expert’ on set and then everything suffers because they haven’t learned enough. That said however, I have seen some amazing young DPs coming right out of flm schools and fnding the opportunities to shine.

Are you concerned about the archival issues of digital technology? Very concerned. Most people are shooting digitally today, it used to be you had a negative that you could vault and go back to if needed. Now you just have hard drives and backups of hard drives and if they crash, it’s gone. I have digital pictures I took years ago that don’t exist anymore because of the printing. I’ve had hard drives crash because I didn’t realize you had to start up a hard drive every six months to keep it going. I thought I could just take a hard drive and put it in the closet like my negatives and two years later, go back and use it. I also have not had it happen to me, but I’ve had students who were downloading footage from digital cameras and lost it. I’m still one of these people who wants an assistant no matter what, no matter how big the crew is, even back when we were using P2 cards with little prosumer cameras I was so terrifed of losing footage that if the production couldn’t afford an assistant, then they couldn’t afford me. I was afraid of losing material. I have amazing documentary footage that was archived on 3/4” tape that is now fuzz. I think archival is always a scary proposition.

Have you done digital intermediates with the flms you’ve worked on? I have, I can’t imagine how I used to work without them. The wonderful thing about digital intermediates are all the things you can do! When I learned how to use Photoshop, my stills got better. Everything is so much more expensive today and with shooting schedules shrinking, the idea that you can do a movie in nineteen days is still daunting to me. But I think it’s possible with the digital intermediate. I used to have to use so many fags to get the light exactly right and make sure the actors hit their marks. Focus is clearly a big issue, but the things you can do with the DI now in terms of boosting and making things darker reminds me of being with my father in the darkroom ffty years ago where you would dodge something with your hand to make something darker. Now you can do all of these things with the DI. I think it’s wonderful.

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As a member of the ASC, one of the things that we’ve been fghting so hard for is to make sure that the cinematographer is always invited to the DI suite. We’re fghting to make sure they are paid for their time but that’s mostly happening on big budget movies. It’s really important to make sure we are all involved in the creation of the digital intermediate because no matter what I shoot now, so much of it is altered in post. If I’m not in the DI suite, then I don’t feel like the author of the image anymore. With all of these new cameras coming out that claim to be 8k, I’m afraid that people are going to start blowing frames up so that even the lens you chose or the format you used could be changed. Many years ago, we were only really worried about what they were going to do if it was shown on television or on an airplane. I was on a panel a long time ago with Vittorio Storaro and I remember him very clearly saying, “nobody goes in to buy a painting and then cuts it down to ft the size of their wall. So why do we do this with a motion picture image?”

If a director came to you with a project and asked you to choose any format to work in, what would it be? I love the super 35mm format because I like the fact that you can use regular spherical lenses and I love the 2:35 image size. My dream situation is to shoot flm and fnish with a digital intermediate. If it was handheld, I would use a Varicam lite or a Panavision ultra lite or a little Aaton, that’s what I would do. Because I still know what 500 ASA or 250 ASA looks like without a light meter. I know what my flters will do and I know what I can do in post. As comfortable as I have become with digital cameras, I still haven’t worked with them nearly to the extent that I have worked with flm, so it just feels more natural for me to shoot flm.

Do you have a preference of working with prime lenses or zoom lenses? I prefer prime lenses but at one point I began to work much more with Panavision cameras because of the Primo Zooms. I felt Primo Zooms were comparable to Primo Primes and they were T2.3 and T2.8, originally the zooms had been so much slower. But I do love the ability of being on the dolly and to squeeze the lens in a little bit. I love to dolly and zoom in combination to accomplish things that you may not be able to do exactly with a 40mm or a 32mm. But in an ideal world, primes are my favorite, I think they look the best. These days I’m just so amazed with almost any image that I see (laughing) from professional cameras and the kind of post that we do, that I think it really just comes down to preference. I think Cooke lenses are pretty amazing, the new Arrifex ultra primes are amazing, Panavision Primos have been amazing for years. But then again, I’m still in love with my Leica M9 still camera with

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the old lenses even though I run around all the time with my big old clunky Canon 5D and get beautiful pictures.

Have you had to make sacrifces in your personal life to be a cinematographer? For a really long time I didn’t think I was making sacrifces. But my inability to maintain one long-term partner was probably because I was on the road for so, so many years…not to mention the hours. Maybe it’s also about being raised in the 1960s and having a different idea about what marriage meant. I’ve lived in a lot of places, from growing up in Texas to NYC, to France off and on for seven years, to LA, back and forth from Mumbai for eight years and then back to NYC for ffteen years. Now my wife and I live in Australia. Unlike my sisters who are still with the men they married from college and still live in the same town they have for decades, I just traveled so much and met so many wonderful people and had so many experiences that I wouldn’t say that I ever really sacrifced. But I’m really jealous of people who have been married for ffty years. How great is that? I also regret time I missed while raising my boys. That time does not come back. I barely know people I went to high school with because I never go back to Paris, Texas. I barely know people I went to college with because I am rarely ever in Dallas or Milwaukee. Frankly, Facebook has made that a bit easier! (Laughs) I found myself enjoying coming back to NY when I was in my ffties because I started reconnecting with people I had done documentaries with 25 years before. It was really wonderful to nurture those relationships again. But I’ve always been an action junkie, whether it was following stories in documentaries or doing narrative flms. To me, I just feel lucky to have done those things, so I don’t really look back at any of it as sacrifce. I am glad to have children in my life because they just mean everything to me. I really am enjoying my granddaughter because I’m open to her, she’ll hang out with me for ten hours, I’ll hang out with her for ten hours and I’m pretty sure I never hung out with any other kids for ten hours. Perhaps the nurturing side of me came out in mothering my crew as well. If I sacrifced anything, it was probably my personal life, but at the time I didn’t think so.

Any thoughts about your career that you’d like to add? When I frst entered the business and worked as an operator for some established DPs, it was during an era where DPs were allowed to be eccentric and very opinionated. After I became a DP, those qualities were no longer acceptable, we all had to ft in and be part of the team. I think that learning the pure virtue of collaboration is something I’ve learned over time. Probably some of the best flms I ever did as a cinematographer were in my forties and ffties and then the projects just stopped coming. Part of the problem was that my close friends stopped getting work and therefore I started getting

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less work. Then all the directors started getting younger and working cheaper and faster and I just became less desired. That’s when I started doing big budget second unit, because I liked the directors. I loved having all the money I could possibly spend if I could do the shot, but then again, working with stuntmen morning, noon and night is not something you want to do all the time. I would like to have had the careers of many of the men I knew in the ASC, but I never really got the full opportunity to show it. I’ve had my moments of great art and my moments of incredible hard work. I even think the enormity of the second unit work we did on Master and Commander is amazing and I’m very proud of it. I never wanted to stay too long at the party. If the quality of the work I was offered diminished too much, then I wanted to fnd other avenues of contributing. What I miss most after periods of not working on a flm is being part of a team, part of a community, part of the crew. I now fll that passion by mentoring young flmmakers. There are so many young DPs that I work with that I am really passionate about and in many ways, I’m like their agent, I watch them go win awards and succeed, and in a strange way I felt as much a part of the business as I ever did. When I frst was asked to join the ASC in 1993, there were no other women at that time that were hanging around the clubhouse. Brianne Murphy was still alive but spending most of her time living in Mexico. I had met her several years previously at an ASC dinner party, but I think she was a little nervous around the younger women DPs, she was so used to being in a world in Hollywood completely surrounded by men. I remember thinking she’s being forced to shoot such awful TV now, maybe that’s what they’ll say about me now (laughs).

Note 1 HDSLR is a high defnition single lens refex camera.

Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC

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Danti Spinotti was admittedly not a good student in his hometown near Venice, Italy, but a passion for still photography and an uncle who was a cinematographer set the course of his path to become one of America’s most admired cinematographers. After a year of apprenticing in Kenya with his uncle, Dante returned to Italy and began shooting documentaries, television and feature flms. In 1986, Dante had the opportunity to come to the United States with Dino De Laurentis to shoot Manhunter for Michael Mann. This collaboration continued with The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Heat (1995), The Insider (1999) and Public Enemies (2009). Dante’s work was immediately noticed in the States and he shot Crimes of the Heart (1986) with Bruce Beresford, Illegally Yours (1988) with Peter Bogdanovich and The Comfort of Strangers (1990) with Paul Schrader. He began his collaboration with Garry Marshall in 1988 with Beaches and continued with Frankie and Johnny (1991) and The Other Sister (1999). He has also shot flms for Sam Raimi, The Quick and The Dead (1995), Barbara Streisand, The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), Roland Joffe, Goodbye Lover (1998), Barry Levinson, Bandits (2001), Pinocchio (2002) with Roberto Benigni and Slipstream (2007) for Anthony Hopkins. Dante worked with Beresford again on The Contract (2006). Dante shot three flms with Michael Apted, Blink (1994), Nell (1994) and reunited their collaboration in 2010 with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He photographed the Marvel movie, Ant Man & The Wasp (2018) for Peyton Reed. Dante even worked with his son on Now is Everything (2019). But it is his collaboration with Brett Ratner that has been the most prolifc starting with The Family Man (2000), Red Dragon (2002), After the Sunset (2004), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), Tower Heist (2011), Rogue (2012) and Hercules (2014). Recently, Dante has enjoyed a new collaboration with Deon Taylor working with him on three flms: Traffk (2018), Black and Blue (2019) and Fatale (2020). Dante has been nominated for two Academy Awards, one for LA Confdential (1997) and the other for The Insider (1999). In 2012, Dante was honored by his peers with the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) Lifetime Achievement Award.

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I spoke with Dante in his home in Santa Monica. We sat outside and talked while Dante smoked a small cigar, birds lingered as if listening to our conversation and for the next couple of hours if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was in a villa in Tuscany.

What attracts you to a project, creatively? The project has to be part of my world, my mentality, something that relates to an aspect of my background or experiences. There has to be something challenging in it for me. Of course, I have to like the idea of working with this group of people, meaning the director and the producers. But most of all, there has to be something that really is a part of my visual world. As my close friend, Vittorio Storaro says, “We all have inside of ourselves 2000 years of the growth of humanity.” I think that’s making a big statement but nevertheless, you bring to a project all of your experiences. I also think the subject matter is very important, because starting a movie is a process of fnding a visual language for that particular movie. You start looking for this language as you read the screenplay and as you read, the subject matter takes you into imagining the possible visuals, and how to tell the story visually. It’s very complicated because there are so many different references that come into this, from maybe historical references, semantic references if you wish, I mean, there’s got to be a reason why you communicate with a moving camera as opposed to a camera that is not moving. Why do you communicate staying close to the face of the actors with a wide angle or with a long lens? You make this effort to fnd the proper language in which to tell the story. When I was in Pittsburg getting ready to do the flm Wonder Boys (2000), we were a couple of weeks away from the beginning of the flm and I really had no idea how to visualize this picture. I had an apartment in the middle of downtown Pittsburg – it was very gray. So, what I did was, on a Saturday night I bought a ticket to a flm multiplex, and with that single ticket, I probably saw four or fve movies. I saw a very moody kind of picture inside the soul of these characters who were very pessimistic. Then I saw The Wizard of Oz, just to clear my mind, the images were so beautiful because it was a restored print. Then I started going into the other theaters sitting in one of the back rows – it was already midnight by then, and I was looking at these short sequences of movies, which is not the right way to see a movie. After four or fve of them, I came home with the idea to flm Wonder Boys. If you don’t get the right language in the frst two weeks, you will probably never get it throughout the shooting of the movie. That’s where you’re the most anxious because you have so many choices.You do a lot of talking with the director and the frst scouting sessions come up and you start doing tests with the actresses and the actors, this is where the visual material starts coming together. I love actors. I think their faces are a part of the fascinating process of making a movie.What their faces convey is really the key to making the story work.

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What makes you pass on a project? If the material is not so interesting, for example there are many sports I like, but I don’t know much about American football. I had an offer recently to shoot a flm on American football. It’s not like I have a reference. Now a flm about soccer, that’s another story or car racing. If it had something to do with my emotional connection to the subject, then I probably would have said yes, but being about something I really don’t know about? I couldn’t do it. There are times when I may do something because I want to learn about something, too, which, when it happens it is quite wonderful, because there’s no better way of learning about something than shooting a documentary or shooting a feature flm.

You’ve worked with an interesting list of directors such as Michael Mann, Brett Ratner, Garry Marshall, Michael Apted, Curtis Hanson – that’s quite a list. Could you talk a little bit about the working relationship you have with some of those directors? The great thing is that all the directors you’ve mentioned are entirely different from each other with very different personalities and points of view. There are directors, as we know, who are very technical. They go deep into their language and they like shooting flm the way they see. They have an idea of where to place the cameras and that’s a very important communication issue to their audiences. Then there are directors who may only see the story from a storytelling perspective, but with a literal interest, so they rely on the cinematographer much more to help them to devise a visual way of telling the story. When I met Michael Mann, I had just become a freelancer in Italy. He is the person to whom I owe most of my international career. He called me when he was looking for someone in Italy to bring to the United States, because his production was in North Carolina, which is a right to work state. He didn’t want to work with mainstream Hollywood people, I guess for economic reasons and perhaps he felt there was more freedom of choice. He was hiring British and Italian collaborators in the feld. Sometimes these guys would meet up on a Saturday night. The British, maybe for drinking and the Italians were speeding in the car too much, so it was an interesting combination. We would also teach the local guys who were very good, and we would exchange experiences. I remember how much I learned by hiring a British camera operator. The British cinema works different from Italian and US cinema. The camera operator has a bigger role, because he works out the shots and angles with the director. I was supposed to be doing another picture for Dino Laurentis, called TaiPan, but the director, (Daryl Duke) apparently was not experienced enough in terms of visual effects, because the movie was a story of Hong Kong, and they weren’t in Hong Kong. Dino came back to me, and told me, “Dante, don’t

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worry, I put you with a young and upcoming director, Michael Mann who is very good.” – He is about to do another movie that’s called Manhunter. So, he few me to North Carolina. I bought a tiny little roll of flm, probably ten to twelve shots in it, just simple shots and I screened these shots for Michael and said, “Michael, these shots are describing my lighting for your picture,” and he said, “Okay, let’s give it a try.” It was great for me, because Michael and I had found a way of flmmaking that maybe I was dreaming about, but up to that point had never actually experienced. It was an extremely intense kind of flmmaking, very long hours delving deep into the material and transforming the books. The Hannibal Lecter movie was the frst flm that was quite different from the book. It was such an enormously transcendent operation for him, and he had a very energetic way of using the camera. He used multiple cameras, knowing exactly the angles of the action, alternating some speeds. I mean he was using the whole possible scenario with a very energetic style of communicating through a movie screen.

His subject matter is very intense, as well. Michael Mann doesn’t do light flms, The Insider, Last of the Mohicans, everything he does is pretty intense. They’re about very intense characters. It isn’t about everyday life, it’s about characters that are extreme heroes in a way. They bring with them very high stakes and moral issues: “Do I do this or not?” It’s not about simple talk sitting at a table with your wife.

What about working with Brett Ratner? Brett is very young, very enthusiastic and able to bring a lot of energy to what to shoot in a movie. Brett is also very accurate in what he does, and he enjoys the collaboration. He likes to hear my exchange on how to do things and he wants to know why. He’s also very good with the actors, so it’s an entirely different way of shooting with Brett. We shot Red Dragon for the second time, which was obviously an entirely different movie. The only difference was that I didn’t need to read the screenplay so many times because I already knew it. It was a very different language, a different cast, a new way of seeing the movie and it turned out to be an interesting picture for me.

Would you say that working with Gary Marshall was more of a traditional Hollywood style of flmmaking? Working with Gary was a more traditional way of flmmaking in Hollywood, with the discipline of shooting and the way the sets are organized, as well as the method of operation, which was very different for me. I came from Italian flmmaking and I also worked for a long time in television, so I didn’t really

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grow up in the movie industry, learning from the ranks, assistant and so on. I went right into being the main collaborator with the director as the director of photography (DP). I always brought with me a sort of improvizational method and “not really following the rules” which lead to fnding a different approach. I had a background in documentary and things that were real, so I didn’t have any preset ideas of you have to do it like that because this is the way it works.

Would you say that you were basically bringing a European style to America? I don’t know if it’s a European style, but maybe it was really my own style, from still photography. But what I would call Hollywood flmmaking is about the way it’s produced. For instance, scheduling here in the states is a very, very important issue because the costs involved are much higher than they are in Europe. In Italy, there’s always a way for a good production manager or producer to adjust the schedule to whatever the director goes for and maybe add a couple of weeks onto production, if needed. I’ve seen a couple of months added to production and still making the budget work somehow, because of some creative ideas. Another main difference historically is that Hollywood has always kept a very strict contact with the audience. Ultimately in America, the box offce determines whether the flm is successful. When I worked in television in Italy, we only had state television, so it wasn’t about the box offce because the audience could only see those channels. That infuenced the flmmaking too. In Italian flmmaking, we have our geniuses like Fellini and then, Visconti, and a lot of other people, fantastic directors who were able to fnd a way of making a movie on their own terms. We have defnitely had some good producers that could have a dialog with the director, much less so now, that’s part of the problem of recent Italian cinema. When Fellini was making a movie and it was maybe over budget, the national market itself was able to absorb and make the producer gain the money back, so there was probably much more freedom to deal with stories that were not exactly what you would consider mainstream, box offce-oriented flmmaking. If 8 ½ wasn’t a Fellini movie, the story may not have been quite so interesting. Whereas in Hollywood, the contact with an audience has always been much more disciplined. You need to show faces, so you’ve got to put life in those faces, from the wide shot, now we need to put in new coverage, so the camera isn’t moving. Imagine Jean-Luc Godard, who did this long dolly shot in Week End, forget that, I mean that’s not Hollywood.

Master, Closeup, Coverage. There you go, coverage and then where is the story? I think that is one of the main differences in Hollywood flmmaking. It’s this consistent school of always respecting the audience and making sure the audience understands what’s

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going on in a simple and clear way. That has corrected the kind of language that applies to a story. The actor has a line, so put the camera there and get a close up and if it’s a funny line, we’ve got to see his face. He has to be lit. Gary Marshall used to tell me, “I gotta see the face, it’s too dark!”

But it also has to do with the genre you’re shooting, don’t you think? Yeah, most of the time it’s comedy. When I was a doing a flm with him called Frankie and Johnny, Garry chose a more dramatic approach to the story. I remember Michelle Pfeiffer was telling me, Dante, you know, in this part of the story, in the beginning, I don’t want to look too good, because she’s a woman with many issues, she’s closing herself, maybe you light more on the top and make me look not so glamorous. But that doesn’t mean that you cannot do great cinema, obviously. It doesn’t mean that because, as we know, there are a number of Hollywood flms that are very serious, quality-minded flms with some humor interest, with a message, without ever losing contact with the fact that you need to be totally responsible for the box offce, which I think makes a lot of sense, Gary Marshall was a very special human being. He was so good at directing, and I always tremendously enjoyed working with him and his social sense of humor. He wrote a book about his work and he wrote a few lines about me, too, about our relationship, and he said, “When I frst worked with Dante, neither Dante nor I could speak English, so we communicated through mumbling.” He conducted the set in a very human way, but with discipline. He was a high-end, highly respectable flmmaker with a very good sense of humanity.

You’ve also worked with some actors turned directors such as Barbra Streisand, Anthony Hopkins and Roberto Benigni. How is it working with the actor-director? Is it different? I remember working with Barbra (Streisand) who I found to be a wonderful person but on one hand she was extremely secure in what she was doing, while on the other hand, she was totally insecure in what she was doing. That really complicated things a bit. That’s the only movie I ever left in my life because for me it was diffcult to deal with this lack of common sense, taken to the extreme, but again she is a very interesting, wonderful person – extremely intelligent. But worried about herself, about the way she would be looking. I remember we did a huge number of tests before the flm started and we found some very dark ways of doing it. It was a very interesting experimental school for me, but this confict kept going as we were shooting that really made things

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complicated. I do remember we did very close shots on Barbara and she had a tendency to like wider shots on her instead. I said, “Barbara, why? Let’s do a close, you look so nice.” She liked them very much, but her having doubts really was complicated. I had a wonderful time with Tony, Anthony Hopkins, he was so confdent and so good with his actors and with the story and so open to suggestions and collaborations. There are situations in which making the flm can be a process that really makes you enjoy what you’re doing. Roberto Benigni was another wonderful experience in Italy. Roberto is quite an outstanding and unique fellow. His brain is like a huge computer. He remembers entire poems. Inside as a person, he’s extremely human and pleasant to be with, so we had a great time. Unfortunately, as a cinematographer you go into a movie and obviously most of the time you trust the director 100%. I remember when Roberto talked to me when he was here in the States and telling me, “You know, Dante, what I really want to do, is to be faithful to the book. I want to shoot the book on Pinocchio.” Now, Pinocchio is a book which was written, I think, in the second half of the 1800s and we all know what the book is about. So, in my head I felt, I don’t think this book can be a movie. The language has to be reorganized to become a story that is good for the screen as opposed to good for the page. It’s an entirely different approach. But, I was trusting Roberto so much, when we started planning the frst day of shooting Pinnochio, I would draw little storyboards and Roberto would put his hands on his head and say, “Mama Mia, I cannot do time for this it’s not possible. This is American flmmaking.” I said, “Roberto, I think we should animate it a little bit with some more energetic and vibrant camerawork.” But we did the movie as he planned, and we enjoyed working together thoroughly. It was a huge pleasure, except for the fact that he tried to do the book, that was a big part of the problem with the movie.

Right, it wasn’t what people were expecting. No, because Benigni’s strength relies on his improvizing with his humor or his provocation. He has the ability of provoking reactions through humor and through political satire. But to confne Benigni to dialog that has been determined in the 1800s, it cannot possibly work. Still, it was a spectacular shoot also because we had an amazing production designer, so there was the possibility to really explore and enjoy lighting this amazing set for that particular story. The book of Narnia that I shot with Michael Apted was a great pleasure because it was the kids in the story that were experiencing all these adventures on a ship, in different worlds, fnding magicians and dragons, so that allowed for a very emotional rendering with the camera. For instance, I suggested the idea to use a very agile camera to Michael, so the camera could be handheld with a lot of depth of feld and try to leave the experience with the kids as opposed to illustrating or representing it.

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Would you say it is more subjective, in that sense? It can be subjective from the director’s point of view, but the camera is more participating in the action as if the audience was another character in the movie, so I was very interested in that.

You’ve recently started a new collaborative relationship with Deon Taylor, would you like to speak about your experiences with him? We were introduced because he likes LA Confdential. He has a company with his wife called Hidden Empire. He came to lunch and he was so great, didn’t enjoy the Italian food, but I really enjoyed his company. We shot this movie, Traffk and it was a very low budget, I think, around $4 million, the whole thing. But the shoot was so pleasant, so interesting that I basically decided to remain available for whatever project he would have had from then on. Deon enjoyed my collaboration, and he was eager to learn from my career. I’ve worked with so many cool and experienced directors that for sure, I was able to bring to him some experience and expertise. His enthusiasm is contagious when he works, his positive attitude, his love for people, his energy and his passion for the craft. I think he learned the craft through looking at the work of the great directors, you know, some of the movies he really liked were the flms I did with Michael Mann. We became very good friends. I think he’s on his way to becoming a very important director.

