I TOLD YOU SO

Until recently, no one who graduated film school instantly declared themself a director of photography, and with good reason.  A couple of semesters’ exposure to the basics within a cloistered environment didn’t equate with bearing responsibility for a multi-million dollar investment.  It still doesn’t.  But society’s values have changed along with our technology, and such declarations no longer seem so ridiculous.  Everyone knows that high-end monitors have taken the mystery – and much of the expertise – out of image creation, yet there remains an enormous gap between shooting for YouTube and shooting for Quentin Tarantino.  No film school I’m aware of teaches anything significant about the part of being a cinematographer that has nothing to do with lighting, camera or post.  In other words, the remaining eighty percent of the job.

            So, what good is real-world, practical experience?

            Except for the rarest of individuals, it used to come from only one place – climbing the ladder of the camera or electrical department.  This was a years-long journey, but at the end of it, if you paid attention, you were possessed of priceless knowledge that was impossible to otherwise obtain.  That’s the path I traveled; some of the lessons I absorbed still inform the work I do today.  And, it was a small world.  All of us on the rise in features and episodics knew each other’s names. Lately, I don’t see many camera assistants or operators following that template. New cinematographers seem to pop up out of nowhere.  Though I’m sympathetic to a young person’s impatience and drive to make a mark, an undeniable wisdom is gained by making a more deliberate choice.  Witness the thoughts of a greater authority than me, Joseph Walker, ASC.

            To be sure, Walker shot one hundred-fifty features (twenty of which are classics), was Oscar-nominated on four occasions, was the first recipient of the prestigious Gordon E. Sawyer Award and was the holder of twenty patents for various camera-related inventions.

            According to David Williams’ Wrap Shot column in the February 2024 issue of American Cinematographer, he taught himself the basics of cinematography by watching the legendary Billy Bitzer.  Unlike most of his contemporaries, he never worked as a camera assistant or operator.

         “That may sound like coming up the easy way, but it wasn’t,” he once said.  “I had to find out everything for myself the hard way.  And I’ve had many occasions to envy most of my fellow cinematographers who, when faced with a problem, could think back to their early training as an assistant and recall how their teachers solved similar problems.  I know how I’ve done similar things in the past, but there are times when I’d like the psychological advantage of that little mental check on my own methods.”

         Bottom line?  Everyone ultimately finds their own way.  Walker found his, though his words suggest he’d have done it differently, given a second chance.  Imagine what heights he might’ve reached if he did.  On the tail of that, he implies something as important in today’s turbo-charged industry as it was back in his day.

         If you want to do anything to the best of your ability, there are no shortcuts.