Shooting to Kill by Christine Vachon

Author:Christine Vachon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061873683
Publisher: HarperCollins

ADs absorb most of the tension on the set: “Will we make the day?” “Will the actor come out of his trailer?” “Will we still have sunlight by the time we move to the next scene?” The best can absorb all that tension without putting it back out. They’re the unsung superheroes of the movie business.

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Your director of photography often controls the tempo of the shoot, contributes his or her own vision (or provides a vision when the director has none), and makes the actors feel cared for, even worshipped. All decisions about lighting are made by the DP, who can make a $200,000 film look as if it cost five million, and a five-million-dollar film look as if it cost two hundred thousand. During production, the DP is privy to virtually every major creative decision, from the number of extras to the color of the costumes to the actors’ movements to whether or not to call it a day. Along with your actors, this is your major hire.

Many low-budget producers look for Directors of Photography (DPs) who own their own 16mm camera package—which, all else being equal, will save you money (that is, if you’re shooting in sixteen).* In any case, you’ll want to see a sample reel. That’s not a hundred percent reliable, however. With a good DP, every movie should look different—unless his or her aesthetic is consistently overwhelming the director’s, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. When inexperienced directors look at reels—for either a DP or a production designer—they’re apt to declare things such as, “Oh, this is too stylized,” when usually the amount of stylization has been dictated by the director.

Getting a great cinematographer won’t make a studio say, “Oh, now we can finance that film!” What a great cinematographer can do, apart from making the movie look good on a low budget, is bring in people who want to work with him or her, who maybe wouldn’t want to otherwise. They have a cachet. But make sure the high-powered DP understands the “size” of the film. If they’re already rich, they might not care about the money they’re making, but when they realize that on a low-budget film they’re only going to have, say, two 6Ks and a 9 light, they may bolt. Also, even if they work cheap, their usual crew probably won’t want to: What’s in it for them?

Many cinematographers have justifiably high opinions of their own abilities, and some go on to direct their own (frequently terrible) features. It’s important that the DP’s ego and the director’s ego complement each other, because a set on which the two are locked in combat is a guaranteed six weeks of hell. On Office Killer, we needed a cinematographer to work with director Cindy Sherman, a brilliant and renowned still photographer with no conception of how to stage a scene on a set or move a camera. We chose Russell Fine because he could do his own thing but also enjoy the

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