Did you shoot all of these flms with Alexa? Yes, they were all digital. I think digital cameras are a little bit like different flm stocks when we were using flm. Fuji flm versus Kodak, the different felds of each camera have different color rendition and contrast on the screen. I was asked if I could use Sony cameras, which I was very happy to do, so we worked with the Sony Venice, which is a remarkable step forward because it’s an extremely sensitive camera. You can literally shoot with almost no light in the sky. We did some exterior shots at night with very low light driving in a car in New Orleans and it’s amazing what you can see. But the camera does that without telling you that it’s really shooting under strain. I think digital has advantages because frst of all, if you do a movie with a digital camera, it’s like shooting a flm and watching dailies at the same time. So, you’ll see exactly how bright that window is going to be, or you see exactly how you want to deal with it. I think the advantages of the digital format are enormous. I only think that digital makes life easier. The quality now, it’s literally indistinguishable. I’d love to shoot flm. I appreciate that because it’s great, but it’s so much better to have an image inside of a tent, which is exactly what you want. And you can decide by looking at this image. Do I like it? I want to

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change it while you’re there looking at the image. You also think about what you want to put next. I like that. A couple of years ago, I did a movie in the winter with a young Swiss director (Marcell Langenegger), the flm was called Deception (2008). Most of the flm was to be shot in hotel rooms, hotel lobbies, interiors, a lot of it was at night in the streets of New York, and we wanted to capture New York in some kind of special ways. I almost had a fght with the director to convince him to shoot most of the flm with a digital camera because we could really capture the atmospheres the way they were. We had to be extremely precise in post-production, this is the main problem with digital, I think, whereas flm is this solid rock that he put down on the ground that contains all the information.

Because of the latitude of the flm stock? All that latitude, you can’t burn out the highlights. On the other hand, the digital cameras, especially the more recent ones, have such a great way of capturing shadows because of the increased latitude of the digital image. The Alexa is very powerful, plus you have ways of pushing half a stop, one stop, you can open your shutter if you need more light, so it’s very, very useful when you’re very involved with specifc dark, low light-levels atmospheres. That is a big advantage. You know, now we’re also going in a different direction, which is the likely success of 3D, which I think is very possible, I mean it’s a major step forward and it’s likely to get better too. It needs the digital technology to be more functional. But the fnal results don’t make you feel like you’ve missed something because you’re not using flm. Recently, Fox made a restored copy of Last of the Mohicans, so they had this restored copy, which is really gorgeous. I went there twice to take a look from the original negative and using the new Kodak Vision Premier. The flm looks like it never did before. Amazing contrast, beautiful and the brightness, and the saturation, the colors, it was just a joy to watch.

Do you have a preference for a certain digital camera? I really love the Alexa wide format, the color rendering is very, very precise. But the Venice is fascinating because it has this incredible ability of capturing low light situations. That means that it can help save the days. I do really like Panavision lenses. These days it’s a very competitive feld. I enjoyed doing the Marvel movie with the Alexa 65, large format.

Do you think flm is, on its way out or do you think it’s going to remain an option? I would expect that, unfortunately, it would be kind of on the way out. Yes. However, I see colleagues still shooting flm, like Bob Richardson and Quentin Tarrantino. I think the reason has to do with the romanticism. However, it’s

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also the way I see things. I see images, functionalism broad strokes. I don’t believe in subtleties making a difference.

Most of the Marvel movies are shot in 65. Did you consider that when shooting, to adhere to a style of the other Marvel movies? Not really, but those movies need to be predesigned, you know, on the table. There were a lot of storyboards and they need to be done like that because there’s a massive amount of video effects (VFX) shots. So, that takes away a little bit from the operation for a cinematographer. But it’s a lot of fun to light for it because you have most of the toys available to you.

So, that’s a big budget movie, then you go to shooting these smaller movies, right. Do you like working in a more intimate format where they’re not massive? Probably the smaller flms, we will do the movie with 60 people, it’s more intimate. On the big movies, it’s like 600 people, everybody works very intensely for 12 hours, 10, 12, 15 hours, whatever it is, then it goes back home. The fact that you create something with the camera and the lighting with the director is a very important part for the fun. I wouldn’t give that up.

Do you have a certain method of how you might prepare for flms once you have the script and you know you’re going to do the flm? Is there a certain ritual or something that you do to prepare? Again, you go back to the fact that you need to fnd a language to do that and the language will be guiding you. Experience in this case is a big help because experience will give you a wider selection of possible options. But the steps are more or less the same. You’re trying to understand the screenplay and then talk with the director. Maybe make sure that there’s an agreement on some basic things so that when you start to shoot, you can be very exact. It’s also important to avoid, if you can, locations which will be diffcult to photograph later, not diffcult in technical terms, or practical terms, but diffcult in terms of having a response on the screen that is important, that makes sense, that really helps the story. You scout and then go into testing. Testing is really more about trying to fgure things out, like makeup or hair, just basic stuff, wardrobe, maybe you fnd some fascinating things on an actor’s face. It’s more likely you’ll fnd this as you’re actually shooting, because testing can be so brief.

Have you used any visual references – paintings or stills or anything in particular, to convey the feeling of the flm? Yes, I remember when I came to have a meeting with Michael Mann in North Carolina, he gave me a photo that was surreal, it was a Magritte painting, the

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one with big trees in the foreground with a blue sky with some clouds, there was a streetlight which was a very specifc blue-green. He said, “You know, this is the movie.” Michael Mann always sets up rooms with a huge amount of visual references, whether it’s historical references, photo scouts of the locations, modern photography or heretical photography that has to do with the love story. I remember before we started Heat, he gave me a book by Nan Goldin which was great. For LA Confdential, he told me to take a look at the work of Robert Frank, which to me was a major discovery because he had a way of using existing light in a very expressive way. Robert Frank would do something like “Dutch tilt” his camera a little bit so he would fnd a way to remove an objective realism, take it away from the photo so that it would now focus on the elements and images he wants you to look at. By removing that realism by some device, which could be using a mirror somehow refected or angling the camera slightly was how he combined characters in the frame. Before Last of the Mohicans, Michael gave me a book of Thomas Cole who was a landscape painter of the Hudson River Valley in the 1800s and Caspar David Friedrich, a German painter of the early 1800s. They painted human fgures who were very small inside a bigger than life nature. That was the whole idea of the movie, these characters having to deal with the raw expanse of nature. When I did my frst flm here in the States with Bruce Beresford called Crimes of the Heart, Bruce was asking me, “Could there be any flm that you did that I could take a look at?” I said, “Bruce, I’m sorry, not really, no.” Because Michael was still working on Manhunter, so he sent like ten shots from the movie and Bruce was sold. Then I put together images with my still camera, I photographed anything I thought was interesting in terms of photos in magazines or paintings from Monet, to Avedon, to Vermeer, you know the girl with the red hat. I brought him something like 15 pictures and I said to him, the light and situations here appear to me as a reference for this movie. That beautiful girl on top of the meadow with an umbrella probably from the late 1800s, French Impressionists like Seurat and Monet.

You used some French Impressionist references for Crimes of the Heart? Yes. When I did a flm called Beaches, I was fying to meet Gary Marshall for the frst time. I was shooting a commercial in Texas and on the fight, I kept taking notes of what to tell Gary after I read the screenplay. I had a lot of notes about colors and saturation. There are a number of exchanges and visual references that are all very useful because they begin to establish the visual dialog.

Did you shoot Beaches on location in Atlantic City? Beaches was on location, yes. For that flm, I was thinking about German Expressionism, painters like Nolde and Kirchner which I thought had an amazing combination of colors. I used that idea for Beaches that was really very simple in its visuals. There was one day we had a very sad sequence to shoot

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over the ocean, it was very overcast and the sand was gray and the ocean was nothing but blues and very, very gray. These colors were quite neutral and when Bette Midler walked to the set, she had this puffy, bright orange jacket. I said, “you just can’t wear this” because Barbara Hershey was wearing something blue and very muted. “Oh, so what can I wear?” I turned around, there was the frst assistant director (AD) there, Benjamin Rosenberg and he was wearing a maroon jacket, I said, “Bette, that could be ok.” She put it on, and we shot the scene with Bette wearing the frst AD’s jacket.

Do you have a preference of working with either prime or zoom lenses? No, it doesn’t really matter to me. Nowadays, especially with the digital intermediate, it doesn’t really matter. I think I enjoyed this last picture because we had these small zoom lenses that we would keep on the camera all the time, whether on the Steadicam or the “A” camera and they allow you to be so much quicker. It’s not about being quick in production to save time and money for the production. It’s about being quick and not wasting time on set, all of a sudden everything stops, the light is going down, you’ve got to change the lens, recalibrate, all the stuff changes, it’s complicated. It also depends on the movie, back in the day if you shot anamorphic, it was a different story because the anamorphic zoom lenses were so slow, like a 5.6. But now a good zoom lens, even super35 can have a 2.8. All the zoom lenses for the Sony 23 camera are f2–1.9, so they’re just as bright as the primes and they’re just as sharp as the primes. So, it’s more about the overall quality of the lens for whatever machine you’re using that really matters.

Yeah, some people are very strict: “Primes only”… You might have a point there, somebody shoots with all anamorphic lenses because he likes those fares, so if it’s part of the story they want to tell, I guess it’s fne.

Some people are very opinioned about format, what camera they’ll fght to shoot, 3-perf Super 35, or anamorphic or something. Do you have a feeling or a preference? I always try to test new things. I was probably the frst guy in Italy who used Super 35mm. I felt that utilizing all the negative space available was a good thing and that’s probably one of the reasons why I also went into digital to just explore some new ways to shoot.

Do you like working with a Steadicam or do you prefer the dolly? Yes, the thing between the dolly and Steadicam is that from a language standpoint, it is exactly the same thing. Steadicam allows you to go around objects

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and get close to actors’ faces and it allows you to continually adjust the performance as you correct the movement of the actors. The actors change their move, the camera can adapt very quickly, but from a storytelling standpoint, it’s the idea of a moving camera. You go back to the early idea of when we frst started using the dolly, moving the camera around. It’s just a way of doing it with the physical participation of the operator.

Do you operate the camera when you’re shooting? I did for a long time. I remember the frst big movie I did as a freelancer. It was a feature flm I did after working in television. I was feeling so bad because it was a guy who was also very good. He was actually operating the camera and I was saying to myself, “How can I do this without looking through the camera? I just can’t do this.” But then the complications of the production and unions and we have these very precise monitors now, so I rarely operate.

I guess if you trust a good operator, it doesn’t matter. Yes, it probably does matter, because as you operate, you can still make many considerations and think about the light, and think about many things, but in fact, two of these very good operators should be just concentrating on the camera movement.

What about producers? Some producers can be extremely helpful because they’re a wonderful reference point in many directions. If you know that you have a good producer behind your back, someone you respect and like, it can be a very good exchange of opinions. If you have someone behind you that can help you fgure out where you can save money or time or where it’s important to really be fast in favor of the production, which is good for everybody. When you know that you’re not falling behind, the atmosphere on the set can be better. It’s always a big advantage. So that’s one of the main aims, to be on schedule and do what you have to do knowing that even if you lose time here, you can gain time somewhere else. With these things, the producer is fundamental. They are sort of like a conscience behind you. A good producer can be very helpful, even though a cinematographer has his main relationship with the director.

How did you like working with your son as the director? He was great. Really great. We did it to make him have an experience and then the movie went around some festivals and was always received very nicely. The layer of the family layer on top of it complicates things sometimes. We had some collaboration of producers who helped us, but it’s a diffcult job and you should never underestimate anything.

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There’s a lot of younger cinematographers these days who wind up directing, what do you think about that? I don’t see why not, directing is something that should be inside you. The idea of being willing to tell a story to someone else with actors, this urge to tell a story, as opposed to, for me, it’s always been creating images to tell a story, not specifcally directing. A couple of times now I teach in some schools, and I organized a little movie for the students and we shot it together. I basically had to direct, even though I was trying to explain, but I had a great time. It’s not that the technical issue technique is so easy, but I tell everybody don’t worry about that. That’s not the point. The point is having ideas, what you put inside the book, right? That requires a tremendous amount of discipline to get there. The key thing is this search for a visual language of the movie. I mean, language is everything from the head to the actors, to the costumes, to the camera, how you live and so forth. Michael likes to use multiple cameras. I have the set lit any amount of time. He likes to be able to shoot between actors without interrupting everything with lighting. I remember we did a scene in a big restaurant in New York, between Chris Plummer and Al Pacino. Michael told me that they’re going to make a deal here. It’s very diffcult dialog. I devised a lighting design that will allow him to shoot from any direction.

Do you have any advice for aspiring cinematographers, how to get started in the business? Let me start with something I probably said on a few other occasions. I think it’s more important to work on your culture. Technique is easy, it’s the simple part, especially now with digital. I always felt that technique is the easy part. The real tough part is to build up your sense of aesthetics. Like visual aesthetics in art for instance, looking at modern art is very important because when you’re actually working on a flm, on a daily basis you’re faced with questions and you need to come up with solutions. You need to make decisions, “Do I do this, or do I do that?” If something tells you “No, this is right and that is wrong.” I think it’s more important to cultivate yourself in a cultural sense of history, if it is a historical picture, why is there supposed to be a certain kind of light from the window? Where is the source? A freplace, why is that backlight there when maybe it shouldn’t be there? In order to get to that point, I think it’s more important to work on your aesthetic side than it is to work on technique. Because there are many people who know the technique very well and you can learn that in a very short time.

Lastly, of all these flms you’ve done through your career, are there one or two that stand out to be your favorites, one of those vivid experiences? As cinematographers, all the flms we do have things that we are happy with and things that maybe we are not so happy with. There are flms you totally

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enjoy making, especially the early ones when there was so much enthusiasm in making them and then it turns out that after three days in the theater, they pull it from the market because nobody went to see it. In LA Confdential, I had a lot to say about the picture. I probably had a big presence in constructing the way we told that story, so it stands out as a favorite. I really enjoyed shooting with Sam Raimi on The Quick and the Dead. It’s a western which could probably have been a better movie. Sam was not the powerful director that he his now, but that was a movie that had some work that we were really happy with and we had a great time shooting. I’m very happy with the Michael Mann movies that I shot. I gained so much from the experience of working with Michael, which was always intensely digging into the material. Some small pictures like Slipstream with Tony Hopkins, I was very happy when we did that. I still think there are some really good things in there. When I look back, every movie has something to which I look with pride. Some of the stuff, instead you say, “I dunno, this could have been better.” You really never know exactly why, but that’s how it is. When my son was starting at the American Film Institute (AFI), he did his frst shoot and it was a disaster. I wanted to help him have a better experience, so I told him to forget about the passionate relationships with everybody. That is not the point. The true point is that you have to start working when you walk onto the set and you have to be really prepared. So, don’t worry about your relationships. As a director, you need to know exactly what to ask for, see your story beforehand, go through the screenplay, fnd out where all the possible points are, maybe you fall into some traps. Try to fgure them out in advance, and once you fnd one, sort it out. Figure out the solution. Once you are prepared like that, you’ll see that all the other problems will disappear. Going onto a movie set you have so many problems that have to do with a number of things, but you have to convince people to do what you would like them to do, they are your collaborators. So, his second shoot was a success, not because of me, but because he liked the story and he started fnding the right collaborators and teamed up with a DP who also had some talent.

When you’re shooting far away for long periods of time, how does that affect your family life? Oh, my family used to come with me back in the days, but now everybody’s so busy, including my wife, she has so many activities. You’ve got to make it work, one way or another. Maybe sometimes it also helps because so far, it’s been ok.

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Sal grew up in Brooklyn, New York, born into a working-class Italian American family. He intended on becoming a police offcer but luck intervened when he was initially not admitted into the Police Academy In New York City due to affrmative action. When he was fnally admitted into the Police Academy, he had moved on to working in the world of commercials and music videos. He discovered his love of image capture behind a single lens refex camera which led to an interest in creating moving images. His career as a cinematographer began in New York City in the early 1990s, where he was fortunate to work on music videos as Harris Savides’ focus puller. Harris was instrumental in mentoring Sal into being a camera operator where he quickly became a director of photography (DP). Sal shot music videos for R.E.M., U2, Bruce Springsteen, New Order, Tom Petty, Radiohead and others. He has also shot numerous commercials. His frst Hollywood feature flm was Any Given Sunday (1999) directed by Oliver Stone, followed by Changing Lanes (2002) directed by Roger Michell. His long-time collaboration with Ron Howard began with The Missing (2003) and continued on with Cinderella Man (2005), The Da Vinci Code (2006), Frost/ Nixon (2008), Angels & Demons (2009), The Dilemma (2011), Made in America (2013) and Inferno (2016). With an interest in family dramas, he photographed People Like Us for Alex Kurtzman in 2012. Always looking for a new adventure, he took on the challenge of photographing Everest, directed by Baltasar Kormakur in 2015. The biopic Concussion (2015) directed by Peter Landesman, focused on the effect of chronic concussions on football players. Sal stepped into the Marvel comic world with Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) directed by Jon Watts and keeping with his desire to shoot mostly dramas, he worked with Susanne Bier on Bird Box (2018), The Postcard Killings (2020) directed by Danis Tanovic and The Tax Collector directed by David Ayer (2020). His love of sports brought him full circle to work on Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021) with Malcolm D. Lee. When “Sal” is not behind the lens of a camera, he is cycling the streets of Santa Monica or spending time with his family.

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What made you want to be a cinematographer? In my family if you didn’t go to college, you had to go get a trade. So, I went to college for electrical engineering and two and a half years into it, I was no longer interested. I left college and went to work for an electrical contractor in Brooklyn. I was twenty years old and doing electrical work, but I still wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with my life. As a kid, I had a fantasy about being a cop, so I decided to take the exam to be a NYC Policeman and I ended up doing really well on the test, 95%, but I missed the frst round of the Academy. I later found out it was because of affrmative action. One day I fnally got the call from the Police Academy and I said thank you very much and passed on it. While waiting for that call, I started to take photography classes on weekends. I became interested in still photography and found it fascinating. I bought a still camera and taught myself to print still photographs. I would go around the city taking black and white pictures and printing photographs. Eventually, I ended up getting work as a production assistant (PA). From the frst day working as a PA, I watched the camera operator. I thought wow photography but in motion. That’s when my interest really grew in flm.

Can you talk about how you became a DP? I wound up working at a company where the Scotts (Ridley and Tony) worked before they started their American commercial companies. There were a lot of European directors working there who were really creative and came up with some very interesting visuals. Like John Paul Good who was the art director of Esquire magazine, he created Grace Jones. Later, he became a really big artist and director in Paris, he did some really outrageous and quirky commercials. I met a camera assistant by the name of Paul Gaffney on a job and I told him I wanted to learn to be a camera assistant. He said, “great, I need some help, can you move those cases?” So, I moved the cases, back and forth and I realized by the end of the day that he just had me moving cases for no reason. I didn’t say anything about it. He said to me I see you want to learn, next week I’m doing a prep, so come to the camera house and I’ll teach you the cameras. Then I started freelancing around NYC. I didn’t want to go through the traditional feature route, because in New York at the time there were second assistants that were career seconds and it took so long to become a frst assistant, then an operator. Music videos started to become a really creative force in the late 80s early 90s with a lot of interesting young directors because it was a place to break the rules. It was also an arena for opportunity. That’s where I ended up meeting Harris Savides and started working as his focus puller. Sometimes I’d go out to Los Angeles with him, Harris knew I always wanted to be a DP, so he was very nurturing which says a lot about the type of person he is. Secure enough and big enough to nurture and not feel threatened.

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I remember one time we were working with this commercial/music video director by the name of Peter Care, he was sort of a forefather to music videos in England back in the early 80s. He was a very interesting, very creative director. We did a lot of R.E.M. music videos with him. Peter also knew I wanted to be a cinematographer, so sometimes he would let me shoot second camera. One day Peter said to me, “I have this little job,” it was a New Order video and he asked Harris what he thought about me shooting second unit and Harris was really encouraging. I shot second unit and when we were looking at dailies, Peter said to me “you know this is really good, if I had known you could shoot like this, I’d have let you do the whole video, maybe something will come up in the future and we’ll do it together.” I went back to work with Harris and these little MTV promos came up and Peter called me and said, “Hey do you want to do these MTV promos?” I shot them and overnight, people were like “who shot these? They’re really good.” Peter said Harris Savide’s assistant shot them. The next thing I know I had an agent calling me. That was how I got on the fast track to becoming a DP. I was an assistant for just fve years.

Did you shoot a music video for Bruce Springsteen? Yes, I was really proud of that one, it was “Secret Garden” with Peter Care. It was all about the celebration of women, so we shot all these women in different environments and it was a lot of fun to do. Bruce was fantastic, we were budgeted for four days and we ended up shooting fve days. On the ffth day, we all ended up working for free. I was living in Hollywood at the time and we shot in my house, the director’s house, the producer’s house, all free locations. On the second day of flming Bruce, we were setting up and I told him, “we’ve got about an hour of lighting to do, why don’t you go back to your trailer.” He said, “you know what, the kids are so young I don’t really get a chance to just hang out and play, do you guys mind if I sit down and play?” The hair on my neck stood up, Bruce Springsteen is going to sit here and give us a private concert while we’re lighting, how lucky can you get? I love how this business provides opportunities for this type of strangeness, it’s fantastic. I got to shoot a great video plus got a private concert from Bruce!

What attracts you to a project creatively? The story, the people involved and how it fts into my life with my children. I don’t do flms back to back because I do have a commercial career that allows me to be home and keep a stable life, which is my frst priority. When I would do a flm out of town, it was a family decision, and we would all fgure out how it was going to work. We put the kids in school wherever we’d go, or home school them. It got a little tricky when my daughter got older, but they liked it. Every time I got a script from the messenger, the frst thing the kids would ask me was “is it in London?” They love London.

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What would make you pass on a project? I fnd that there are a lot of flms that are repetitive in terms of the story with a different twist at the end. I tend to stay away from those. I’ll never say no to Ron (Howard). I would love to see a little bit less mainstream flmmaking; I try to stay away from the mainstream. I like to walk a crooked line so to speak.

Are you drawn to a specifc type of genre? I defnitely like realism in flms. I can relate to them more. I grew up on Italian neorealist flms. They are a very big infuence in my life. I am always drawn to dark, depressing stories, the world collapsing around somebody emotionally. I read the script to The Road and I wanted to do that flm so badly, that’s the type of flm that I’m drawn to.

No romantic comedies for you? The thing about romantic comedies is that they all tend to look the same. It’s all about making sure everybody looks perfect and you can’t show any emotion in the photography. I would love to see a romantic comedy that had a realistic look to it. I think they are afraid of the box offce, that people won’t go see a realistic romantic comedy. I like keeping the house dark. When we sit down to eat dinner at the table, I tend to turn off the lights in the other rooms, so there is just the light around the table, it’s not moody, it’s not dark, it’s intimate, we’re all involved in a conversation, we’re focused on each other, the rest of the world goes away at that point.

Do you think that there is a preconceived look to lighting for genre flms? I think that is possible, but I haven’t been in that situation. I think that does happen with specifc genres. That they tend to end up looking a certain way. But genre flms that don’t look the way they are “supposed to” are the ones that people talk about.

If they are marketed wrong, then there’s a tone problem and even though it could be a good story it may not work as well. Marketing, let’s not even get into that. I’m still a little angry about that from Cinderella Man.

I saw that flm and I thought it was beautiful. It was a lot of fun to do. Did you see the behind the scenes? I’m in the ring with the camera getting beat up, walking around with a forty-pound camera

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on my shoulder with boxers. There were two cameras in the ring from time to time and other cameras outside, which is challenging because they had to catch moments and not catch us. It was choreographed but it was at full speed, so you had to move quickly. You really needed to make sure you didn’t get in anybody’s way because if you hurt an actor you shut down the flm.

In prepping for that flm did you look at Raging Bull’s fght sequences? A little bit, but I didn’t look at it that much though. Raging Bull was a big infuence for me when it frst came out and for many years after. I tried really hard not to go to that flm in prep for Cinderella Man because I didn’t want to have anything make me question where I wanted to go. What was interesting about Raging Bull is that if you look at it frame by frame, you can really see how far away the punches are and how they got away with it. But Cinderella Man was a very different flm and we needed to be much closer. I wanted to really get the camera inside there. Stylistically, Raging Bull gets more into Jake LaMotta’s head.

Yes, it becomes very subjective. Extremely. In Cinderella Man, we really wanted the audience to feel as if they were in the ring, in the fght and taking them along on a journey. The challenge was how do you do that? My frst response to Ron was to get into the ring with the camera, and he was like “what?” I think he was a little skeptical at frst, so we did some tests with little hand-held video cameras and he said, “but those are little cameras,” and I told him ”I can do it.” In preproduction on one of our sets, the Maple Center in Toronto, which doubled for Madison Square Garden, we started shooting some tests with the camera. The more Ron saw how agile I was with the camera in the ring, the further we pushed, which was a lot of fun. We used different types of cameras for different techniques and different lenses. We made a couple of rigs, one was a punching rig on a pole which I literally stuck between Russell and whoever he was fghting, so the camera would come from right underneath them and then I’d take it out really quick and make it an overhead. It was physically challenging, photographically challenging and emotionally challenging.

Is that a favorite flm that you’ve done? Yeah, my two favorites are Cinderella Man and Frost/Nixon. I’m really proud of that flm. I don’t know much about marketing but the way they brought Frost/ Nixon out, slowly thinking that it would gain momentum, might have hurt the box offce as opposed to going with a quick wide release.

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Maybe the timing of the subject matter? I think everybody was a little exhausted after the election. Also, people thought Frost/Nixon was just going to be boring interviews and it’s not that at all. If anything, it’s like a championship-boxing match, there are these two opponents, one courting the other and getting him to agree to meet; then the preparation and the training for their battle, which turned into a battle for the truth. What was really interesting about the supposed drunken phone call scene is that we flmed that scene live on two different sets with two cameras on each set, two cameras on Frank Langella and two cameras on Michael Sheen. They were live on the phone being recorded and flmed so the emotion is really there, and those actors were so fne-tuned that there was this really great energy to it. Right from the beginning of the flm, Ron was saying “we’re going to do this phone call live.” We’ve got to work this out, and what’s interesting is that I kept Nixon in a really dark room and Frost in a brighter room; I lit his room with practicals, but much brighter. In Nixon’s room there was no light at all, which created a contrast there. That was a lot of fun, those are the days you walk away from shooting 25,000’ feet or more of flm, because of the four cameras running, it’s a long exhausting day, the actors are exhausted, but you walk away feeling exhilarated. It’s one of those days where you go, I am so lucky to be in the business and do what I do.

How did you get together with Ron Howard and start working with him? I think it was for The Alamo, Ron was originally going to do The Alamo and I think Rodrigo Prieto was going to shoot it and for some reason he had to drop out. Todd Hallowell, Ron’s producer was talking to Ron about me because Todd, as he likes to tell the story, says when he saw Any Given Sunday, he walked out of the theater, bought another ticket and went back in to see it again. He really loved it and he kept talking to Ron about it and he thought it would be a great idea to bring me in on The Alamo. After Rodrigo was no longer available, I interviewed with Ron. It was really funny because the day before I met Ron, I was flming a commercial with Jake Scott, Ridley Scott’s son and we were on a boat flming off of Catalina Island for ffteen hours. I got back at 11:00 at night and I had the interview 11:30 in the morning with Ron. I get there a little early and I’m sitting in the waiting room and the whole room is moving, I feel like I’m still on the boat, so I’m thinking to myself how am I going to do this interview? We talked and I had some ideas and Ron started becoming interested. After the second interview, they hired me to do the flm. We started prepping and then things started to fall apart, Ron backed out and the flm just didn’t happen. Ron called me right away and said, “I just want to let you know it doesn’t look like I’m doing this flm and thank you very much and maybe we’ll get to work on something in the future, thank you for sticking in there.” I thought it

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was really great that he called me himself, I didn’t really know him, he could have had the agent call me. Then a couple of months later, his agent calls me and asked me to shoot The Missing. Ron was doing rehearsals at the locations and invited me to the rehearsals. He likes to rehearse the actors before production begins which is great because I start seeing the blocking and get ideas to start preparing. Ron is an extremely prepared director, he comes to work early and he’s ready to go, he gets out of that car and you better be running as fast as he is! The frst week of The Missing was going really well, although we had some challenging weather issues; we’d be outside flming and a front would come in and I’m like “okay let’s go inside the barn, I’ll light the barn for day and we’ll keep the scene consistent.” We’d run inside and shoot the barn for a few hours, the weather would change and we’d run back outside, it was one of the best weeks you could ever have on a flm. Friday morning comes along, and we’re setting up for a scene and Ron says, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” Now, you usually get fred on a Friday after the frst week, so I walked over to the end of the barn which felt like a mile for me and I’m thinking, I can’t believe it, how much harder can I work? I thought it was this great week, what went wrong? I had forever in my mind to go over this as I walked over there. Ron pulls me aside and says, “Listen I have this script called Cinderella Man and I’d like you to read it.” I was in shock, I said, “I’ll do it, I’ll do it!” And he says, “no read the script frst and tell me if you like it.” Here I thought I was getting fred and actually it was the beginning of a long relationship.

What was it like working with Oliver Stone? That was a really interesting experience. Any Given Sunday was my frst feature flm, so it was trial by fre to put it lightly. That flm had a lot of testosterone pumping through it. Oliver said to me on the frst day of principal photography, “Welcome to Vietnam.” I walked away going, “what the fuck is he talking about?” and then I realized it was about survival, in Vietnam you did what you had to do to come home alive, and I did what I had to do on Any Given Sunday to come home alive, everybody was expecting me to come home in a body bag and I didn’t. Oliver is a really challenging director to work with, he’s a really smart man but everything was a challenge. The earliest Oliver came to work was twenty minutes late every day, unlike working with Ron and Roger Michelle, they come to work really prepared and collaborate and are willing to have your input. Oliver on the other hand kept his cards really close, so you had to maneuver carefully to fgure out when to bring your ideas forward, which presented a big challenge for me. We all have the same common goal here, the director is the one piloting the ship, I’m the frst mate, I’m there to help the director get to where they want to go and hopefully very smoothly and on beautiful waters. The thing I had going for me on Any Given Sunday was the fact that the second unit director and cameraman had very big egos and Oliver wasn’t going to have

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that. Oliver was willing to listen to my ideas about how to approach the football game and he seemed to have some of the same ideas. We wanted the audience to feel like they were in the game, what does it feel like to be on the feld? I can remember a specifc meeting with second unit, and they were telling us, “you shoot the principal actors, and we’ll shoot the football,” once again no collaboration. Because of that, Oliver really cut their Achilles tendon and we wound up shooting most of the football game. On top of that you had all these egos on set, there was always something going on someplace. We had James Brown, LL Cool J, Jaime Fox. A real fght broke out on set between Jamie Fox and LL Cool J right over Al Pacino! It was in the scene where they are supposed to have a fght as they are coming off the feld and Al is supposed to break it up, so Al is in there acting and breaking it up and these guys are really throwing punches. We fnally realized it and broke it up. There was Al Pacino in the middle of these punches fying over him. So that was Any Given Sunday. I have a lot of respect for Oliver. He’s a really smart man. I think sometimes because he keeps his cards really close that it puts obstacles in front of him, there are a lot of good people around on set and you have to use those people. I’m not the type of person that gives up, some people just give up and don’t adhere to the challenge, but you know what, that’s a lot of energy spent, really good energy that you could use to focus on improving what you’re doing. As opposed to energy trying to fgure out how to navigate these waters to be able to accomplish your job, that's counterproductive. I would love the opportunity to work with him again and see what it would be like now. I’m more experienced. I’m a different type of person than I was back then, Oliver’s different, it would be interesting to see what the perspective would be.

He hasn’t settled on one cinematographer since Bob Richardson, but now Richardson is working with Scorsese and Tarantino. Yeah and doing some really great work, I have a lot of respect for Bob Richardson, he’s another rule breaker.

You mentioned that you had the opportunity to watch the blocking during rehearsals on The Missing, do you do that often when you are working with a director? With Ron, yes, he would say today is a good day to come to rehearsal or we’re doing this scene, do you want to be there?

On set is it a spontaneous decision to do a dolly shot or is it more planned? With Ron there is a lot of dialog that takes place in preproduction, so you are breaking down scenes and working out ideas way before the day you shoot.

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Ron and I and the frst assistant director (AD) drive to work together and start planning the day. At the end of the day, we drive back together and recap, maybe plan a little for the next day. Ron comes into the car in the morning and hands us the shot-list for the day. I look at it and start working with him on it, “is this what we talked about in preproduction?” Ron may say, “yeah but I’ve been thinking; last night we talked about approaching the scene this way and I started looking at the location and thinking what if we did this instead?” I might add something like, “Instead of using the dolly maybe we should use the Steadicam here and mix this up a little,” so I can have my ideas expressed, not always accepted but it’s okay. On Frost/Nixon, the driver would come pick me up in the morning, I’d have him come early and we’d go to get coffee and Ron would get in the car and really appreciate the coffee; one day he said, “you know what I’d like to get in on the coffee ritual” and I just looked at him and he said, “I promise I won’t talk about work until after we get the coffee.” I said, “okay,” but that lasted about three days, the fourth day he gets in the car with the shot list “I was thinking…” and I said, “No, coffee frst.”

Does Ron like to use storyboards? He does but not for everything. For action sequences, he uses storyboards. We used a lot of storyboards for Angels and Demons because we really needed to fgure out how we were going to photograph St. Peters Square. We weren’t allowed to shoot there, so we built St. Peters Square with 900 linear feet of green screen. We were working in a semi virtual reality, so we really needed to work off the boards to fgure out how to approach it. Production wants the wall to be 30’ and you really want the wall to be 60’ because of low angels, visual effects are in there too, so pre-visualization and storyboards became big players on how we approached St. Peters. Even at the Piazza Navonna in Rome, we shot there in one direction and everything in the other direction was all built, including the fountain. We dug a hole in the ground and put in this 40,000-gallon fountain that was recreated by the production designer, who did a fantastic job on that flm.

Have you worked with visual references to communicate a visual style? Often, I’ll look at photography and a lot of photography is not about the actual picture that I’m seeing but the feeling it evokes. Which can be challenging to convey sometimes. Maybe you are looking at a modern room and the light looks a certain way coming in the room but you’re flming something that is over 300 years old, so how do you use that reference in that scenario? It’s more about the emotion, how it makes you feel rather than to convey the actual look of the photograph. I think sometimes Ron just looks at me like I’m nuts and sometimes he gets it.

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Has he ever come to you with a particular reference? He may say, “look at these flms I kind of like the way they look, what do you think?” Ron never says I want something to look like this, but he likes to have references as a direction to go in. But he wants me to bring my own favor to it. He has a very sophisticated palette, it’s never “hey look at this and copy it,” instead it’s more like listen to this song, take a look at this.

What about with color palette? Have you worked on flms where you thought about specifc colors or a specifc look, like skip bleach for this, or saturation for this? A little bit, I’ve never done skip bleach on a flm. I’ve done it in commercials, but for features I’ve tested it and it wasn’t quite right. I used lower contrast flm stock for Cinderella Man, and I lit it warm and muted to make it feel more somber and a bit daunting and heavy. I referenced the artist George Tooker for that flm. There’s a scene in Cinderella Man where he (Russell Crowe) goes back to the relief offce and Ron just let me go a little bit, so I approached it a little on the off-beat side. The references I used were more about the emotion through color palette and tone. We shot this woman through a hole in the gate and it was very much infuenced by George Tooker. I have been very fortunate to work with great production designers, Wynn Thomas did a fantastic job on that flm. We were fortunate enough that the sets were right where our offces were, so while they were being built, we would just wander down and have a look and watch the progression. When you walked on that set, you felt like you were walking into a real apartment. Even though we built the whole set to be wild including the ceiling, I took one wall off for one shot because I just couldn’t get the camera back far enough but I really fought hard to photograph from within the apartment so that you felt what the Braddocks were going through. There were times where I would be sitting at the kitchen table with the camera and it was very frustrating, so at one point the crew said to me could we please open a wall in the opposite direction so we can get equipment in and out easily? They would have to have one or two lens cases nearby and I was shooting with two cameras, so for lens changes they had to go out of the back door and around to get a lens and come back in, so they pleaded to let me open the wall. Those are examples of approaching a scene or several scenes in an environment to make the audience feel what those actors are going through. Frost/Nixon was shot all on sets except for the exteriors and the interior of the lobby of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The rooms at the Beverly Hilton we built, the interiors of Nixon’s house we built and I think it’s conveyed that it doesn’t feel like a set. It’s more of a challenge lensing a scene because you aren’t taking out a wall. It’s not realistic if I take out this wall and go back there; it looks and feels a little off. I think that Tony Scott got it right because for him a wide lens was a 200mm, so he’d compress the space, which the audience feels, and it creates a different tone.

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Do you prefer working with primes or zooms? I’m more of a prime person. I dislike zooms in shots, I prefer dolly moves to zooms. There are certain times when it’s appropriate to use a zoom, but mostly I think a push in on a dolly works better. Primes are faster, I do handhold the camera often so it’s easy to just grab the camera off the dolly and throw it on my shoulder. Sometimes I won’t even wait for the whole shoulder bracket just to get going. With the zoom on the camera, it’s harder to do that because you have to take the zoom off and the follow focus, the rods and the cables and I’m a little impatient.

Do you operate your own camera most of the time? Yes, I do. I also have a very good operator, Andrew Rollands, he’s fantastic and John Barr is my gaffer who shoots second unit for me. Andrew is the “A” camera operator and when we collaborate, it’s like “I’m thinking of doing a shot like this” and Andrew will come in and say, “what about a dolly shot here?” Or just change an idea on the shot list, so we work well together. It’s defnitely a collaborative environment. I jump in with the “B” camera and I have freedom with Ron to poke around with the B camera, so sometimes we’ll do three or four takes if he likes the performance. I look at him and he says, “go ahead” because he knows I want to move on to a different angle.

Do you always use multiple cameras? Always.

Is it harder to light for multiple cameras? It’s much more challenging. But usually with multiple cameras you’re creating a greater depth because all of the actors are at the top of their game since they are all on camera, so it’s not like an actor is off camera and not quite giving a full performance. With everyone on camera. all of the actors’ performances are elevated, and we get a lot more done in the day and I get to come home and see my family.

In terms of how you are situating the cameras, is it generally on opposite sides of the line? Sometimes there could be a whole dolly scene involved as the master shot, and Ron may take something from one part and something from the other part of the dolly shot and I’ll see an opportunity to get a camera angle only for a few lines before the dolly or the other camera gets in the way. That kind of works out too. There is no specifc rhyme or reason to the approach, the A camera is always the master camera and the B camera falls in.

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Do you do much testing before you shoot? Sometimes. On Frost/Nixon, I really didn’t. I knew going in what kind of flm stock I wanted to use and how I wanted it to look. For Cinderella Man, we did a lot of testing, Angels and Demons, we did a little testing, more hair and makeup tests. A lot of tests on Da Vinchi Code because I started using some LED lights, now there’s a whole bunch of color corrected LED lights available, but back in 2005 in England there wasn’t much LED technology that was color corrected available, so we started testing the lights inside the car, where we could place them, how we could color correct them; they weren’t quite photographing like they were being metered, I couldn’t really rely on the meter. If I opened up to a T1.4 sometimes it was overexposed, so I had to fgure that out.

Do you do much work with the production designer in prepping the flm? Yes there’s a lot of communication, a lot of dialog; working with someone like Alan Cameron it’s almost diffcult in a very good way, because he’ll have sub drawings and a model made and you’ll start working on it and you go if I had the camera, and before you can even say anything he’ll say, “I have some windows here you can light through or I made this so this piece comes off and you could light here and not see it.” He is thinking so much ahead and it’s fantastic to work with somebody like that. He doesn’t put you in a box.

Have you done much location shooting where you don’t have sets and have to deal with what’s there? Oh yeah, a great amount. In commercials all the time, I like practical sets and that’s why I try to photograph the sets we build like practical sets without moving walls.

Regarding camera movement, are you making suggestions or does the director usually come in with an idea of what they want to do? Sometimes they do and sometimes it depends. There are times where Ron will come in and say, “hey I was thinking of putting the camera here,” and I’ll say what if we move the camera here instead? I keep the camera on a slider so I can do a little adjustment left or right. Other times it’s unspoken and it just happens and he’s okay with that. The one thing I have a hard time getting Ron to do are “oners” (single take of the entire scene shots). I am a big fan of “oners.” You just do a scene that’s a medium shot and it’s amazing and I’ll say, “I’ve got it, we don’t even need to do the coverage.” Ron will be like, “let’s get the coverage just in case,” and he’s usually right.

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There was this great part of the scene in Frost/Nixon where David Frost is driving to the Smith house for the very frst time, so we took the passenger’s side of the door and tied it open, put the camera battery on the roof of the car with Velcro so it would just come off easily, had a focus puller in the backseat behind me and I was in the passenger seat with a stripped down camera and just a video monitor. Michael Sheen was driving the car, Sam Rockwell was in the backseat behind him and the other two actors in the car were off camera where David Frost is parking. So, we were flming across his hands to somebody jogging in the street, and I tilted up through the window as the car starts turning and we see the news reporters on the lawn of the Smith house where everyone is waiting and pan over and get David Frost’s face as he parks the car and acknowledges his producer with the camera, parks the car and goes to get out and I hand off the camera to Andrew Rowlands who picks up the camera, the camera assistant in the backseat hands the focus out the window to another focus puller, picks up the camera, comes out of the car and you see David Frost getting out of the car as you are going up with him and the camera follows him and the rest of the cast across the street as Nixon’s limo pulls up, the camera goes around, Nixon gets out and you wind up with an over the shoulder and it’s a Goodfellas move but all handheld, in the car and out of the car. It didn’t quite work as a oner, they ended up cutting it into several different shots, but it was a whole choreographed single take and I really kept pushing for it to be used as a oner. Ron wanted some coverage on that and I said you know what would be a great idea let’s take the camera down the street and put it up high looking down almost like surveillance and he asked, “how is that really going to work?” I said it could be secret service or an odd point of view. He said I’m not sure about that but okay and it made it into the flm; it’s a good break in between some of that hand-held camerawork.

How do you feel about working with Steadicam? I like Steadicam, every device has a purpose, so I’m not averse to one, if it’s the right tool for what you are trying to do, then I think it’s fne to use.

Where are you when Steadicam is shooting? Sometimes I’m over his shoulder, I wear headsets with my guys so we can communicate and talk to everybody very quietly, so it doesn’t interfere with the actors. Or I sit back at the monitors with the director and watch what’s going on, but it’s carefully worked out with the operator and if there is something that’s not quite right, I’ll talk to him very quietly about what I need for him to do. I have a great collaborative relationship with Steadicam operator Andrew Rowlands. Andrew does A camera and Steadicam, so there is always a Steadicam at our disposal. Sometimes it’s preplanned and sometimes it just comes up on the day.

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You worked on three very different flms in a row with Space Jam, Tax Collector and Postcard Killings and working with different directors? Space Jam was a really interesting and tricky project. It was a huge $200 million-dollar flm with a lot of visual effects. The studio let the director go after nineteen days of flming for creative differences. That happened on a Monday evening, I came in and interviewed on Tuesday and I started prepping on Wednesday. Malcolm is a very collaborative director; he reminds me a lot of Ron. He knows the material really well, knows what he wants, comes really prepared and it’s really exciting when you work with a director like that. I love working with a director that’s prepared because subconsciously, I wind up pushing myself further. Great sense of humor too, which is really nice to be around. The studio had great expectations and we delivered. I’m happy I did a project like this because it’s like nothing that I’ve ever done before. I like working in different genres, different technology, different budget sizes. Tax Collector was about fve million to 200 million on Space Jam and I’ve done everything in between. I think that shows a lot of versatility on my part, but for me, I love every challenge. And approaching every challenge, you have different restrictions, budget restrictions, so you have to look at it differently.

So, when you’re working with a fve million-dollar flm, what do you feel when you’re prepping it? What feels different? How do you feel the restrictions? Well, you have less time, less amount of days. With a two-hour flm, you may flm in twenty-three days, as opposed to ffty-fve or seventy days, depending on the content. I call in a lot of favors from the camera house, Keslow Camera, they’ve been fantastic with me. Dennis McDonald and the rest of the team. They’re really very supportive of cinematographers. Whether it’s a small or a big project, they’re like, “Okay, what do you need? Don’t worry about the budget, just tell me what you need.” We had two full camera packages and I operated the B camera, Will Arnot operated the A camera, and we had a great time. David Ayer has a lot of connections in the LAPD world and in the gang world from Training Day and End of Watch. We wound up shooting in parks and projects in Los Angeles that nobody’s shot in before. David went and spoke to the cops, and to the gangs, and they sat down and he said, “Okay guys, we’re going to flm here, and this is how we’re going to make this work.” I felt safer than I do in downtown LA. So, it was a lot of fun, and we got to work with a lot of different people. I made a lot of friends on the project. You’re limited though because you don’t have the cranes you’d want to have. So, you really have to think about what scene would the crane really be needed for rather than it just sitting there in case it was needed, you have to commit.

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So, what makes you decide on a format, between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 or 2.39:1? A lot of things. We shot Tax Collector 1.85:1. I wanted to show more of the city, Los Angeles. I wanted more top and bottom frame. I also shot spherically, so I could use faster lenses. If I went anamorphic, anamorphic would have been kind of an interesting look, but it would have been a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, and using slower lenses, I would have needed more lighting, more money for that. So, budget is also a consideration. We shot Everest at 1.85:1, because I wanted to show more of the mountain, and the environment. I felt we should have shot SpiderMan on 1.85:1, but the director really wanted to go 2.35:1. I understand and respect that. I want to see more of what’s happening, sometimes, in a flm like that. So, my choices are based on the content, the story, the locations, the sets and budget.

So, what was that experience like? You were shooting in a pretty intense environment with mountains, and cold and snow. What was the experience like for that shoot? I got nerve damage in my toes from it. It was really exhilarating though, because you’re out in the environment. You have to have to harness in on location, so I wasn’t just saying to the camera department, “Give me a camera up there.” I’m like, “Guys, I want a camera up there!” I grabbed cases with them, harnessing in and carrying them up the mountain. So, it was a real team effort, in that sense. I like getting my hands dirty, I really do. I’m going to admit it. I’ll help the boys. If I’m not doing anything and they’re moving lights, I’ll just jump in and help them move lights. It’s also leading by example, too, I think. Some of the crew look at you differently when you are willing to get your hands dirty, and you know how heavy a light is. So, when you’re scanning the location, you don’t just say, “I’d love to get a couple of lights on that ledge, just up there.” Because of the experience helping out, you know what it’s going to take to get that up there.

You’re mostly shooting everything digitally now, so what makes you decide between a RED Weapon 8K, an Alexa, is it the format, or the situation? I prefer to shoot Arri Alexa. I like the look of the digital sensor on Alexa more than any other camera. We wound up shooting RED on Bird Box because at the time it needed to be small and handheld, and Arri didn’t have the 4K camera required for Netfix at that time. It’s a little more user-friendly. Of course, I like the organic quality of photochemical, I did Postcard Killings on flm. There was a couple of nights I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking, “Shit, I have to expose that too much.” Because you’re not seeing it, and you’re waiting, waiting, waiting, and fnally you’re like, “Okay, the lab is open.” Call the

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lab, and go, “Hey, how’s that scene? I underexposed a little bit, did I underexpose too much?” “No, no, no, it’s fne. Don’t worry about it.” “Fuck, I lost three hours of sleep.” But, I like that it keeps you on your toes and makes you think differently. When you look at it digitally, you see it right there and the other problem with digital is there can often be too many cooks in the kitchen. You have too many producers on set and one person will be, “This is too dark, this is too green, this is too that.” Not understanding the whole overall palette and mood of the flm. They’re just looking at one scene that they just happen to be there for that day. I fnd that hard. Everybody’s hands in the computer and they think, “Oh, I’ve got a computer, look what I can change and do on my computer.” You do have a lot more room to change things digitally, but when you set out with intention to create a visual tone with the director to help tell that story, you want to keep that intact, as much as you can.

So, do you think that flm is still a viable option right now? When I did Postcard Killings, we were in London and Kodak told me, in 2017 in Europe, they sold 10 million feet of flm, in 2018 they sold 15 million feet of flm, so there was a 50% increase in flm being used in Europe. So, more cinematographers are going back and saying, “Hey, let’s shoot this on flm.” It’s not as easy as it used to be, fnding a lab to do your dailies. We had a lot of dirty negative on Postcard Killings, so that becomes a cost afterwards to clean the negative. Which producers aren’t happy about.

But then, in terms of archival, you have your negative, and then you do a digital intermediate (DI), so you basically have more archival material, than you would shooting digitally, especially if it’s a lower-budget flm, right? Well, it depends. For Tax Collector, we did it digitally. It depends on the director. We were averaging 5000 feet of flm a day on Postcard Killings. What I fnd with digital, a lot of times, is that directors just keep rolling and go, “Do it again, do it again, do it again, do it again.” But, when you reload that camera, or when you have a producer saying, especially when you have a tighter budget that was cut, they’re like, “Hey, you can’t go over this amount of flm a day.” You’re conscious when you turn that camera on and off, and when you say, “Cut” or not cut. So, a lot of times, if I see the director starting to have a conversation with the actor and you can see this is going to take a minute or so, I’ll even turn the camera off myself. Because I don’t want to waste the flm. I think it makes you a little bit more diligent, which is a good thing. It makes a director think, “Maybe I should do some more rehearsals frst, before I start rolling. Do less takes, then I can get more work done in a day.” And not only that, you’ve got

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to look at all those dailies too. Five thousand feet of dailies is a lot different to looking at 20 thousand feet of dailies.

Oh my gosh, yeah. So, flm’s not dead. No, I don’t think it is, no.

But, it died, it had resuscitation, it had a little heart attack, for a while. You know what? It did. It did have a heart attack and then it was resuscitated. Which is really interesting because I never thought that it was going to have a heart attack. I was always like, “Oh, this is way off.” And then RED came out of nowhere and changed the game.Then,Arri and Sony were playing catch-up and they caught up really well, but they caught up so well that it just pushed everything ahead.Then everything just started going digital and it opened up the world for a lot of cinematographers. People just went out and bought a camera because they were inexpensive and started flming. I have reservations about that, I don’t think that’s the proper way to go. There’s a lot more to learn about being a cinematographer than just flming. There’s a lot more that goes into it.Which, I think you miss when you just start shooting. I think apprenticeships are really important. I think you need more of a foundation and apprenticeships give you that foundation. I try to mentor because I think it’s important. It was really interesting how digital took off and it came to a point where nobody wanted to shoot on flm. Then, a few cinematographers and directors like Chris Nolan and Tarantino pushed hard to get flm back. Because of them, a lot of other people started going back to flm. Which is interesting, because now, you’ll have a producer who’s been around for a long time, who’ll say,“Are you feeling comfortable with flm?”“Yeah, this is what I used to do for 20 years before digital was here, it’s fne.” It brings a nervousness back, in a strange way,“Wait a minute guys, we all used to do this. Don’t you remember?” But there are some new executives at the studio that have no idea what that’s like, and they’re nervous about it. So, they start questioning the producer.

So, you’d also had experience of shooting a big Marvel flm, like Spider-Man. What was that like for you? Yeah, that was challenging because there were a lot of visual effects. The storylines changed a lot, and it was tough. I wasn’t performing at my best, during that. I was having a diffcult time dealing with the changes. They’d come up with big ideas and the money wasn’t there to facilitate some of those ideas. It was all new for the director, John Moss, who I really like.

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There was a while there where I was like, “I don’t want to do another Marvel flm.” But now I’d like to go back, because I think I’d be approaching with a different mindset. It would be nice to take on that challenge again.

Is it because it’s kind of a genre, the Marvel comic book, are there certain things that you have to adhere to from the previous flms, the franchise? Well, it is a little true. They want it to be better, but when you look at Marvel flms, they tend to all look the same. That’s what’s hard about trying to change or to give it a little extra twist. They want to elevate, every time you do another project. You’ve got to give Marvel a lot of credit, it’s easy to put things on autopilot and they don’t. They’re like, “Okay. That was really good, and the bar was here, now we want to set it here.” So, that aspect of it is great. However, the flms all tend to look the same.

So, you’ve done a lot of flms with Ron, but now you’re doing different work with other directors. Do you feel you work the same with other directors, or do you feel they’re bringing something different out in you? Well, it depends. As we discussed earlier there, some directors do push you further. I really loved working with David Ayer. He’s very committed, really knows the story because he wrote it himself. Because he pushes, you’re pushing yourself every day, as well. Malcolm Lee is like that as well. So, I like working with people that really put the effort into it. Other directors that aren’t putting the effort into it, I learn something there, as well. I take that experience with me, on to another project. What to look out for, what to change, how to do it differently. But Ron is my favorite director to work with. We’re still really good friends and we always talk. We’re waiting for the right project to work on together again.

What advice would you give an aspiring cinematographer on how to get started in the business? There are a lot of people who have worked for me who are now cinematographers. I think training under other cinematographers is a tremendous asset. Seeing how other people work and how the process works, how to communicate, that’s a big deal. It’s not about just knowing the technical aspects of the job but also the communication and political aspects of it, which are just as diffcult. Also, it’s important to see what’s involved in putting a project together and dealing with the challenges that might arise. Going through that experience with someone else and seeing how they deal with various issues gives you the knowledge on how to handle it on your own and take it a

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step further. Aspiring cinematographers should not be afraid, take chances, be ballsy; that’s what sets people apart. I think some young cinematographers get too caught up in the rules. You’ve got to take chances and risks or you’re not going to grow. I used to speak with Conrad Hall sometimes; he was a really great guy, talk about the old timers. You’d have some idea and talk to him and he’d go, “Oh wow that’s fucking crazy, wait a minute what if you did this instead of that?” There he is at 70 years old getting really excited about your crazy idea.

Other than Harris Savides, who was your mentor? Conrad Hall was a mentor. Bob Richardson was a mentor. I was always a fan of Roger Deakins’ work. Back in the day, Gordon Willis’s work, Jordan Croneworth is another risk taker.

What do you think about the difference between the New York flm community and the Hollywood flm community? I’ve been out of the east coast community for a long time, but when I was back there, it was defnitely a more closed environment and it was harder to progress and move up. That’s why I chose the route of music videos and coming out west because there was a lot more opportunity out here, not so rigid. You broke rules a bit and nobody knew. In New York, if you did a non-union job and they knew, you got in trouble. So, there was no place for you to grow, out here they are much more tolerant of that.

Do you think that it’s harder to make it on the east coast or do the flm school graduates have to come out to LA? Is it harder to freelance in New York? Not in the past few years, there’s been so much work since the tax incentives. The tax incentives in other states make it inviting to shoot elsewhere and also it’s become very diffcult to flm in LA, neighborhoods are becoming very diffcult, the city says they want to be helpful but they aren’t. Lately, if you say you want to shoot in downtown LA on a Thursday night, production has to pay extra money to buy out parking lots to put the trucks in because the city doesn’t want them on the street taking up parking because Thursday night is an art walk night. It’s also business and commerce that’s happening, so you can’t take that away. Producers, especially in commercials, are starting to go, “hey wait a second it’s costing me an extra $5k to buy this parking lot to shoot on this corner and then we have to do a location agreement, do you really want to shoot here?” Then you start to go, “hey I’ll go to Vancouver and I won’t have this problem.” Then I go to New York City to shoot and I’m being told about lights shining in people’s windows, it’s not like we’re disrespectful, we

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try really hard to shoot a scene in the street. But you’ve got a condor on the other end of the street and another light that’s pointed down in the street with fags on the side of the light trying not to point into people’s windows. There’s a moratorium in some places in downtown Los Angeles where you can only work until 2:00am; how can you promote any business? Agencies are starting to go wait a second let’s go someplace else where it’s a lot easier to flm and it’s cheaper.

Have you had much interaction with the producers on any of the projects you’ve worked on? Yes, I’ve had good relationships with the producers, very proactive. I think it’s very important to have a good working relationship with the producer. It’s good to include them on what you want to do because they are the ones that are going to allow you to be able to do it. They are paying for it. There are many times when you might come up against a brick wall, you’ll say but you know what? I don’t need this other location this whole thing could be really simple if we took the money away from that and put some of it here and they’ll see that you are willing to work with them. A good producer will try to make it happen for you, they’ll say, “you know that’s a really crazy idea, it will cost a lot of money but just give me a few days to fgure something out here.” That would be because you have this collaborative working relationship with the producer. If you go head to head with the producer right from the beginning, they are going to go, “no, no can’t afford that, do something else.” It’s always important to be a team player.

Would you say that you’ve achieved the level of success you had hoped to at this point in your career? Are you happy with where you’re at? I’m happy where I’m at as a person. I made choices in my career that were personal choices, that were very important to me. I think, if I didn’t make some of those choices, I probably would have been further along in a different direction. I chose not to do certain flms because it was more important for me to be home and be a father at that time. I see a lot of cinematographers that have broken families. Because they go from one flm to another flm, to another flm, to another flm. I had a commercial career, so I was able to come off a flm, stay home and do a bunch of commercials, so I can be a father. I can be with my children. I have a great relationship with my kids right now and that’s really important to me. I’m about to do a little project next week, and my son’s going to be my assistant. He’s studying Private Design, Yin Yang, Industrial Design. He’s very artistic and very mathematical at the same time. But he wants to work. He’s building a car and I’m not paying for it, he is. So, he’s like, “Yeah, I need to work. It will be great to

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work with you and spend time with you at work.” As opposed to, “I don’t know who this man is.” So, that was much more important to me. I came from nothing, so I have this incredible life. I live in an amazing place. I’m very, very lucky and fortunate. Could it have been different? Yeah, it could have been. Do I want it to be? No, I don’t. I’m happy being a father. When I die, I want my kids to get up there and speak, and not think of me as some stranger. You know? And I have that, so I’m a very rich man. Not fnancially, but in my heart.

There may come a time when you have to make sacrifces for your children rather than be an absent parent. Yeah and it’s a big sacrifce. Ron and I used to talk about this. Because Ron has four kids, and his wife is like, “I don’t like that Hollywood stuff.” Cheryl is like salt of the earth, she’s an amazing, amazing woman. And Ron talks about how, I think he might have been shooting Ransom, in New York, shoot Friday night and come home Saturday morning, from a night shoot and walk in the door, and Cheryl would be like, “Okay, Ronnie, the twins have to be at soccer practice at 11, we need to be at baseball practice at two, and Bryce needs to be here at four.” And he’s like, “I’m in the Volvo station wagon, drinking a lot of coffee, driving.” And he goes, “If I had to do it all over again, I’d do exactly that.” And he has a great relationship with his kids.

So, what other challenges are you looking forward to taking on? I was on a project before the virus hit, called White House Plumbers. I know, everybody’s like, “What’s that?” White House Plumbers is about Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, and the Watergate break-ins. It’s a fve-part, limited series. I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never worked in this genre. I get to work on a part of history and it’s kind of a bookend to FrostNixon. Working on a series brings a whole different set of challenges that I haven’t really experienced before and I’m really embracing that. As well as the team that I work with, David Menville is the writer/director on it. Brilliant guy, and I can see that we’re going to have a great, collaborative relationship. So, that’s exciting. Something different, something new for me.

Amy Vincent, ASC

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With a love of animals and an aptitude for science, Amy had planned to become a veterinarian. She was on the pre-med track at UC Santa Cruz when her path was derailed by a work study position in the performing arts. Fascinated by the technical side of theater lighting and sound design, she switched her major to theater arts. A flm history course taught by Bruce Kawin introduced her to the collaborative nature of the director and cinematographer through the work of silent flmmakers F.W. Murnau and Karl Freund, inspiring her to learn more about the world of cinema. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, she moved to Los Angeles where her frst job in flm was cutting deteriorated silver nitrate prints at UCLA. She spent several years working in post-production as an assistant editor, including working on Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me, but her true desire was to move into the camera department where she could put her lighting skills to use. She made the transition as an intern and worked her way up through the ranks of the camera department. Amy was fortunate to have the experience of working as a camera assistant with John Lindley on Vital Signs and Father of the Bride, with Bill Pope on Fire in the Sky, and Gridlock’d, and with Robert Richardson on Natural Born Killers before she decided to attend AFI (The American Film Institute) to see if she had what it took to be a director of photography (DP). Proving that she did, Amy’s frst flm as director of photography was the critically acclaimed Eve’s Bayou (1997) directed by Kasi Lemmons. Amy re-teamed with Kasi on The Caveman’s Valentine. She continued as a director of photography on the critically acclaimed Hustle & Flow directed by Craig Brewer, where she won the Sundance award for Best Cinematography. The collaboration with Craig Brewer continued on Black Snake Moan and Footloose. Amy photographed the documentaries This Film is Not Yet Rated directed by Kirby Dick and House of Cardin directed by P. David Ebersole. She was the DP on numerous flms including Some Girl with Rory Kelly, Jawbreaker with Darren Stein, Walking Across Egypt with A. A. Seidelman, Way Past Cool with Adam Davidson, Freedom Song with Phil Alden Robinson, and Kin, for Elaine Procter.

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Amy is also a recipient of the Women in Film Kodak Vision award. She has also photographed numerous television pilots including Upload, Downward Dog, Wayward Pines, True Blood, Hail Mary, Eastbound and Down, and Campus Confdential. Her second unit/visual effects credits include Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, Bewitched, Biker Boyz, The Zookeeper, I Heart Huckabees, and Gridlock’d. Amy Vincent is the frst woman to be elected as Vice President (VP) of the esteemed American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), where she is involved in numerous committees – pushing for a safe return to the set amidst the pandemic and confronting the inclusion and diversity issues within the industry. She has been in the ASC since 2002 and has become a mentor and iconic fgure to many younger cinematographers. I frst spoke with Amy early in 2013, and in the seven years that have transpired, many things have changed in the motion picture industry. We spoke again in August 2020, with the motion picture industry trying to fnd new ways to work within the global pandemic from COVID 19. She is currently chair of the ASC Future Practices Committee (FPC) which addresses current and future working practice, and creative integrity as our industry manages the crisis. The purpose of the ASC-FPC is to advise and propose creative and technological solutions, as we adopt, and adapt to new health and safety protocols. Amy is a vegan, lives near the beach and loves all animals. She enjoys taking her dogs for walks on the beach or a hike in the Santa Monica mountains when she’s not working.

Can you tell me a little about what the Future Practices Committee is discussing? The Future Practices committee was formed by myself and co-chair Eric Messerschmidt. The FPC’s intention is to advise and propose creative and technological solutions, as we adopt, and adapt to the new health and safety protocols, all the while striving to preserve visual storytelling as an art form and maintain creative collaborations. We focus on individual cinematographers’ on-set experiences from Australia to New Zealand, Japan, to here in the United States, hearing how different it is from region to region. That’s one of the most interesting things about this time is to see everybody coming together. We have so many amazingly smart, problem solving, passionate people in this business, that I have no doubt that we’ll get back and we’ll get back safer, stronger, with more vital stories to tell. It will be because of the collaborative nature of flmmaking that everybody comes together for the greater good. And I think that safe, accurate and quick turnaround testing may be the key to production getting back on its feet right now. My hope is that we can take a lot of these technologies of health and safety precautions and integrate them into the workplace, but not in a creatively oppressive way. We need to facilitate communication and collaboration. We

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do have a lot of ways to achieve that. There are a lot of remote technologies we already had, and now we’re fguring out the communications and collaboration tools to make them available. Everything from shared monitoring technologies, to virtual scouting, to blue tooth-enabled camera operation and beyond.

I think it’s interesting because nobody else has really addressed what will happen post-Covid, or with Covid still happening. Being on this committee makes you a voice and presence stating these things which are going to be the new guidelines set for young cinematographers coming into the industry who will have a different set of rules to abide by when they’re working that you didn’t have and that our predecessors didn’t have. It’s going to be a new way of working. The thing that is important to me and what we’re working really hard to enhance, is the inclusion work that’s being done, to create on-set mentorship and training programs. But we’re also working together to fgure out a way that we can preserve the art form of cinematography and visual storytelling even though we’re working under Covid protocols. I really love my community. I love the ASC, the membership, our crews, and the young cinematographers in training. Recently, we did a presentation on the news from the front lines from around the world of what everybody’s doing and experiencing as we return to work. There was a presentation on technology, and we concentrated on the new communication systems, virtual scouting, ultraviolet (UVC) lighting for sterilization, the use of atmosphere in the time of Covid. It’s about being generous with information, we don’t have any trade secrets, we want everybody to be effcient, be able to communicate, be safe and healthy. It’s exciting to see the leaders in our feld working to help an inclusive group of flmmakers enter the post-Covid flmmaking feld.

So, you're currently VP of the ASC? I am the frst elected female Vice President, serving under Stephen Lighthill, who is also the department head of cinematography at AFI. So far, it’s been a really fantastic experience. All of our masterclasses are cancelled for right now, and a lot of the ways we serve the community have disappeared. It’s a strange and unique time. Online education and the accessibility of brilliant artists and generous professionals in our feld being out there online and talking about their work is great. So, it’s an incredibly rich time to be a student whether you’re a professional student or a student of cinematography, because everybody is out there sharing their passion. We all love what we do.

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I have great hope that we will come back from this pandemic with a better, more inclusive workforce and with intensely human stories to tell. But we can’t forget, with all the safety protocols and minimizing numbers of people and separating monitors, we can’t forget our inclusion practices and our training practices. We are in the process of working together with the union and some of the studios to create a real mentorship on-set training program where people are actually paid for their internships while they shadow a DP.

You are part of a generation of cinematographers who helped to open the doors to younger female cinematographers. Can you talk about what you feel is your responsibility as a mentor? Sandi and Nancy were the only names out there during a certain era, then came me, Ellen, and Cynthia. What’s funny is that you can talk about these women by their frst names and know exactly who you’re talking about. But if you said, “Oh, that was John, Peter and whoever…” you wouldn’t. I’ve become very good friends with Cynthia Pusheck, Mandy Walker, Polly Morgan, and Natasha Braier. We’ve made it our mission to work together on the board and committees at the ASC. When you do fnd yourself in a situation where you are the only other woman in the room, it feels like a fashback. It’s like, “Wait a minute, this is from a long time ago?” We have this new joke – “What is this, the ‘90s?” which is kind of funny because I shot my very frst movie in the ‘90s. I do think a lot has changed. It’s a glorious feeling when we see how much progress has been made. There’s a natural proclivity for the women in the cinematography feld to become friends. I think that’s one of the things that has really transformed my life, is having good friendships and collaborating with other women. Cynthia has been one of my best friends since we were assistants together in the late ‘80s and we have a friendship that extends far beyond just being two women’s names on a list of cinematographers. Ellen and I were at Sundance together since we were kids. I love that all of the women of our age are now in leadership and governance roles as proof that it can be done. I feel like we’ve done a good job with enabling and empowering women. But we still need to address the LGBTQ and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) population. The ASC is working together with ITASE Local 600 and SOC (Society of Camera Operators) to create a program of online conversations about inclusion in our business. I feel like we’re at a time when what’s refected in the leadership in our country is also going to be refected in the leadership in the union, the ASC, and the SOC. Because we need change, we want change, we’ve been ready for change. We also need to support the inclusion initiatives and that’s something that, while everybody’s talking about safety protocols, we’re continuing to work really hard on inclusion and diversity. What makes me devoted to the younger population and people of color coming up is the drive for inclusion and there’s a strong maternal part to teaching and to mentoring that really drives me.

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Do you think that the male crew members have changed or are they having more respect for women in charge? I think it’s very old fashioned to hear somebody say something like, oh I’ve never seen a woman behind the camera. Well, when was the last time you were on the set, 1990? The world has changed. But there was a time when it wasn’t like that, we came up at a time when it wasn’t necessarily commonplace. But now if you walk on a set and there aren’t women in camera, grip, and lighting, it seems strange.

Can you talk about how you got started working in the industry? I spent about four years working in post-production, not really because I wanted to, but because I was offered a job. I did such wonderful things as cut sound effects on T.J. Hooker as an assistant editor. The best movie I was an assistant editor on was Stand by Me, directed by Rob Reiner. But most of the time, it was renowned cinematic gems like American Ninja Part 3 and Missing in Action Part 2: The Beginning, that was one of my frst ones. I kept telling the people I was working for that I really wanted to get into the camera department. Eventually, an opportunity came up for an internship for a movie in Santa Fe called And God Created Woman; it was a remake of the original. I asked one of the producers of the project that I was assistant sound editing on if he could help me get into the camera department anywhere. I drove to Santa Fe, with my Jack Purcell sneakers, and a little denim jacket, in my old BMW. I had no idea that in March, in Santa Fe there’s snow on the ground! I had never been on a real movie set before, especially as an intern when the camera department didn’t really want or need an intern. So, it was an interesting situation, but that was my frst experience in the camera department. I still had to rely on my post-production work for a while to earn a living, until eventually I started as a second assistant camera (AC). I worked my way up through the ranks. I loved second assisting because I could really pay attention to what the cameraman was doing. I had the privilege of working with a lot of great cameramen, but the most important person that I worked with on my way up was John Lindley, he’s still a close friend and kind of a father/mentor fgure to me. I learned a lot from John about what the cameraman does. For a while, when John was doing a movie, I was the second assistant. There did come a time when he worked with a different crew while I was still the second assistant. It was on Father of the Bride, and the camera operator on that job was not welcoming to a woman in the camera department and that really turned a switch in me. I had applied to AFI at the time we were on Father of the Bride, and I had reached a certain level of success in my assisting career where I was making decent money, and had saved some; my father had always said, “If

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you have money and time at the same time, that’s true freedom.” I thought, ok, what is true freedom? Then I thought, I could buy a house, I can go spend time in another country or I could go to AFI and see if I have what it takes to become a cinematographer. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. When I told John that I’d been accepted, he said, “Well, you’re going.” I think it was very important for me to see if “I had what it takes.” I needed to change my perception of myself and ask the question, ‘Was being a camera assistant my lifetime goal and dream?’ John allowed me to be involved creatively. We used to use an old black and white Polaroid camera to record exposures, I started getting a real sense for lighting and exposure by being the one that took the Polaroids. I would write all the information on the back of the picture. He trusted me and I think he knew how much I was learning by doing that. Because the stress and pressure of second assisting was not so extreme that I couldn’t have an ear and an eye open to learning.

Since you had already been on set, you learned a lot before you got there. I also worked with Bill Pope, who was also a great role model, another gentle, kind, person who moves through the world in an admirable way. I worked for Bob Richardson for quite some time, as well. Bill Pope, John Lindley, Bob Richardson, and Darius Wolski were all people that I assisted for, who knew that I was on my way. They took the time to move me up quickly or teach me by allowing me to watch them work and observe the collaborations with the directors that they worked for.

So, you had the opportunity to work with Nora Ephron, Oliver Stone, and some pretty big names as directors. Yes, Oliver Stone, Nancy Meyers, Phil Robinson, and Amy Heckerling. Bill (Pope) was the frst cameraman to move me up from second assisting to focus pulling. I found out pretty early on that I didn’t have those inherent, innate gifts that some focus pullers have. It was a very stressful job for me even though I had a great understanding of optics and the camera systems that we were using. Focus pulling was, for me, the most stressful job on set, so I moved up quickly. Bill Pope was also the frst cameraman to give me my frst A-Camera operating job. I was working on Gridlock’d with Bill as an A-Camera operator and getting ready to go off to do Eve’s Bayou, which was my frst movie as a DP. I remember Bill said, “No matter what you do, get yourself an operator.” Here I was operating A-Camera and I had gotten very comfortable with my job as an operator, I loved operating – it’s the best job on set. I’ve learned that when Bill says something, he’s usually right. I got Henry Cline, who was a frst assistant who was ready to move up, and I gave him the script to Eve’s Bayou to read. That was his frst opportunity as an operator. That type of thing doesn’t always work out where you give somebody their frst opportunity, but in this

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case, it really did. We went on to do seven or eight movies together after that. It’s funny, because I had been his second AC when he was pulling focus and then, when I got my frst movie as a DP, I asked him to operate. Now he operates with Bill Pope and John Lindley. It’s like you build a family even though you don’t all work together on every job.

Did AFI take you to that next level? AFI had a very different cinematography program when I was there. The program is far stronger and comprehensive now. But I will say that I met people there, that in some way, shape, or form were responsible for me becoming the cinematographer on Eve’s Bayou. There was a producing fellow, Jim Wilson who now works in London for Film4, who said to me, “I’m working for this producer who’s trying to get this short flm off the ground.” At that point, I was so burnt out on shooting short flms, for free, that I said, “You know what, I just can’t. I’m so done with that,” and he’s like, “No, I really think you should read this. I’ll give you the feature flm that the short is pulled from, you should read it because I think you’d be a really good match for this project.” I read the script for Eve’s Bayou and oh, my goodness, it was one of the best scripts I had ever read. I agreed to meet Kasi Lemmons and we did do a short flm together called Dr. Hugo. I borrowed my neighbors’ equipment and on Memorial Day weekend, we shot the flm that was supposed to be set in Louisiana. We shot near USC in one of those big old Victorian homes. The producer wanted to have something that Kasi had directed so that he could get the fnancing for the flm. Dr. Hugo was quite successful. It was selected for the Emerging Cinematographers Awards program in its inaugural year. Then it was three years before the funding for Eve’s Bayou came through. This gave Kasi and I plenty of time to prepare. We literally storyboarded every single shot of that movie and you could page through that storyboard book and see the movie. I have this huge notebook from that flm that I’ll save forever. We drew the rough drawings and then had somebody come in and redo them because I can’t draw. I’ve never prepped a movie that thoroughly since. But that kind of thoroughness is so helpful when you’re on limited schedule and budget. It was the best fail-safe we could put in place. I love Eve’s Bayou as a movie now as much as I did then because there’s something about your frst time that can never be recaptured. There was a certain naivety and daring, a photographic integrity. I was completely devoted to director Kasi Lemmons and Caldecot Chubb, who was the producer because he kept me involved as part of the partnership in the negotiations for the fnancing for the movie. He didn’t want Kasi and I to be separated, and that’s sort of unheard of to this day. I felt completely obliged to him because I had this opportunity with a great script that was very visual, and Kasi and I had three years to do the prep work. There was something so special to me about that movie. Because it was the frst, I didn’t know any better than to not put the photography in the

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forefront. I didn’t know anything about politics. I’ve since learned, and I may have learned the hard way a little bit over the years. There’s a lot that goes into being a successful director of photography, not the least of which would be the photography. But there’s also studio politics and the schedule, and all of those important collaborations. Eve’s Bayou legitimized me. I’m very grateful that my frst feature flm was something with visual integrity. Therefore, people noticed the photography and so they noticed me.

Then you started working more in the industry as a cinematographer. Did you get an agent from that movie, or did you already have an agent going into it? I had one before we shot Eve’s Bayou in 1996. It was Kasi Lemmon’s directorial debut, and she’s a female African American director working with a female cinematographer. That wasn’t very common back then. I was still relatively naïve about the number of women working as directors of photography in the business, and I didn’t realize that I was a big exception to the rule. As a result of being that big exception to the rule, I got noticed for everything that I did, good or bad, hopefully more of the good, than bad. I feel like there were a lot of people with their arms stretched out, wanting to offer me things. I remember getting invited to join the ASC in 2002, and I had only done four movies at the time. I do think that it was because I was a woman. I was at a younger stage in my career than when most people get invited into that organization. Kodak was also a big supporter of mine and in general people wanted to help. For example, Panavision was very supportive of my early career, as was Deluxe. I choose to believe that there were a lot of people that were ready for a new female cinematographer and they did a lot of things for me to help make that happen.

Did you face any obstacles coming up through the ranks of the camera department or being a DP? I was naïve when I started out and I didn’t consider that I was going into not just a male-dominated career, but an extremely male-dominated world when you get to the top ranks. If you’re going to move up through the union ranks, from camera assistant, operating, to becoming a DP, the statistics actually got more extreme as you went up. I can look back and say, you know what, I had a lot of people helping me out, I had a lot of people standing by with open arms to welcome me or with arms extended to give me opportunities, but I also have met with some adversity. I wanted to do the work and be absolutely certain that I was a generous collaborator with a creative, visual interpretation of any script that I had the privilege to shoot. I also had to make sure that I really knew my technicals, upside, downside and sideways. Anything that a female cinematographer does in the workplace is a refection on all of the rest of us. I take that part of the responsibility very seriously. There can’t be a

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question of your capabilities, at any time. It’s very important and it’s a responsibility to all of the young cinematographers coming up, especially the women. Obvious things to know, there is no gender to lighting. There’s no gender to close collaboration with a director, be it male or female. We all know that to be true. In the early part of my career, I was just naïve enough to not be stopped in my tracks by the statistics. I raised an eyebrow or two when my presence, even as a camera assistant, was not welcome by certain people on set. I think it gets far more insidious if you want to take it apart from the higher level. Back then, there were people that would never tell you to your face that they would never hire you because you’re a woman, but they just plain wouldn’t. Oh, the old days. But I choose to try to turn that into a positive thing. I have a little bit more time than somebody who does back-to-back movies. I have time to teach, I have time to be a role model and participate in the cinematographic community. I take that part of my career very seriously.

Were there sacrifces you feel you had to make to pursue your craft? I do wish that I had found the space and the time to have a family. But as a result of not having had a family, I have found time to be a generous teacher and mentor. Some of my best relationships with young people have come through my teaching. How satisfying it can be to see the growth of the students’ work, to witness a young creative mind developing. I look back on the people who taught me, like John Lindley, I am sure he felt the sense of responsibility that I feel to the young flmmakers. At frst, when I started teaching, it was because I had an injury, and I couldn’t work. My ability to be a good teacher and a role model to some of the younger up-and-coming cinematographers gave me a satisfaction that I wasn’t expecting. It is important to put out a positive outlook, but also be realistic about the challenges of the profession. Over the past few years, teaching has become a fairly big part of my life. I can fll the time between projects on a very positive and productive level by teaching. I get immense satisfaction from helping young people fnd their feet visually and learn how to collaborate and become better people by becoming better artists. It flls a gap that has always existed for me because I made a choice of career over family. I don’t want to label that as my biggest regret in life, but I hope that I never have a bigger regret in my life. I would say that’s the biggest thing that still doesn’t sit perfectly with me in terms of all the choices that I’ve made in this 50 plus-year journey. For my generation, that wasn’t always an option. There was a certain family structure in American society that dictated women who want to have children were probably going to need to stay home to raise those children, at least for a period of time. And if you worked as a cinematographer on location in feature flms that could be a tough road to hoe unless you were fortunate enough to

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have a stay-at-home partner who was going to be happy to care for the children while you were off working. I think that one’s career ascendence often coincides directly with the childbearing years. I am pleased to witness how much the tide has changed. A huge shift toward a more inclusive, more family-friendly workplace has transformed flmmaking, and dramatically increased opportunities for women in the feld.

What kind of flms are you drawn to? What attracts you to a project, creatively? I’m drawn to the opportunity to collaborate with a director who has something to say. I like to work with somebody who is devoted to the material and has something to say through it. It’s important to work with directors who really care about what they’re doing. It’s a great pleasure to work with a director who’s very specifc about what they want with the camera and blocking and it’s also fun to work with somebody who communicates through feelings, “I think we should have this kind of feeling.” And then you create together.

How technically savvy do you like a director to be? In this day and age most directors and audiences are extraordinarily visually savvy. I think Craig is sort of my ideal director because he’s technically very curious and he’s very specifc about what he wants, but now that we’ve done three movies together, he really entrusts things to me. We communicate through music, through Craig’s words on the page and I just pay attention to what he’s saying all the time, whether he’s talking to the actors or the AD (assistant director) or whoever. That comes out of having the privilege of multiple collaborations. I do think there is something to be said for the ideal director-cinematographer collaboration. It is pure gold when you fnd that in the journey. This is the essence of cinematography, the partnership with the director. You become a team to bring a story to life. You create for the director a safe performance space within which to work. You are augmenting with color choices, composition, camera movement, lighting, and collaboration with the designer. I strive to provide the director with a place in which to do their job – with the words and the actors and the camera. The really good work comes when all of that comes together. I like directors to know enough to realize what their ideas entail, but I also appreciate some of the vision that comes out of plain old naiveté. I don’t mean that in a negative way. I love that uncensored brain and trying to bring that uncensored brain to life. I talked about the virgin experience of photographing my frst feature flm, it’s like you get to relive that again through the eyes of some frst-time writer-directors. There’s also something wonderful about the sort of unspoken language that you have with somebody that you’ve already been through the creative trenches with.

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How you approach your lighting situations. How do you begin your lighting design? I am a classicist, in the sense that I believe in good preparation, a careful selection of locations and designing the plan for the whole movie. I believe each thing impacts the other. When you see the bigger picture, then you basically take it apart right down to a shot-by-shot basis. What time of day is it supposed to be? Whether it’s somebody’s memories or somebody’s dream? You have to know the essence of the scene. Then you look at the blocking and see what the director wants to do and make suggestions that may allow for more photographic opportunities. I’ll look for windows or for various light sources, for depth, like all cinematographers will do. Sometimes, I’ll try to work with the natural light, as opposed to rigging the whole set. Then, get your wide shots done with the natural light and sort of augment and fnesse when you get in closer. One of the things that a cinematographer does is to take the ideas from the script and the director and translate them into the logistics of a schedule and of a location. There’s a certain point in prep for me where we’ve been scouting, we’ve locked in on locations and I’ve gone to the locations with the director, we’ve gone through all the scenes and there’s this certain point in time where instead of talking about character and tone, visual structure, and other lofty ideas, everything turns logical and practical. I start referring to the scenes by scene numbers and I’m talking to my gaffer about gel colors and what instruments we’re going to be using. I love that gentle foating back and forth between the director’s beautiful vision and turning that into the logistics when you start shooting. It’s like those two worlds come together to produce this, hopefully beautiful flm. When you fnish prep, you should be able to push the ball down the hill and be able to engage with that beautiful energy of creativity, logistics and inspiration that just all comes together.

What’s your favorite format, if you could select one? My current favorite format is Large Format. I shoot with the Sony Venice a great deal, and also the Alexa Mini LF. I would love to shoot 35mm anamorphic flm again. I did it in Africa many years ago and it was just glorious. The flm was called Kin with Isaiah Washington and Miranda Otto. We were in the Namibian Desert and it was just amazing. But unfortunately, that movie never came out in this country. The whole experience to me was like the storybook version of being a cinematographer on location. It was so fantastic. I had a set of beautiful anamorphic lenses from Panavision in London. I would love to shoot anamorphic flm again. I would love to shoot flm, there is still nothing like it. There is a discipline that comes with having a photochemical process and understanding the science of color and light. Those are the things that are never going to change. You can capture them with any number of difference mediums, but for me because I grew up photochemically,

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I have a great love and passion for the technical. I am very scientifc and mathematical, so I love the discipline that comes with photochemical work. Specifc and deliberate flmmaking is how I was trained and what I appreciate, which is not to say that I would not embrace the improvisational comedy here and there, but there’s a certain discipline that has been around for a hundred years of making movies that sometimes goes out the window when you’re not shooting in a flm format.

What do you think about the longevity of flm? I think there’ll always be a place for it. I hope. I think ultimately, Kodak will keep making flm as long as vital flmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan continue the drive to work with flm. Film started making this little comeback as an intrigue thing. But I really like the fact that we have this huge arsenal of tools to use in lighting and in image capture, and they all serve a different purpose. It’s no longer that thing of flm or digital, it’s more of what is right for your project? If I think Super 16 is the perfect format for a job, then I would budget it out. Because there are so many considerations beyond just what flm looks like. You also have to consider, where’s the lab? How are you going to see dailies and is the director going to be okay with having a standard def video tap on an old Super 16 camera? But the beauty of that turnaround time on flm gave the cinematographer something special. It was like there was a little bit of magic and a little bit of mystery to what we did. Nobody really knew what things were going to look like until we sat down to watch dailies the next day. There was an era where the cinematographer was king, and some of the magic of what the cinematographer does has been diluted. The fact that everyone can see the results of the work in real time takes a little bit of the mysteriousness away and mystery is power. When I was transitioning from flm to digital with Craig Brewer, I remember him saying I don’t know if I want that lady with the Kleenex box jumping in between takes. So, from the director’s standpoint, if you’re the kind of director that doesn’t want to take the actor out of the moment and wants to be able to say, okay, let’s go again, you may not like the reset that comes with flm. The immediacy of digital image capture works for many directors, because of that instant gratifcation factor that allows not just the director but it also allows the DP to take more chances and to see the results of the choices right then and there in real time, as opposed to the turnaround on flm. I can’t see Craig being able to work on flm again. He really loves that open, free idea of being able to roll and never cut. But I do miss the mystery.

Of course, everything is done digitally in post… It doesn’t cost any more money for a good composition than for a bad composition and a poorly framed shot is always going to be a poorly framed shot,

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regardless of what you do to it in post. Just like a badly lit shot is always going to be a badly lit shot, no matter how you try and fx it. Now there are certain things that you can get away with that you couldn’t have before because of the digital intermediate (DI). I’m not at all a person who advocates the “oh well, we’ll fx it later kind of thing,” but there are some times, due to the pace at which we work, that you have to take advantage of the tools that are at our disposal.

Yes, even over the past couple years. I was thinking that in the not too distant future a new group of cinematographers would come up who have never shot flm. There are so many things that are just deeply imprinted on my brain in 24 frames per second with a shutter opening and closing, perfs pulling down, that’s how I see things. I just see the flm moving and stopping, moving and stopping and I think that this is the disappearance of photochemistry. Let’s take it in a world of teaching, now it’s so damn easy to get an image that anybody can and there’s instant proof because you’ve got a monitor. There’s not as much mystical or magical power of the cinematographer anymore. Anybody can actually get an exposure without even really understanding how they got it, and this affects everything. In some ways, it’s very positive that you can do a workshop where you can get people out and shooting and practicing newly learned old-school concepts right away. But the fact that they don’t have to understand them on a deeper level to apply them. Is it making for better or worse? So, it’s very diffcult to teach the discipline that goes along with photochemical. If you didn’t learn your T-stops, or you didn’t know how to use your light meter or you didn’t know your color temperature, you would have a lot of big fat surprises when you got to the dailies. But now you can just go look at the monitor. But on the other hand, I have been known to take more chances and go further with color overexposure or whatever because I have that confrmation right there. I do miss the ‘cinematographer as king era,’ as we call it. The cinematographer as king era to me, was guys like Allen Daviau, Conrad Hall, Haskell Wexler, Gordon Willis, of course, they were treated like kings and they were paid very well and the schedules were based on them. But those days are over and they’re not over because there aren’t still talented, gifted, brilliant people working out there. They’re over because of the business and the way things have changed technically.

Do you prefer working with prime lenses or zoom lenses? How extensively do you test lenses before you do a shoot? I primarily use prime lenses partly because the optical quality is so pure. Recently, I’ve been working with everything from Leica Thalias, to Arri

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Master Primes to Vintage glass or Panavision Primos. The technical specifcity of working with a specifc focal length and lining up a shot with a 40mm and saying the camera goes from here to here. I like to work that way. I’m very technically specifc, I like the deliberateness of flmmaking in that style. On the other hand, the availability of the smaller zooms makes a world of difference in terms of the amount of time you can save on set. For example, in television, the pace and the schedule often dictate working with two cameras ftted with 11–100’s (zooms); that’s how you roll. It’s a very different way of working. My preference is to work with primes and be very specifc, put down marks, and use a viewfnder to line up every shot. That’s the ideal mode for a feature flm, when you get a proper blocking rehearsal. There’s any number of different ways to capture images now whether it be photochemical or any number of digital formats, but lenses are everything.

What are your thoughts about working with Steadicam versus Dolly? Do you have a preference for one or the other? There are so many tools that we can use to move the camera. We are not limited to SteadiCam or Dolly. There are cranes and gimbles, handheld cameras and drones. Now, as we are coming back on to sets after the pandemic, we have a large array of remote technologies that are facilitating the art of camera movement in visual storytelling. It all goes back to the script, you think about what style of camera movement will best ft a character’s journey, and the tone of the scene. You take into account the logistics of locations and terrain. Then you choose the tool that best suits the scene. Making a visual road map through the script of what tools you plan to use really helps. In concert with the director, I like to develop a visual framework, unique to each project, a set of visual rules to guide us. Not necessarily obvious to the audience when they’re watching the movie, but it is very much in support of the director’s intention.

What have you been working on recently during this pandemic, besides the ASC Future Practices work? I entered the LA Lights the Way streetlight design competition with Heidi Adams, a production designer, and Al Demayo from Litegear. I’ve known them both for over 25 years. It was an amazing creative collaboration. When Mayor Garcetti announced the competition to design a streetlight for the smart city of Los Angeles, I was inspired to put a group together to collaborate – two cinematographers, and Al and Heidi, who made up the design force behind the whole thing. The competition opened in January and we were one of four teams selected in the professional category to move to Phase Two, the structural engineering part of it. It was such a beautiful collaboration, and we came to it with this sense of having to make it something that actually would be more than a fxture on a movie set, that had to stand up. I can’t tell what

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I’m most proud of, the fact that we just had such a good time cooperating or the end result. I am so blown away by Heidi’s stunning design. It’s a twisted trapezoid with all lighting engines on the curve of the top. It has an electric vehicle (EV) charging station, and a solar array, as well as a modular sunshade. It’s so beautiful. I love it. One thing I was motivated by was that I love the city I live in and part of why I love it so much is that I have an amazing group of friends that come from the beginning of my working on flm crews. I met Heidi on commercial set, I met Al on the set of Father of the Bride and we’ve worked together in various capacities ever since. We have lit the streets of LA for decades on our sets. Who better to design the lighting for the smart city of the future! I think that the skillset that you develop as a cinematographer can be quite useful in other areas of life – compassion and collaboration and creativity.

Mandy Walker, ASC, ACS

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Mandy Walker knew that she wanted to become a cinematographer at a young age and never deterred from her path. With the infuences of art, photography and cinema from her parents, she was fueled with the visual tools needed to become a cinematographer. Extremely interested in still photography, as a teen she printed photographs in her own dark room. After high school, instead of going into a flm school, she decided to learn the craft of cinematography by working her way through the ranks of the camera department in Australia. She spent the 1980s on set as a willing student, watching directors of photography (DPs) and gaffers work frsthand. She worked as a production runner, clapper, loader, focus puller and camera operator. She also shot many short flms and music videos while she was working as a camera assistant. Mandy was given the chance to shoot her frst feature flm Return Home in 1990, directed by Ray Argall. She also worked with him on music videos, including for the Foo Fighters and INXS. Her second feature was Eight Ball (1992), also directed by Ray Argall. She continued shooting short flms, documentaries, TV series and feature flms in Australia throughout the 1990s as both a camera operator and director of photography. In 1999, she was invited into the Australian Cinema Society which opened doors for much bigger projects as she seamlessly continued working her way from smaller Australian features to mainstream Hollywood flms. She was director of photography on Walk the Talk (2000), Australian Rules (2002) and Shattered Glass (2003). In 2004, she was the cinematographer on the alluring Chanel No.5 “The Film” featuring Nicole Kidman and directed by Baz Luhrmann. This led to the epic, Australia (2008), also directed by Baz Luhrmann. In 2011, she went on to photograph Beastly for Daniel Barnz and Red Riding Hood for Catherine Hardwicke. She was invited into the ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) in 2011. She returned to Australia to cross the outback as the cinematographer on Tracks (2013), directed by John Curran. Mandy reteamed with Baz Luhrmann for another Chanel No.5 short, “The One I Want” (2014). In 2015, she was director of photography on Truth, directed by James Vanderbilt and Jane Got a Gun, directed by Gavin O’Connor.

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She photographed the critically acclaimed, Academy award-nominated, Hidden Figures (2016) directed by Theodore Melf. For her next project, she fearlessly took on mother nature to photograph The Mountain Between Us (2017), directed by Hany Abu-Assad. Never shying away from a challenge, Mandy expanded her talents to include working with complex visual effects and huge battle scenes for Mulan (2020) directed by Niki Caro. She is again collaborating with Baz Luhrmann on an untitled Elvis Presley project (2021). Mandy is another great example of how tenacity and perseverance can lead to accomplishing your goals and dreams. She is at the top of her game, undaunted on her path to become a director of photography, she has more than achieved her goal.

Can you tell me a little bit about your journey of climbing the ranks to becoming a cinematographer? I knew when I was about 13 or 14 that I wanted to be a cinematographer. My mother had taken me to art galleries and to the cinema my whole life and I always loved photography. I was doing lots of still photography in high school. My father built me a little dark room in our backyard shed and I was printing my own black and white photos. It was a natural way of putting together all the things that I enjoyed doing, photography, cinema and art and so I thought, well a cinematographer seems like it would be a great job for me! As soon as I left high school, I got a job as a runner on a feature flm. When I was 18, I started talking to people in the camera department and they would refer me to someone who was looking for camera crew for a project, it was really a networking thing. Eventually, I got a job as a clapper, loader and eventually as an assistant on small movies and documentaries, basically working for nothing for a little while. Then I was a focus puller, an operator and eventually, became a DP. I moved up pretty quickly. By the time I was 25, I had shot my frst feature flm with a director who had pretty much been my mentor for the past fve years called Ray Argall. He was a cinematographer and when he went on to be a director, he asked me to shoot his movie for him. That was great because we already had a working relationship, and he was very trusting and also helped me in being able to move into that role.

So, obviously, when you’re working that way, having a mentor is very helpful. Was there anyone else who was a mentor to you? Yeah, there was a guy called Ellery Ryan. He was a person that I would go to for advice and he was the frst person to give me a job as a camera operator for him. He taught me a lot during that one movie. Occasionally, I would go to lectures or master classes at flm schools, and one of them was with John Seale

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and Allen Daviau. Another was with Danny Lenoir and Dean Semler. I learned so much just seeing these other cinematographers work. But what has been really great about my career was that I had the opportunity to be on set watching directors and cinematographers work together. That was the best education for me because I could see how various cinematographers worked on set. I’d always ask questions and be watching what they were doing and talking to the gaffers and grips. It was a really good chance for me to see a variety of ways of working, because most of the time, DPs don’t see other DPs working. If you come in straight from flm school and start shooting, then you haven’t really watched other people on set.

That’s true. In flm school, you only watch other students on set, making a lot of the same mistakes and it’s not really the best way to learn, right? Well, it’s different, isn’t it? It’s a different way to learn, I suppose. But I was always shooting even when I was an assistant. I was shooting little student flms. I made myself available to the flm school and I was shooting little student flms and music videos. When I was working with Ray Argall, he had a production company that did music videos, and he would let me shoot some of the really low budget ones. From my early twenties, I was always shooting things and testing ideas and creating little flms.

So, you had your own flm school anyway with incredible mentorship and saved yourself tuition. Yes, I did!

Were there any obstacles and any bumps in the road along the way? Well, I, at that time there weren’t many women in the camera department, so it was more diffcult to get a job in that position. It was a little tough on set sometimes when I was down at the bottom with guys who were kind of questioning my ability to lift the gear and things like that. I knew this was what I wanted to do and that I could do it. In my mind, there weren’t any obstacles. I just powered on through that. There were people that were really great and supportive of me and that was the positive part, it kept me going.

Is there a flm that you recall seeing that made a huge impression upon you based on the cinematography? When I was in high school, my father would take me to movie theaters that would play a lot of European flms or foreign language movies. There was one that really made an impression on me, it was The Spirit of the Beehive. Because

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usually, you go to the movies and you see Australian and American and English flms. The style of those flms is very similar. Then I started watching flms from other countries, like there was a Spanish movie and I started to see how different people and different cultures saw the world. I started watching the flms of Wim Wenders and people like that, embracing the idea that in different cultures, there is a different eye, that there wasn’t just one style of flmmaking, there wasn’t one way to do something, that there are different ways to tell stories and create images that help to tell stories. So that was when I frst realized what cinematography was. That there was a much broader storytelling element to a movie than just making pretty pictures. I remember being about 15 or 16 when that happened to me.

How do you approach defning the theme of a flm with the visuals? Well, for me, frst of all, it’s the story. Before I even attempt working out how I’m going to shoot a movie, I’ll sit with the director and go through the script a few times and just talk about how they see the story and the characters’ journeys. What I did with Ted Melf for Hidden Figures was we went through the script and I got him to do a little slug line for each scene, it was a description of what was going on in the story and for the character, what emotions were happening, what emotions they were going through or what atmosphere he felt was being created. Sometimes, it would just be one word like, “Defeat.” Or sometimes, it would be a sentence describing what was going on. For me, once I understand the storytelling, then I start looking at how we’re going to shoot the movie and look at infuences and references and things that I feel are relevant to what the director is trying to say at that point in the storytelling. A lot of that starts on an emotional level for me and then becomes a technical exercise. I’ll look at lensing and obviously other flms that are of similar genre or style to the story that we’re talking about, as well as art and photography. I take a lot of photographs on locations because that brings in a lot too.When I location scout, I look at the light and then I’ll start working out what camera to use.Then I visit Dan Sasaki at Panavision, he’s like the lens guru at Panavision in Woodland Hills. I’ll go and show him images of things I’m thinking about and he develops lenses for me. On the last four or fve movies, he’s done that just a few months before the flm began shooting. He’s an artist in how he sees optics, he’ll talk about what sort of depth of feld you want to create, what kind of distortions if any you want to create in the images, the colors, the contrast, the saturation and things like that.Then he’ll build a few prototypes for me and I’ll go and look at them and work out what’s right for this particular flm and do some tests. What happens for me is that once I’m on a movie, we’re very well planned because I always make sure I’m really prepared in what I’m doing before production begins. I don’t ever turn up and not have a clear idea about what I’m doing for a particular scene or a location. If I feel that I have the message of the story clear, then it’s easier for me to express that in a technical sense

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while I’m on set.That includes working out when to move the camera or how to move the camera and what lensing and what depth of feld and what type of shots work best to recreate the emotion of the story.

So, you are saying it starts with story, with understanding the theme? That’s what drives the technical elements of the flm? Exactly. I try and explain that, when I have meetings or I’m teaching students, you’re not there to create pretty pictures. You’re there to help the director tell a story. Sometimes, the images you’re creating are not pretty. That’s why I never go in and do the same thing on a movie from one flm to another, because you’re always telling a different story.

What would make you decide on a format like 1:85, 2:35 or anamorphic? I think it’s about the scale of the flm as well as the subject matter. For instance, for a flm like Mulan or Australia, I wanted to shoot widescreen because of the landscape. We had a lot of epic landscape in both of those movies. I shot spherical on Australia because the style that we were going for was more like a 1950s type of old Hollywood flm, so I wanted the depth of feld to be a little greater. I didn’t want to have a low depth of feld on anamorphic. We decided to go 2:35 and stick with 35mm flm so it’s still a widescreen but with spherical lenses. For Mulan, we looked at a lot of Chinese cinema, contemporary and historical as well as art. That linked itself to a widescreen format too. A lot of the Chinese painting is in a long horizontal or a vertical format, one or the other. We knew we were shooting a lot of epic battle sequences and images with a lot of action going on, so we thought we should go with widescreen for that. We shot 65 mm.

So, that was your choice to go with the ALEXA 65? Was it tricky to work in such a large format in terms of keeping sharpness and focus with a limited depth of feld? No, it wasn’t really. One thing that Niki had said to me really early on is, “Our flm is focused on Mulan.” So, when we’re in one of these battle sequences, it’s not about a melee of fghting and generic type of fghting, we wanted to be focused on her, so by shooting on 65mm we could separate her from everybody else with depth of feld by the way our lenses were made to push everything else on the outside out of focus and push them away from her and center her in the frame. It linked itself to that. It actually helped in creating that image.

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Is shooting on flm an option that flmmakers are still considering? I do think so, for instance, for Hidden Figures we decided to shoot flm. Because we were cutting in a lot of archival footage and the matching between that and ours, even though it’s old footage on different flm stock and format it kept the feeling of the grain. Shooting on celluloid tended to help the transition from some of the archival footage into ours. We felt that would be more of a visual echo effect to the images of that time.

I was wondering if the flm format is becoming something that people are going to for more nostalgia type flms at this point? I think so, Little Women was shot on flm too. But then there are directors like Christopher Nolan and Tarantino who always shoot on flm. When I look at shooting a movie, it’s more about the theme and story as well as the images you’re trying to create. You have the options of flm or digital, different lenses and different cameras. You choose particular hardware to create the images and all those things put together make that one image. Selecting flm as a format is something that people still consider as an option.

But for Hidden Figures in particular, it was also because you were inter cutting a lot of archival stuff, so it made sense to use the same format? Exactly. The frst thing that Ted said to me was, “I want to shoot on flm,” because he felt that it was the right decision for that movie. But we have the option of creating images with different aspect ratios. It’s like having a box of tools and all the different elements put together make this one style of photography and create the visual language of the flm.

How challenging was it to shoot The Mountain Between Us? That’s one of the greatest parts of my job, having different challenges. On every movie I work on, there’s something that I’m going to be asked to do that I’ve never done before and I love that. It doesn’t daunt me because I’m experienced enough to know that I’ll always fnd a way of getting to a place where the director is happy and we’re able to achieve what he or she has set out to do. He told me, I don’t want this to be on blue screen or green screen. I want it to be real. I want to be moving with the actors. I want them to be on top of this 11,000-foot mountain and for us to be there with them, and I want to be moving elegantly with them. At frst, I was thinking, “How am I going to get up there with all of this gear?” We all have to get in and out

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by helicopter every day. We had six hours on top of the mountain each day. You couldn’t set up a track in snow that was three feet deep, you couldn’t walk with a Steadicam. So, myself and the grips got together and worked out a way to make these sled dollies that were using snowboards. We had a remote head, and we would have fve grips pushing it. We also built a crane on top of the mountain and it took like three days to get the pieces up there. When we were down on the fats, down below in the tree line where we could get to a road, we used a Technocrane which was a 50-foot telescopic crane so that we didn’t make footprints. Those are the things I developed and worked out to achieve what the director wanted. I never want to say no when a director asks me something obscure, or something that I haven’t done before or even a logistical challenge. I always want to say, “I’ll work it out.” And so far, I always do!

Can you talk a little about how you went about shooting Tracks in the Outback? That must have been quite an adventure? It’s a really great flm actually, even if I say so myself, I’m very proud of it. We shot on flm, because the director and I wanted to shoot on flm to show the epic landscape and extraordinary images in a classic way. Her journey had been documented in National Geographic, so part of the reference that we had were those still photographs from the time period of the 1970s. We hardly took any equipment with us because we had to travel sometimes an hour and a half off road to get to some of these locations. I had no lighting, and I didn’t see any dailies for the entire shoot, not one day. I was just going on my experience and my gut feeling about what we were doing. We had a couple of night shoots in the desert, without any lights. There was one particular scene where she’s chasing her black dog through the desert at night and I remember saying, “Oh no, maybe we should have changed it to day.” But it wasn’t, because it was a night scene and I had to work it out. I had little lights around the fre, just these little bulbs. I had a 1K generator that was running these little light bulbs. There was just light coming from the fre as she runs away into the desert. So I did some tests with fashlights and we found a fashlight that was bright enough and looked like it was from the 1970s. It actually worked well for the scene because as she was running off, the fashlight was sort of moving around because she was chasing her dog who was sick. The light was picking up the dog and it was increasing the drama and the experience for her. I found a way of making it work for the scene for us technically. So, things like that come up and at frst you go, “Oh no. How am I going to shoot this black dog in the desert at night?” But when you see the flm, it works really well for the dramatic element of that part of the movie. I always think there’s a way to fgure out how to do something that doesn’t compromise the flm. Maybe that’s why I love pre-production because it’s a

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chance to test and work those things out. Sometimes, it may take a while and I might have to say to a director, Well, it’s going to take me a little longer to work out how to do this but we’ll achieve what you want. It may not be exactly the way that you thought it was originally going to be shot, but we’re going to be telling the same message to the audience that you originally intended.

In that situation, you were shooting with flm that was probably 500 ISO (flm speed rating) at best, right? On Tracks, since I knew I was going to be going away on location to remote places and not able to see one day of dailies in pre-production I did a lot of tests and tested all of my ideas before we went to shoot. That’s the way I like to work, especially with something I haven’t done before. I want to be sure that I’m going in quite confdently knowing that what we’re going to attempt will work. I say that a lot to people who are learning, that even if they can spend one day while they’re doing their camera testing, to go ahead and test some ideas, it’s much better than turning up on set and trying things that may not work. Because on set you just don’t have time to experiment.

Do you feel that you’re testing the same amount digitally that you would if you’re shooting flm or more? Yeah, I do. Because one of the reasons why I could shoot Tracks without seeing dailies is because I’ve shot a lot of flm in the past. The way that I actually learned how to expose was from a documentary I shot in Vietnam in 1990, I think it was. It was just me, a sound recordist, a producer and a director and no one else. I was loading my own flm and doing my own assisting, lighting and gripping. I had two redhead lights that were little, tiny 800-watt lamps. I was still learning at the time, so what I did was I had my light meter with me and because I was in some really extreme lighting situations, I’d be looking through the camera and judging my exposures less technically but by thinking, “This has got to be a little bit over and this has got to be a bit under, and that can be that far under.” I didn’t see dailies on that documentary for fve weeks, so when I got back, it was just kind of my gut reaction I suppose. As you know, you don’t just hold up a light meter and that’s your exposure. You have to judge what goes over and what goes under and how far under you go and what’s bright. I also learned a lot from reading the Ansel Adams book The Zone System. I read it before I went away. I would look at everything like a gray scale. With exposures, it’s about interpretation and getting it right by interpreting what is overexposing and what is underexposing, then you decide where you want it to sit. Because of that, when I went to shoot Tracks, I could walk out without a light meter because I knew what the exposure was on the stock I was using. So, I feel just as comfortable shooting flm as I do digitally now.

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Do you have a preference? No, because each flm has its own visual language, and you fnd the right way to tell that story with all the tools available. I don’t really have a preference, but I’m glad we shot Hidden Figures on flm, I think it was the right choice, but I’m also glad we shot Mulan digitally because I think that was the right choice for that particular flm.

What attracts you to a project creatively? What themes speak to you? First off, it’s the director. I have to be interested in going on a journey with that director. When I frst read a script, it’s all about story. I read it like I’m reading a novel. If the storytelling interests me, and the themes of the script interest me, then I’ll pursue it. So, those two things are what makes me decide whether or not I want to do a flm.

How do you like to collaborate with a director and what attributes do you like a director to possess? I like working with different types of directors. Like for instance, working with Baz Luhrmann, he and Catherine Martin had already done a whole look book and research, because the flms I’ve done with them were historical periods. So they would pull out references from historical research and have a guide to the visual language of the flm. Then I bring my part in and collaborate with them. Niki Caro has very strong storytelling ideas and we developed the look of (Mulan) together. She had a really clear vision of the flm and the character’s journey in her head. Then together we developed the visual language. Then other directors may say, “Oh Mandy, I don’t know. Show me some things and then I’ll tell you what I like.” So, that’s another part of my job that I like, that variation of different directors and different ways of working. Each one is completely new, and I have to work that out pretty quickly when we start the journey together, to fgure out how they want to collaborate with me. I try and spend as much time with them as I can early on to get a sense of what that flm is in their head and then move from there. And then, of course, involving the art department, costume, makeup, and getting us all on the same page. Visual effects too because they are also an important part of my job now. Having that open dialog going all the time and making sure that everybody’s aware of what I’m doing and how I’m approaching things so that the color palettes are consistent, texture is right for costume and things like that. For instance, in Mulan, the shadow warriors who were the enemy are dressed all in black. I spent time with the costume designer in testing different situations of the textures of her fabrics, like she’d have leather and then cotton and then different sort of parts of the costume. I wanted to make sure that you could see them and they wouldn’t get lost in the image. I may do a few different lighting

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steps to get all that stuff right. But to me, it’s important that I collaborate very closely with all those people. Because the visual language is part of everybody’s job on the movie, to make sure that it’s consistent.

So, you’re not really just collaborating with just the director. You’re collaborating with the production designer, you’re collaborating with visual effects, everybody… Yes. It starts with the director though like you say. I spend my frst few weeks in pre-production just with the director because I have to make sure that whatever I’m doing in my collaboration with the other departments comes from their vision. My job is to serve the vision of the director.

You’ve done a lot of work with Baz Luhrmann. What do you like about your working relationship? I think he is a great storyteller and visionary. Each of his projects have different styles with different stories that he’s telling each time which I really fnd exciting. He’s a great collaborator too, people love working with him on set. He’s very charming and he speaks to everybody. He’s like a conductor when he’s on set. He’ll be saying, “And now I want the grips to be moving the dolly and slow down over here, then the music comes up.” It’s really a great experience for everybody and it’s very positive and everyone feels like they’re part of it, they’re part of the process and they’re involved in creating his vision. He has a really clear view of what he’s doing, so he’s very good at communicating that to everybody. I just loved being able to do the few flms we did together, because they were really fun. The little Chanel No. 5 flms were treated like little dramas. It wasn’t like we were doing a commercial.

You also worked with Catherine Hardwicke on Red Riding Hood. Are you seeing more female directors working these days? I do think there’s starting to be more women directing and I’m glad to be seeing a higher percentage of us and that it is changing. In the past, there was a tradition of only males being cinematographers and directors, then it becomes an unconscious bias that people automatically hire a man. It’s the same with my crew now in camera, grip and electric. I’m encouraging more women and more inclusion and diversity in our departments too, because I think that minorities are not given the chance and there are great people out there. It’s a matter of fnding them and providing them with opportunities. Then, of course, there will be more diversity in our industry. For instance, on Mulan it was the frst time for a big studio flm like that to have both a female director and female DP, and we had a female frst assistant director (AD). So, the set was being run by women on this big budget movie. But I think because of that,

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you kind of feel like everybody is watching you. I still feel like that anyway a lot of the time in my job. It isn’t that often that people have worked with a woman in my position, so they’re watching how I’m going to approach my work, if I’m going to be different or do things differently or whatever. Then after a few days, they sort of forget about it and everything’s the same.

Of the flms that you’ve done so far, and they’re quite vast, is there one that you’re particularly proud of? You alluded to really liking Tracks. But is that the one or is there another? I’m pretty proud of everything I’ve done. I think I’ve picked projects for the right reasons and I’m happy with that. Of course, I’ve learned from each of the projects and from the experiences of working with different directors. Right now, I’m dying for everybody to see Mulan because I’m really proud of what I did on that flm, because it’s an epic battle movie which I’ve never done before. I think Australia was a big break for me and again another large-scale project that I enjoyed and I’m really proud of my work on that. So, there’s not just one particular movie. I feel like my career is in a really good place and I get to work with great people.

I think women cinematographers today are creating the example that you can have it all, the career, the kids, the stable family life. But I’m sure it isn’t always easy. Have you faced any personal challenges in that regard? I’m really lucky that when I decided to go back to work when my daughter was about a year old, my husband quit his job and became a full-time dad. We’re a small family and we were able to travel together and they would come with me on projects when I was working overseas, and we were together for a lot of the time. But when my daughter got older and was in high school and couldn’t travel so much, we kept in contact.When I’d go home, I would just make sure that I was there for my family. I would make sure to spend a lot of time with my daughter, intense time with her when I had time off. Our family works. She’s working with me now and she’s 22, we have a great relationship and she’s a strong, intelligent woman in her own right and not afraid to be going off on her own path. I’d say I’m lucky that my family and I made it work. Recently, a woman who’s also a cinematographer called me about having a family and working. I told her, There are a lot of women in all walks of life who found a way to make it work in different jobs, not just in the flm industry. Even though our job is intense, and we have to travel a lot, you have to consider that this is your

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life and your child has to ft into it. Just make sure that she/he has love and attention and feels safe. Even if I didn’t have my husband taking care of our daughter, we would have had someone looking after her to travel with us or whatever worked. We would have found a way to make it work and not to be daunted by that.

You are an inspiration to cinematographers and a role model for women in particular of course. Do you see yourself as a mentor as well? A little bit, but I’m happy to do that because I didn’t really have a mentor. I didn’t have anyone like me to watch and learn from. I had to forge ahead and fnd my own path and be strong and pursue my passion and make it work. That’s what I say too, look at it as a challenge but not in the negative way. If you’re passionate about what you want to do, just be strong and make it work. You’re going to fnd obstacles, but everybody does and diffcult working relationships every so often. But you just have to believe in yourself and be confdent. And if you’re passionate and you do have the talent, then just keep going.

How do you think an aspiring cinematographer should get started, should they go to flm school or work their way up through the camera department? I think in Australia, that was how most cinematographers came up. John Seale didn’t go to school either and assisted, then operated for other cinematographers. It was the way that you got moved up in the camera department, a little bit more like the English system. Nowadays, I think it’s a little bit more diffcult to do that because it works more like the American system where you have career focus pullers and career camera operators. I think if you want to do that you can, but there’s also the option of going to flm school. Now it’s so much easier than in my time, to just go shoot things. Use your phone, use your stills camera, try ideas. Go and shoot, put it on Instagram or Vimeo or YouTube. That is the best way of trying out your ideas and seeing if they work or not. Get together with some friends and make a little movie. My daughter did that last year. She got together with some of her friends and made a little flm. Then the networking is important because it’s about the people who can help you. I think one thing flm school provides is the opportunity to work with a group of students and you learn and collaborate together. Then one of them may get a job or a project that you can work on. Then you sort of move up together and help each other out, and keeping those connections going. Do as much as you can, but then know you’re going to have to travel. For instance someone once called me and asked about being a cinematographer, and I said, “You have to be prepared to travel because in your little

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town where you’re living right now your career is not going to be able to fourish.”

Is your daughter interested in being a cinematographer or a director? She wants to be a director.

So, she’s like, “I see what you do. I’ll get somebody to work for me.” (chuckles) Yeah, exactly.

Do you ever aspire, do you think you would want to direct your own feature? No. I’m happy doing what I’m doing. I know a lot of the female cinematographers have started to direct, haven’t they? Like Ellen and Rachel and Reed. So, good for them. But for me, I love working with directors and I love what I do. I haven’t really thought much about that.

But would you shoot for your daughter? Yeah, of course, yeah.

Oh wow, that’s awesome. She’s lucky! Do you think that cinematographers are becoming a little bit more of celebrities today than they were in the past? Putting a face to behind the camera? Yeah. I do think so. Although, there have been celebrity cinematographers in the past, like Conrad Hall, Owen Roizman, James Wong Howe and Gregg Toland. They were celebrity cinematographers, but not in the sense that they are now. It’s because people can see faces and chat. Like I’ve been doing a lot of webinars and masterclasses during isolation and so have other cinematographers. I think yeah, you’re right, there is more visibility and celebrity for the cinematographer today.

Index

1:78 157 1:85 23–4, 48, 157, 241–2, 286 1.85:1 aspect ratio 367 2:35 332 2:39 221 2:40 48, 286 2.39:1 aspect ratio 367 4 Little Girls 85 4K 32, 56, 367 8 1/2 341 8 mile 234, 243 13th 75–6 20/20 324 25mm 44 27mm 44 29mm 44 35mm 44 40-80-mm T2.8 23 40ASA 315 40mm 170 50mm 44 60 Minutes 324 70-200-mm T3.5 23 75mm 44 100 ASA 329 250 ASA 332 500 ASA 315, 332 2001: A Space Odyssey 87 5260 500T Vision 2 240 Abu-Assad, Hany 392 Academy Committee 28 The Accidental Tourist 23–4 Ackerman, Robert Allan 323 actor/directors, working with 342–3 actors 159–60, 186, 236 Adams, Ansel 121, 398 Adams, Heidi 388–9 ADR (automated dialog replacement) 28 Affeck, Ben 35, 231–2

AFI (American Film Institute) 185; Kelly, Kira 74; Morano, Reed 185; Morgan, Polly 199–200; Morrison, Rachel 215, 217–18; Pusheck, Cynthia 251; Vincent, Amy 381–2 AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) 157 Ahern, Michael 145 The Alamo 358 Albers, Josef 110 Alberti, Maryse 1–4; advice 12; artwork 10; balancing work and home life 12; choosing formats 10; choosing projects 8–9; collaboration with directors 7; documentaries 5–6; going digital 10–11; obstacles 6; pregnancy 11–12; preparation 8; regrets 9; sacrifces 4–5; technology 9–10; tests 11 Alcott, John 24 Alden, Phil 145 Alexa 11, 174, 345 ALEXA 65 395 Alexa Mini LF 385 Alexa Studio XT 237 Alexander 248 All These Sleepless Nights 57 Allen, Joan 160, 295 Allen, Woody 38, 151, 271, 275, 283, 284 Almadovar, Pedro 243, 243–4 Almendros, Nestor 217 Almodovar, Pedro 231 Altman, Robert 106 American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) 157 American flmmaking 343 American Gangsters 283, 284 American Gigolo 18 American Gun 298 American Horror Story 200, 205–6 American Ninja Part 3 379

406 Index Amores Perros 231, 233–4, 236 anamorphic format 22–4, 100, 172–3, 237, 242, 318 And God Created Woman 379 Anderson, Colin 50 Anderson, Paul Thomas 35, 39, 40–1, 46 Andrews, Benedict 216 Angela 85 Angels and Demons 361, 364 Anker, Daniel 290 Anna Karenina 163 Annie Hall 43 The Anniversary Party 17, 31 Antonioni, Michaelangelo 123 Any Given Sunday 358–60 Apatow, Judd 36 Apted, Michael 11–12, 163, 337, 343 archiving 27–30, 122, 141, 174–5, 222, 265, 331, 368 Argall, Ray 391–3 Arizmendi, Kate 223 Arnot, Will 366 Aronofsky, Darren 7, 8, 125, 126, 128, 130, 133, 135, 187, 191 Arri Alexa HD digital camera 31 Arrifex 297 Arrifex Alexa 174 Arrifex Optimas 297 art: Alberti, Maryse 10; Lachman, Edward 117–19; Libatique, Matty 135–6; Lindley, John 151; Morgan, Polly 201 As Good As It Gets 23–4 ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) 267, 320, 377–8; Future Practices Committee (FPC) 376–7 aspect ratio 203–4, 220–1, 246, 367 Atonement 163, 166–8, 171; color palettes 169–70; lenses 170; Steadicam 172 attributes of directors: Bailey, John 17–18; Elswit, Robert 38; Kuras, Ellen 91; Lindley, John 148; McGarvey, Seamus 166; Morano, Reed 187–8; Morgan, Polly 208; Prieto, Rodrigo 234; Savides, Harris 276; Seale, John 308; Sissel, Sandi 326; Walker, Mandy 399–400 August, John 289, 299 Australia 395, 401 automated dialog replacement (ADR) 28 Avelino, Aric 289 Ayer, David 353, 366 Babel 236 Bachmann, Gideon 107 Bacon, Kevin 289, 298

Bailey, John 15–17; 1:85 23–4; anamorphic format 22–3; attributes of directors 17–18; choosing formats 24–5; choosing projects 19–20; digital 31–2; directors 20–1; dolly versus Steadicam 26–7; flm, longevity of 27–30; lighting 25–6; Ordinary People 21–2; preparation 19; Super 35mm 22–3; violence 20; visual references 22 Baily, John 265 balancing work and home life: Alberti, Maryse 12; Kelly, Kira 81–2; Kuras, Ellen 100–1; Libatique, Matty 140; Lindley, John 160–1; Morano, Reed 195; Morgan, Polly 210–11; Morrison, Rachel 225; Prieto, Rodrigo 248–9; Pusheck, Cynthia 260–1; Schreiber, Nancy 300–1; Sissel, Sandi 327–8; Spinotti, Dante 351; Totino, Salvatore 372–3; Walker, Mandy 401–2 Barney, Matthew 134 Barnz, Daniel 391 Baumbach, Noah 271, 275 Beaches 347–8 Beau Travail 57 Beautiful Life 298 Begleiter, Marcie 290 Bendiksen, Jonas 242 Benigni, Roberto 343 Beresford, Bruce 337, 347 Berger, Todd 289 Bergman, Ingmar 291 Berlinger, Joe 289 Berta, Renato 117 Bertolucci, Bernardo 17, 106, 109 The Betrayal--Nerakhoon 86, 88–9, 99, 101 Bewitched 152 Beyond Borders 233 Bier, Susanne 353 The Big Chill 17, 160 Biker Boyz 255 Billy Jack 87 Binoche, Juliet 316 Bird, Brad 35 Bird Box 367 Birds of Prey 134 Birth 280 Biutiful 240–2 Black, Stephanie 4 black and white 174 Black Magic 36 Black Panther 222, 226 Black Swan 127, 130, 134–5 Blade Runner 136, 279 blocking 41, 171, 209, 281, 360

Index Blow 90, 96 Blunder, Markus 179 body scans 159 Bogdanovich, Peter 337 Bonfre of the Vanities 26 Bound for Glory 43 Boyd, Russell 305 Bradley, Slater 118–19 Braier, Natash 378 Braubach, Mary Ann 290 bravura effect 26 Breen, Charles 295 Brewer, Craig 375, 384, 386 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men 30 Briesewitz, Uta 261 Broch, Brigitte 241 Brokeback Mountain 233 Broken Embraces 243 Brooks, Jim 23 Brosnan, Pierce 27 Brothers and Sisters 256 Bryars, Gavin 95 Bullock, Sandra 298 Byrne, David 106 Cain, James 115 California 43 camera movement: Libatique, Matty 139; Lindley, John 155; Seale, John 316–17; Totino, Salvatore 364–5 camera operators 137, 363 Cameraperson 53, 56, 63, 67 camerawork 64 Cameron, Alan 364 Canon 5D 330–1 Canon K-35s 113 Care, Peter 355 Caro, Niki 392 Carol 111–112, 114–115, 120 Cassavete, John 169 Cassidy, Jay 290 Cat People 17, 20, 27 Chain of Desire 296, 299 “Changing the Face of the Industry” 268 Chevigny, Katy 53 Chi-Raqs 127 Chompski, Alejandro 289 choosing formats: Bailey, John 24–5; Elswit, Robert 48; Kelly, Kira 78; Kuras, Ellen 96–7; Libatique, Matty 129–30; Lindley, John 157; McGarvey, Seamus 172–3; Morrison, Rachel 220–1; Pusheck, Cynthia 266; Savides, Harris 286; Seale, John 318–19; Sissel, Sandi 332; Spinotti, Dante 348; Totino,

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Salvatore 367; Vincent, Amy 385–6; Walker, Mandy 395 choosing projects: Bailey, John 19–20; Elswit, Robert 37, 39–40; Johnson, Kirsten 61; Kelly, Kira 77; Kuras, Ellen 89–90; Libatique, Matty 127–8; Lindley, John 146–7, 149; McGarvey, Seamus 165–7; Morano, Reed 194; Morrison, Rachel 218–20; Pusheck, Cynthia 260; Savides, Harris 275, 277; Schreiber, Nancy 293–4; Seale, John 308; Sissel, Sandi, 325–6; Spinotti, Dante 338–9; Totino, Salvatore 355–6; Vincent, Amy 384; Walker, Mandy 399 Chubb, Caldecot 381 Chunking Express 74 Churchill, Joan 328 Cinderella Man 356–7, 359, 362 Citizenfour 58 Clark, Larry 106 Clark, Shirley 324 Cline, Henry 380 Clooney, George 35, 42, 48, 49–51 Close, Glenn 12 Cohen Brothers 90, 186 Cold Mountain 317 Cole, Thomas 347 collaboration with directors: Alberti, Maryse 7; Johnson, Kirsten 58–9; Kelly, Kira 77–8; Kuras, Ellen 93–7; Libatique, Matty 126–8, 133–4, 136–7; Lindley, John 149–50; McGarvey, Seamus 170–1; Morano, Reed 187; Morrison, Rachel 219–20; Prieto, Rodrigo 233–6; Pusheck, Cynthia 259–60; Schreiber, Nancy 292–3, 296–7; Seale, John 306–8, 314; Vincent, Amy 384; Walker, Mandy 399–400 color correction, Pusheck, Cynthia 264–5 color palettes: Elswit, Robert 46; emotional response 113; Kuras, Ellen 97–8; Libatique, Matty 137–8; Lindley, John 159; McGarvey, Seamus 169–70; Morgan, Polly 202; Prieto, Rodrigo 245–6; Savides, Harris 281–2; Schreiber, Nancy 297–8; Seale, John 310, 314–15; Totino, Salvatore 362 color theory, Lachman, Edward 110–11 color timing 98 comedy 342 Confrmation 227 The Conformist 16–17, 109, 291 Coogler, Ryan 7, 216, 227 Cooke Speed Panchros 113 Cool J, LL 360

408 Index Cooper, Bradley 126 Coppola, Sofa 106, 271 Costner, Kevin 157 The Counterfeiters 45 Cover Shot 184 Covid 377 cranes 316–17 Craven, Wes 145, 323 Creed 227 Crimes of the Heart 347 Cristofer, Michael 231, 233 Cronenweth, Jordan 253 Croneworth, Jordan 371 Crowe, Cameron 231 Crystal, Billy 86 CSI Miami 255 Curran, John 7, 391 Curtiz, Michael 115 Dahan, Olivier 128, 132–3 Daldry, Stephen 163 Dark Blood 118 Dark Waters 110, 113 Daviau, Allen 393 David & Lisa 146 Davidson, Adam 375 DaVinci Code 364 Davis, Angela 76 Davis, Hope 299 Davis, Zeinabu 72 Dawson City: Frozen Time 122 daylight: recreating on set 138; Seale, John 316 De Laurentis, Dino 337 De Niro, Robert 86, 247 De Sica, Vittorio 107 Deakins, Roger 26, 51, 90, 153, 158, 167, 174, 217, 371 Deception 345 Delgado, Clarence 55 Deluxe 382 Demayo, Al 388–9 Demme, Jonathan 86, 90, 296 Demme, Ted 86, 96 Denis, Claire 57 Dennehy, Brian 24 Depp, Johnny 86 depth of feld 314 Derrida 56 Derrida, Jacque 57–8 de-saturation 282, 311 Deschanel, Caleb 16 Desperately Seeking Susan 108, 110 DeVilla, Alfredo 289

Dick, Kirby 53, 375 Dick Johnson is Dead 53 Dickerson, Ernest 125 Dickson, Jim 16–17 Dieckman, Kathryn 301 Dieckmann, Katherine 289 Dietch, Donna 36 digital 367–8; Alberti, Maryse 10–11; archiving 122; Bailey, John 31–2; versus flm 112–13, 121, 130, 157–8, 206–8, 285–6, 329; Pusheck, Cynthia 265; Seale, John 320–1; Spinotti, Dante 344–5; Vincent, Amy 386–387; Walker, Mandy 398 “The Digital Dilemma” 28 digital images, Kuras, Ellen 99 Digital Optical Technology System 122 Dillon, Matt 298 directing, Pusheck, Cynthia 258–9 directors: American versus British 166–7; for hire 148; women directors 82–3 directors, attributes of: Bailey, John 17–18; Elswit, Robert 38; Kuras, Ellen 91; Lindley, John 148; McGarvey, Seamus 166; Morano, Reed 187–8; Morgan, Polly 208; Prieto, Rodrigo 234; Savides, Harris 276; Seale, John 308; Sissel, Sandi 326 directors, collaborating with: Alberti, Maryse 7; Johnson, Kirsten 58–9; Kelly, Kira 77–8; Kuras, Ellen 93–7; Libatique, Matty 126–8, 133–4, 136–7; Lindley, John 149– 50; McGarvey, Seamus 170–1; Morano, Reed 187; Morrison, Rachel 219–20; Prieto, Rodrigo 233–6; Pusheck, Cynthia 259–60; Schreiber, Nancy 292–3, 296–7; Seale, John 306–8, 314; Vincent, Amy 384; Walker, Mandy 399–400 DIs (digital intermediates) 29–31, 158–9; Kuras, Ellen 98, 100; Lindley, John 160; McGarvey, Seamus 167–8; Prieto, Rodrigo 240; Savides, Harris 283–4; Seale, John 319–20; Sissel, Sandi 331–2; Totino, Salvatore 368 diversity 378 Do the Right Thing 127 Docs and Robbers 183 documentary photography 63–64 dolly 26–7, 48, 139–40, 155–6, 172, 317–18, 348–9, 363, 388 Donavan, Bob 44 Dope 227 DOTS (Digital Optical Technology System) 122

Index The Double Life of Veronique 169 Doubt 26 Douglas, Michael 179 Downey Jr., Robert 171 Doyle, Chris 74 Dr. Hugo 381 DuArt 156, 324 Dubin, Mitch 171 The Duel (Spielberg) 3 Dunaway, Faye 146 Dunn, John 32 DuVernay, Ava 71, 75–6 Dylan, Bob 86, 282 East Los High 75, 80–1 Ebersole, P. David 375 Edit Decision List (EDL) 99 Eggleston, William 107 Egilsson, Eagle 255 Eisner, Breck 163 El Digital Zone System 122 Elephant 26, 287 Elliott, Scott 163 Elswit, Robert 35–6, 255; Academy Awards 51; blocking 41; choosing formats 48; choosing projects 37, 39–40; color palettes 46; directors, attributes of 38; dolly versus Steadicam 48–50; handheld cameras 45; infuences on 37–8; lenses 44–5; lighting 36–7; preparation 39, 46–7; producers 47–8; storyboards 42–3; There Will Be Blood 47; visual references 43–4 emotional response, color 113 End of Watch 366 The English Patient 306, 310, 315–18 enhanced naturalism 173 Ephron, Nora 145, 148–9, 152 Epstein, Rob 290 Espinoza, Daniel 164 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 86, 89–90, 95, 98, 186 Evans, Bruce A. 145 Everest 367 Eve’s Bayou 380–2 Faces Places 123 Fahrenheit 9/11 67–8 Fairies 73 The Family 295, 302 A Family Affair 108 Famuyiwa, Rick 216, 227 Fanny and Alexander 279 Far From Heaven 111–12, 115–16, 120

409

Farley, Chris 159 Father of the Bride 152, 379 Favreau, Jon 125, 128, 134 Fellini, Federico 341 Feste, Shana 18 Field, Sally 256 Field of Dreams 149, 160 Fierberg, Steve 256 flm 120–1; archiving 141, 222, 265; versus digital 112–13, 121, 130, 157–8, 206–8, 285–6, 329; longevity of 27–30, 99, 140, 174–5, 222, 284, 329–30, 345–6, 386; testing 154; Walker, Mandy 396 flm dailies, Savides, Harris 283 flm stocks 136–137; latitude 345; Seale, John 315 Fincher, David 271 frst-time directors, Bailey, John 18 Fisk, Jack 46 Fleischer, Ruben 125, 132 Flint Strong 219, 222–3 Flockhart, Calista 256 focal lengths 280–1, 314 focus pulling 380 For a Few Dollars More 24 For the Love of the Game 21 Ford, John 16, 40, 45 Ford, Tom 164 formats, choosing see choosing formats Foster, Jody 125 Fox, Jamie 360 framing 129 Frank, Robert 107, 347 Frankie and Johnny 342 Fraser, Greig 217 Frears, Stephen 163 Freeman, Morgan J. 289, 296 Freidman, Jeffrey 290 French Impressionist references, Crimes of the Heart 347 French New Wave 19 Friday Night Lights 156 Frost, David 365 Frost/Nixon 357–8, 361, 362, 365 Frozen River 179, 184 Fruitvale Station 220–1, 227 Fuji 154, 315, 344 Gaffney, Paul 354 Gaghan, Stephan 35, 125 The Game 282, 286 Gammill, Jay 179 Garcia, Andy 90 Gardner, Jennifer 160

410 Index Gate of Hell 235 Genet, Jean 25 genre flms 313; lighting 356 George, Terry 145 Gere, Richard 18 Gerry 26, 287 Gibney, Alex 5 Gibson, Brian 323 Gilroy, Dan 35 Gilroy, Tony 38, 39, 42 Glazer, Amy 289 Glennon, Jimmy 22 Godard, Jean-Luc 106, 341 Goddard, Drew 164 The Godfather 156, 280 Godfather 1 74 Godfather 2 74 Godfather 3 74 Godmilow, Jill 324 The Godmother 194 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 110 Goi, Michael 197, 199–200 Goldblum, Jeff 300 Goldin, Nan 234, 347 Gomer, Steve 323 Gondry, Michel 86, 93, 95, 186 The Good, Bad and the Ugly 24 Good, John Paul 354 Good Girls Revolt 256, 260 Good Night and Good Luck 42 Goodfellas 27, 365 Gothika 134 Gould, Howard Michael 289, 296 Grace, Jeff 289 Gracey, Michael 164 Grant, Susanna 145, 149 Gray, F. Gary 125, 131–2 The Greatest 18, 21, 27, 30 green screens 9–10 Greenwood, Sarah 169 Gridlock’d 380 Groundhog Day 32 Gunning, Thomas 72 Gustafson, Tom 71, 73 Gyllenhaal, Stephen 35 H2-Workers 4 Hall, Conrad 74, 217, 253, 371 Hallowell, Todd 358 Halmi, Robert 147 Hamburg, John 163 hand-held cameras 45, 313, 365 The Handmainds Tale 180

Hanna, R.J. Daniel 289 Hannah, Liz 101 Hannibal Lector 340 Hanson, Curtis 35, 45, 231, 233–4 Happiness 8 Hardwicke, Catherine 391, 400 Hardy, Tom 132 Harold and Maude 296 Harrison, Greg 289, 292–3 Hawley, Noah 201, 203 Haynes, Todd 4, 7, 106, 112, 116–17 HD taps 131 HDR (high dynamic range) 207 HDSLRs (hybrid digital single lens refex cameras) 173, 330–1 HDSR 99 Heckerling, Amy 380 Henderson, Abdul 67–8 Hendrix, Jimi 2 Hereditary 77 Hershey, Barbara 348 Herzog, Werner 106, 108 He’s Just Not That Into You 23, 29 Hidden Figures 394, 396, 399 Hido, Todd 75 high dynamic range (HDR) 207 Highsmith, Patricia 114 Hines, Cheryl 289, 301 The Hitcher 316–317 Hoffman, Dustin 44 Hollywood flmmaking 341 The Homesman 237 Hoober, Sophie 173 Hopkins, Anthony 337, 351 Hopper, Dennis 106 Hopper, Edward 117–18, 279, 295–6 The Hours 163, 166, 170 How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days 25 Howard, Ron 6–7, 306, 353, 358–62, 370; balancing work and home life 373; camera movement 364–5; visual references 362 humanness, Johnson, Kirsten 65–7 Hunt, Andrew 290 Hurricane 109 Hurt, Bill 160 hybrid digital single lens refex cameras (HDSLRs) 173, 330–1 I Love Trouble 155 I Think We’re Alone Now 180, 190 I’m Not There 282 In the Line of Fire 20

Index

411

Jackson, Mark 179 Jagger, Mick 180, 189 Jaglom, Henry 289 James, Elgin 179, 187 Jane 86 Jaws 205 Jenkins, Barry 219 Jim Brown All American 98 Joffe, Roland 337 Johnson, Craig 179 Johnson, Kirsten 53–4; advice 69; affects of flmmaker on personal life 68; camerawork 64; choosing projects 61; collaboration with directors 58–9; documentary cinematographers 61–3; documentary directors 57–8; flm 55–6; humanness 65–7; inspiration 57; memorable experiences 65–6; Moore, Michael 67–8; preparation 59–60; safety 63; self-censorship 64–5; themes 60 Johnson, Rashid 125, 128 Jolie, Angelina 48 Jones, Grace 354 Jones, Tommy Lee 232, 237 Jonze, Spike 192 Jordan, Neil 164 journalistic photography 63–4 JR 122–3 Jude 97 Juhola, Eric 183 Just the Ticket 90

Kawin, Bruce 375 Keach, Stacy 146 Keaton, Buster 66 Keaton, Diane 179 Kelly, Kira 71–5; 13th 75–6; advice 82; balancing work and home life 81–2; challenges 79–80; choosing formats 78; choosing projects 77; collaboration with directors 77–8; documentaries 76–7; future for 83; photography 74–5; pregnancy 80–1; storyboards 78; TV 76–8; visual references 78 Kelly, Rory 375 Keslow Camera 366 Kidman, Nicole 391 Kill Your Darlings 187 Kim, So Yong 179, 187 Kin 385 Kinugasa, Teinosuke 235 Kirkpatrick, Karey 145 Kline, Kevin 24 Kodachrome 235, 237 Kodak 154, 174, 344, 382, 386 Kodak 5219 241, 244 Kodak 5260 241 Kodak 5279 241 Kodak Ektachrome 235, 237, 247, 315, 368 Kodak Vision Premier 345 Kormakur, Baltasar 353 Krokidas, John 179, 187 Kuras, Ellen 85–9, 186; anamorphic format 100; attributes of directors 91; balancing work and home life 100–1; The Betrayal-Nerakhoon 88–89, 101; choosing formats 96–97; choosing projects 89–90; collaboration with directors 93–97; color palettes 97–8; digital images 99; DIs 98, 100; Lee, Spike 93; longevity of flm 99; negative experiences 91; preparation 92–3; Scorsese, Marty 94; selecting a cinematographer 102; themes 91; transitioning to studio flms 90–1; visual references 94–5 Kurtzman, Alex 353 Kwapis, Ken 19, 29

Kalin, Tom 85 Kanew, Jeff 22 Kanievska, Marek 106 Kaplan, Jonathan 145 Kasdan, Larry 24 Kassovitz, Mathieu 125, 134

LA, fnding work 371–2 LA Confdential 347, 351 LA Lights the Way 388–9 La Soufriere 108 La Vie en Rose 132–3 Lab Aim Density (LAD) 203

Iñárritu, Alejandro González 231, 233, 240–1, 243 Inception 200 inclusion in the flm industry 378 Inside Man 139 inspiration: Johnson, Kirsten 57; Lachman, Edward 108–10, 122–3; Morano, Reed 186–7; Morrison, Rachel 217; Pusheck, Cynthia 253; Savides, Harris 272 The Irishman 235, 237, 247–8 Irola, Judy 328 Iron Man 1 132 Iron Man 2 132 Italian flmmaking 341

412 Index Lachman, Edward 105–7, 113, 282; advice 122; art 117–19; Carol 114–15; challenges of cinematography 113–14; color theory 110–11; digital versus flm 121; emotional response through color 113; Far From Heaven 115–16; flm 120–1; flm versus digital 112–13; future of flmmaking 123; Haynes, Todd 116–17; inspiration 108–10, 122–3; lighting 119–20; stylistic approaches 111–12; Super 16mm 115 LAD (Lab Aim Density) 203 Laforet, Vincent 200 Lambert, Mary 323, 329 Landesman, Peter 353 Lang, Fritz 72 Langella, Frank 358 Langenegger, Marcell 345 Last of the Mohicans 345, 347 The Last Picture Show 44 The Last Shot 152 latitude of flm stock 345 Laurentis, Dino 339 Lawrence, Francis 231 Lawrence of Arabia 290, 318 Learned, Michael 147 LED lights 364 LEE 101 Lee, Ang 231, 233, 235 Lee, Malcom D. 353, 370 Lee, Spike 85–86, 92, 93, 94, 98, 127, 128, 134, 231 Legion 154–156, 201, 204 Leica M9 332 Leiter, Saul 114 Lemmons, Kasi 375, 381 Lenoir, Danny 393 lenses 44–5, 136–7, 153, 170, 236, 280, 348, 363, 387–8 Levine, Richard 289 Levinson, Barry 337 Libatique, Matthew 93, 94, 125–6, 191; actor/directors, working with 128–9; advice 141–2; art 135–6; balancing work and home life 140; camera movement 139; choosing formats 129–30; choosing projects 127–8; collaboration with directors 126–8, 133–4, 136–7; color palettes 137–8; digital versus flm 130–1; dolly versus Steadicam 139–40; future of flmmaking 140–1; Lee, Spike 127; lenses 137; longevity of flm 140; Marvel flms 132; memorable experiences 132–3; recreating daylight on set 138;

Straight Outta Compton 131–2; testing 130; visual references 134–5 lighting 151–3; Bailey, John 25–6; Elswit, Robert 36–7; Lachman, Edward 119–20; LED lights 364; Morrison, Rachel 216–17, 218; Pusheck, Cynthia 257–8; Savides, Harris 279–80; Schreiber, Nancy 296–7; Seale, John 312; Totino, Salvatore 356; Vincent, Amy 385 The Limey 120 Lindley, John 145–6, 375, 379–80; actors, DIs 159–60; attributes of directors 148; balancing work and home life 160–1; camera movement 155; choosing formats 157; choosing projects 146–7, 149; collaboration with directors 149–50; color palettes 159; digital versus flm 157– 8; DIs 158, 160; dolly versus Steadicam 155–6; how he operates 153–4; lenses 153; lighting 151–3; photography 150–1; producers 151–2, 154; production designers 154–5; testing flm 154; TV 147; visual references 150; women directors 148–9; writer/director 148 Linear Tape-Open (LTO) 141 Little Birds 187 Little Women 396 Littleton, Carol 16, 17 Local Hero 151 location shooting 364 longevity of flm 140, 174–5, 222, 284, 329–30, 345–6, 386 Look Up Tables (LUTs) 131, 237 Lopez, Jennifer 180, 194 Lopez, Temi 296 Lords of Flatbush 109 Lorenzo’s Oil 311 Loverboy 297 LTO (Linear Tape-Open) 141 Lubezki, Emmanuel 217 LuBute, Neil 289 Lucy in the Sky 201, 203–4, 207 Luhrmann, Baz 391, 399, 400 Lumet, Sidney 46 Lush Life 300 LUTs (Look Up Tables) 131, 237 Macdonald, Dwight 107 MacDonald, Kevin 231 Mackie, Anthony 221 Mademoiselle 25 magazines for photographic inspiration 136 Magnolia 41 Magyar, Dezso 323

Index Mahoney, Victoria 179, 187 Maier, Vivian 114 Malik, Terrence 89 Mambéty, Djibril Diop 54 The Man Who Wasn’t There 174 Manhattan 43, 151 Manhunter 340, 347 Manley, Chris 256 Mann, Michael 337, 339–40, 346–7, 350 Mapplethorpe 294, 295, 298–9 Maren, Michael 289 Markowitz, Jonah 294 Marshall, Garry 337, 340–1, 342, 347 Martin, Catherine 399 Martin, Steve 152 Marvel flms 132, 346, 369–70 Master and Commander 334 Maysles Brothers 108 McAvoy, James 168 McCalkey, Jim 27 McDonald, Dennis 366 McGarvey, Seamus 163–5, 199; advice 175–6; Arrifex Alexa 174; attributes of directors 166; black and white 174; choosing formats 172–3; choosing projects 165–7; collaboration with directors 170–1; color palettes 169–70; directors, American versus British 166–7; DIs (digital intermediates) 167–8; dolly versus Steadicam 172; HDSLRs (hybrid digital single lens refex cameras) 173; lenses 170; longevity of flm 174–5; operating cameras 171–2; Stone, Oliver 167; Super 16mm 174; visual references 169 McGillis, Kelly 311 McQuarrie, Christopher 35 Me Too Movement, Alberti, Maryse 6 Meadowland 187, 188 Melf, Theodore 145, 392, 394, 396 Mendes, Sam 86 Menges, Chris 151–2, 173 mentoring: Pusheck, Cynthia 267–8; Sissel, Sandi 328–9; Vincent, Amy 378; Walker, Mandy 392–3, 402 Menville, David 373 me-too moments, Morgan, Polly 210 Metty, Russell 116 Meyerowitz, Joel 150 Meyers, Nancy 380 Michael 152, 160 Michael Clayton 38, 42, 48–51 Michals, Duane 281 Michell, Roger 353

413

Midler, Bette 348 Mildred Pierce 115 Milk 283 Miller, George 311 Miller, Lee 101 Miller, Rebecca 85, 89, 92 Minghella, Anthony 305, 317, 318 Miracle at St. Annas 127 Mirivsh, Dan 289 Miss Virginia 295 The Missing 359 Missing in Action Part 2: The Beginning 379 mixing formats 130 MKII Zeiss 242 The Mod Squad 90 Money Monster 128 Moore, Michael 53, 67–8 Morano, Reed 179–85; actors 186; attributes of directors 187–8, 208; balancing work and home life 195; choosing projects 194; collaboration with directors 187; DPs 191–2; inspiration 186–7; preparation 190–1; producing 195; themes 189; women in flm industry 192–4; writing 192 Moreau, Jeanne 25 Morgan, Brett 86 Morgan, Polly 197–201, 378; art 201; aspect ratio 203–4; balancing work and home life 210–11; challenges 209–10; color palettes 202; digital versus flm 206–8; horror flms 205; learning 203; McGarvey, Seamus 199; preparation 202, 208–9; A Quiet Place II 205–6; themes 204; visual references 202 Morrison, Rachel 215–16; Academy Awards 226; advice 226–7; background 217–18; balancing work and home life 225; choosing formats 220–1; choosing projects 218–20; collaboration with directors 219–20; Coogler, Ryan 227; directing 224–5; Flint Strong 222–3; inspiration 217; lighting 216–18; longevity of flm 222; pregnancy 225; preparation 224; visual references 220 Morrow, Steve 128 Mosquito Coast 315 Moss, John 369 The Mountain Between Us 396–7 Mr. Brooks 157, 160 MTV promos 355 Mudbound 216, 220, 221 Mulan 395, 399–401 Müller, Robby 108, 253, 328

414 Index multiple cameras 363 Murphy, Brianne 334 Murphy, Ryan 125 music, Kuras, Ellen, 95 music videos, Totino, Salvatore 354–5 My Own Love Song 132–3 Nair, Mira 323 Nava, Gregory 106 Netfix 140 Nevada 300 New Line 29 New York 38, 43; freelance 371 Nichols, Mike 163, 166, 170 Nicorre 73 Niehaus, Lenni 300 Niiwam 55 The Nines 299 Nolan, Chris 369, 396 November 289, 292, 298 Noyce, Phillip 35, 48 Nurse 147 Nykvist, Sven 43, 95–6, 109, 279 O Brother Where Art Thou 158 The Oath 58 O’Connor, Gavin 391 Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa 183 O’Hare, Dennis 49 Okada, Daryn 294 Once Upon a Film 183 optical tracks 50 Ordinary People 17–18, 21–2 Original Sin 233 Otto, Miranda 385 Pacino, Al 350, 360 Panavision 23, 297, 382, 385 Panavision Primo zooms 170 Parasite 9 Passengers 237–8 Pelé 131 Pelham 123 43 Perry, Frank 146 Perry, Tyler 294–5, 323 Personal Velocity: Three Portraits 85 perspective 95 Pet Semetary 329 Peterson, Gene 16 Peterson, Wolfgang 305, 310 Petrycki, Jacek 163, 165 Pfeiffer, Michelle 342 Pfster, Wally 197, 200

Phelan, Kate 73 Phoenix, River 118–19 photo chemical timers 30 photochemical 284 Piggyback 296, 297 Pill, Alison 295 Pinnochio 343 planning of shots 171 Pleasantville 149, 156, 158 Plummer, Chris 350 poetic realism 107 Poison 4 Poitras, Laura 53, 58 Polanski, Roman 317 Polaroids 380 Pollack, Sydney 49 Ponsaldt, James 125 Pope, Bill 375, 380 Portrait of a Woman on Fire 83 Portugal, Carlos 75 Poseidon 311, 313, 320 Postcard Killings 366–8 Powell, Sandy 111 Pratt, Jeffrey Gordon 294–5 pregnancy 211; Alberti, Maryse 11–12; Kelly, Kira 80–1; Morrison, Rachel 225 preparation: Alberti, Maryse 8; Bailey, John 19; Elswit, Robert 39, 46–7; Johnson, Kirsten 59–60; Kuras, Ellen 92–3; Morano, Reed 190–1; Morgan, Polly 202, 208–9; Morrison, Rachel 224; Prieto, Rodrigo 232; Pusheck, Cynthia 263–4; Savides, Harris 278–9; Schreiber, Nancy 294; Seale, John 309–10; Spinotti, Dante 346; Totino, Salvatore 357, 364, 366 Prieto, Rodrigo 167, 231–2, 358; actors 236; advice 249; Almadovar, Pedro 243– 4; attributes of directors 234; balancing work and home life 248–9; Biutiful 240–2; collaboration with directors 233–6; color palettes 245–6; digital 236–7; DIs 240; The Irishman 247–8; lenses 236; Passengers 237–8; preparation 232; Scorsese, Marty 247; Silence 238; Stone, Oliver 246; storyboards 232–3; visual references 234–5; Wall Street 2 244–245; Water for Elephants 239–40 prime lenses 44, 96, 137, 153, 170, 236, 280, 297, 332–3, 348, 363, 387–8 Primo Zooms 332 Prince, Jonathan 323 Procter, Elaine 375

Index producers: Elswit, Robert 47–8; Lindley, John 151–2, 154; Spinotti, Dante 349; Totino, Salvatore 372 production designers 154–5 projects, choosing see choosing projects ProRes 31 Punch Drunk Love 41 Purcell, Jack 379 Pusheck, Cynthia 251–3, 255, 378; advice 266–7; archiving 265; balancing work and home life 260–1; challenges 262–3; choosing formats 266; choosing projects 260; collaboration with directors 259–60; color correction 264–5; directing 258–9; future of flmmaking 264; inspiration 253; lighting 257–8; mentoring 267–8; preparation 263–4; role models 253–4; themes 256; TV 256–7; underwater cinematography 254–5 P-Valley 294–5 Queen Sugar 76, 77, 79, 81 The Quick and the Dead 351 A Quiet Place II 201, 205–6, 209 racism, Johnson, Kirsten 54 Radin, Phil 23 Raging Bull 357 Raimi, Sam 337 Rainer, Yvonne 88 Rainman 307 Raising Arizona 186 Rami, Harold 86 Rami, Sam 21 Ramsay, Lynne 163, 166 Ratner, Brett 337, 340 realism 26 RED 369 Red Dragon 340 RED Epic Dragon 131, 367 Redford, Robert 17–18, 21 Reed, Peyton 337 re-entry 161 Rees, Dee 216, 220 Reiner, Rob 36, 179, 186, 305, 375, 379 Requiem for a Dream 127, 134, 187 Reservation Road 153 Revenge 255, 256–7 Reynolds, Ryan 299 Richardson, Robert 12, 167, 360, 371, 375, 380 Richardson, Tony 25 Rickman, Alan 86, 163 Rikers High 215

415

Risk 58 Rivera, Diego 234 The Road 356 The Road to Perdition 279 Roberts, Julia 160 Robertson, Pete 171 Robinson, Julie Ann 145 Robinson, Pete 172 Robinson, Phil 149, 155, 375 Rockwell, Sam 365 Rodriguez, Rosemary 289 Roizman, Owen 43–4, 51 role models, Pusheck, Cynthia 253–4 Rollands, Andrew 363 Romano, Peter 254–5 romantic comedies 312, 356; lighting 25, 151–3 Rosenberg, Benjamin 348 Rosenberg, Stuart 127 Rosenwald, Laurie 63 Ross, Gary 145 Roth, Tim 173 Rothko, Mark 22 Rourke, Mickey 8–9 Rowlands, Andrew 365 Ruby Sparks 131 Rushmore 187 Ryan, Ellery 392 Sacred Lives 257 safety 63, 100 SAG (Screen Actors Guild) strike 157–8 Salgado, Sebasteao 234 Salt 48 Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia 85 Sanford, Arlene 327 Sarandon, Susan 27 Sargent, Alvin 18 Savides, Harris 74, 271–4, 353, 354, 371; Allen, Woody 275; choosing formats 286; choosing projects 275, 277; color palettes 281–2; digital versus flm 285–6; directors, attributes of 276; DIs 283–4; flm dailies 283; focal lengths 280–281; inspiration 272; lenses 280; lighting 279–80; longevity of flm 284; multiple cameras 279; operators 279; photography 279; preparation 278–9; Scott, Ridley 277; successes 287; testing 282–3; Van Sant, Gus 276 Scarfotti, Nanco 17 Schnabel, Julian 86 Schrader, Paul 17, 18, 32, 106, 337

416 Index Schreiber, Nancy 289–91; advice 302–3; balancing work and home life 300–1; challenges 291–2; choosing projects 293–4; collaboration with directors 292–3, 296–7; color palettes 297–8; directing 301–2; favorite flms 299–300; lenses 297; lighting 296–7; Mapplethorpe 298–9; photography 291; preparation 294; P-Valley 294–5; television or flms 299; visual references 295–6 Schumacher, Joel 35, 125, 128 Schwarz, Jeffrey 290 “Sci-Tech” 28 Scorsese, Marty 27, 86, 94, 180, 189, 232, 237, 238, 247 Scott, Jake 358 Scott, Ridley 271, 277, 354 Scott, Tony 354, 362 SDR (standard dynamic range) 207 Seale, John 305–6, 392; attributes of directors 308; camera movement 316–17; choosing formats 318–19; choosing projects 308; collaboration with directors 306–8, 314; color palettes 310, 314–15; daylight 316; de-saturation 311; digital cinematography 320–1; DIs 319–20; dolly versus Steadicam 317–18; flm stocks 315; genre flms 313; lighting 312; Minghella, Anthony 306; operating cameras 313–14; preparation 309–10; romantic comedies 312; smoke 311–12; testing 316; visual references 310–11 Seberg 221 “Secret Garden” 355 Sedgwick, Kyra 298 Seidelman, A. A. 375 Seidle, Ulrich 109–10 Seidleman, Susan 106 selecting a cinematographer 102 Self Made 77, 81 self-censorship 64–5 Sembène, Ousmane 54–5 Semler, Dean 393 Serra, Eduardo 97 Seven 97 “Shadow” 119 Shankar, Ravi 324 Shchrieber, Live 125 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 45 Sheen, Michael 358, 365 Sheeran, Frank 247 Shields, Claressa 222 shot lists 208 Shyer, Charles 145

Signs of Life 108 Silence 234, 237–9 Silver, Scott 86 Silverado 24 Simmons, Johnny 267 Sirk, Douglas 116 Sissel, Sandi 263, 323–4; archiving 331; attributes of directors 326; balancing work and home life 327–8; challenges 326–7; choosing formats 332; choosing projects 325–6; digital versus flm 329; DIs 331–2; HDSLRs 330–1; lenses 332– 3; longevity of flm 329–30; mentors 328–9; sacrifces 333 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 23 The Six Wives of Henry Lefay 296, 298 skip bleaching 97 Sleeping With The Enemy 160 Slipstream 351 Slumdog Millionaire 45 smoke 311–312 SNL 324 Snow White 150 Society of Camera Operators (SOC) 378 Soderbergh, Steven 48, 106, 117 The Soloist 169, 171 Sony 900 23, 31 Sony CineAlta 183 Sony Venice 344–5, 385 Space Jam 366 Spade, David 159 Speed Racer 281 SpiderMan 367 Spielberg, Steven 3, 205 Spinotti, Dante 337–8; actor/directors, working with 342–3; advice 350; balancing work and home life 351; camera operators 349; choosing formats 348; choosing projects 338–9; digital 344–5; directing 350; dolly versus Steadicam 348–9; flm stocks 345; genre flms 342; lenses 348; longevity of flm 345–6; Mann, Michael 339–40; Marshall, Garry 340–2; Marvel flms 346; preparation 346; producers 349; Ratner, Brett 340; style 341; successes 350–1; Taylor, Deon 344; visual references 346–8 The Spirit of the Beehive 393 Springsteen, Bruce 355 Stand by Me 379 standard dynamic range (SDR) 207 Stanton, Harry Dean 173 A Star is Born 127, 128

Index State of Play 236, 243 Station 19 294, 295 Steadicam 26–7, 48–50, 139–40, 155–6, 172, 317–18, 348–9, 365, 388 Stein, Darren 375 Stein, Suzanne 123 Stemler, Dean 320 Stewart, Kristen 221 Stewart, Scott 145 Stone, Oliver 163, 166, 167, 231, 233, 244–5, 246, 353, 359–60 Storaro, Vittorio 16–17, 106, 109, 117, 151, 338 storyboards 7, 20–1; Elswit, Robert 42–3; Howard, Ron 361; Kelly, Kira 78; Libatique, Matty 133–4; Lindley, John 149–50; Prieto, Rodrigo 232–3 storylines, multiple storylines 282 Strada crane 172 Straight Outta Compton 131–2 Straight Time 44 Stranger on A Train 114 Streisand, Barbara 337, 342–3 Summer of Sam 92, 94 The Sunshine Family 296 Super 16mm 45, 115, 174, 221, 386 Super 35mm 22–4, 318 Super Techniscope 24 Surtees, Robert 44 Swank, Hillary 160 Sweeny, Julia 290 Swinton, Tilda 49 Swoon 85 Syriana 48 T4.5 lens 23 Tai-Pan 339 Tanovic, Danis 353 Tarantino, Quentin 369, 396 Tauber, Matt 188 Tavoularis, Dean 155 Tax Collector 366–8 Taylor, Deon 337, 344 Taylor-Johnson, Sam 163, 164 Taylor-Wood, Sam 171 Taymor, Julie 231, 232 technology 9–10 testing 130; Elswit, Robert 46–7; Lindley, John 154; Savides, Harris 282–3; Seale, John 316; Totino, Salvatore 364; Walker, Mandy 398 Thaler, Wolfgang 106, 109

417

themes: Johnson, Kirsten 60; Kuras, Ellen 91; Morgan, Polly 204; Pusheck, Cynthia 256; Walker, Mandy 394–5 There Will Be Blood 41, 46–7, 51 Thomas, Wynn 362 Thurman, Uma 289 Timoner, Ondi 289, 298 Titan cranes 316–317 T.J. Hooker 379 Tomorrow Never Dies 254 Tooker, George 362 Tootsie 43 Totino, Salvatore 271, 353–4; advice 370–1; archiving 368; balancing work and home life 372–3; camera movement 364–5; camera operators 363; choosing formats 367; choosing projects 355–6; color palettes 362; digital 367–8; favorite flms 357; flm 368–9; Howard, Ron 358–62, 370; lenses 363; lighting 356; location shooting 364; Marvel flms 369– 70; multiple cameras 363; music videos 354–5; New York versus LA 371–2; preparation 357, 364, 366; producers 372; romantic comedies 356; Steadicam 365; Stone, Oliver 359–60; successes 372–3; testing 364; visual references 361 Touch of Evil 25 Tracks in the Outback 397–8 Traffk 344 Training Day 366 True Confessions 44 Tully, Kristy 73 TV: collaboration with directors 259–60; preparation 263–4; Pusheck, Cynthia 256–7 Two Lane Blacktop 24 Ugetsu 235 Umberto D 107 underwater cinematography, Pusheck, Cynthia 254–5 Upczack, Emilie 289 Vachon, Christine 4, 85 Vadakan, Visra Vichit 323 Van Sant, Gus 26, 271, 276, 284, 287 Vanderbilt, James 391 Varda, Agnes 123 Varicon 94 Venom 132 The Verdict 46 Veselic, Zoran 238

418 Index Vincent, Amy 255, 375–6, 379–80, 382–3; AFI (American Film Institute) 381–2; ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) 377–8; ASC Future Practices Committee (FPC) 376–7; choosing formats 385–6; choosing projects 384; collaboration with directors 384; digital 386–7; dolly versus Steadicam 388; LA Lights the Way 388–9; lenses 387–8; lighting 385; Lindley, John 379–80; longevity of flm 386; mentoring 378; sacrifces 383–4 Vinyl 189 violence, Bailey, John 20 Viper 285 The Virgin Suicides 110 visual references 22; Elswit, Robert 43–4; Kelly, Kira 78; Kuras, Ellen 94–5; Libatique, Matty 134–5; Lindley, John 150; McGarvey, Seamus 169; Morgan, Polly 202; Morrison, Rachel 220; Prieto, Rodrigo 234–5; Schreiber, Nancy 295–6; Seale, John 310–11; Spinotti, Dante 346–8; Totino, Salvatore 361 Walkabout 170 Walker, Madam C.J. 77 Walker, Mandy 191, 378, 391–2; advice 402–3; balancing work and home life 401–2; challenges 393; choosing formats 395; choosing projects 399; collaboration with directors 399–400; digital 398; flm 396; Luhrmann, Baz 400; mentoring 392–3, 402; The Mountain Between Us 396–7; testing 398; themes 394–5; Tracks in the Outback 397–8; women directors 400–1 Wall Street 2 244–5 Walton, Tony 155 The War Zone 173 Washington, Isaiah 385 Water for Elephants 239–40 Watkins, David 25 Watts, Jon 353 Wayne, John 45, 160 We Need to Talk About Kevin 166, 172–3 weepies 116 Weir, Peter 305, 310, 315 Welles, Orson 25, 36, 186 Wenders, Wim 108 Wenk, Richard 86

Were the World Mine 73 Wexler, Haskell 43, 217, 328 ‘What ifs’ 310 Whedon, Joss 163–4 Whitaker, Forest 300 White House Plumbers 373 Wilde, Olivia 188 Willis, Gordon 43, 51, 74, 120, 147, 156, 217, 297, 371 Wilson, Jim 381 Wilson, Lana 75 Winick, Gary 163 Winslet, Kate 97, 101 Witness 310, 311 The Wizard of Oz 338 The Wolf of Wall Street 237 Wolski, Darius 380 women cinematographers 192–4, 326–7, 401 women directors 82–3, 148–9, 190, 192–4, 301, 400–1 women in flm industry 190, 212, 227, 261–3, 301, 378–9; children 225–6 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown 244 women’s crews 80 Wonder Boys 338 Wonder Woman 194 The Wonder Years 327 Wong Kar-Wai 74 Workman, Chuck,290 The World Trade Center 167 The Wrestler 7–10 Wright, Joe 163, 166, 169 writer/director 148 writing, Morano, Reed, 192 Yan, Cathy 125, 134 Yelling to the Sky 187 Young, Bradford 191, 217 Your Friends and Neighbors 295–6 You’ve Got Mail 153 Zambarloukos, Haris 199 Zellweger, Renée 132–3 Ziering, Amy 53, 56–8 Zimbalist, Jeff 125 Zodiac 283 Zone System 122 zoom lenses 44, 137, 153, 170, 236, 280, 297, 314, 332–3, 348, 363, 387–8