visions of life

On and off, I have been at it for 2 weeks. And now it is, sorta done. I am talking about my website for my work in cinematography. Most of the pages were done in a day but the rest, mainly 'compressing' video fils, took a while. I leave them overnight and go to sleep. In the morning, I add one more quicktime clip/film. I am awaiting some films and music videos to get finished and to be sent a copy. Some projects going back a whole year.

When I started I had 4 student films on my reel, and 3 were on super8. I have a funny variety. Mostly low/no budget shorts and features and art films. I would say most DP's reels consisted of commercials. It's one washing powder ad after another. Get paid a lot for that crap. I have no commercials. I have shot quite a few in house commercials for BidUp TV but i don't have the footage. Good commercials are like really good shorts films. In fact, most shorts come nowhere near the narrative power of a commercial in 30 seconds. I have been asked for interviews or to shoot on the strength that my reel wasn't all slick and commercial. We get what we can do. Many commercial DP's have never shot a feature, budget or no budget (unless you are of course already shooting features you go back to shooting commercials). Shooting drama is a different aesthetic and really, what most DP's aspire to do (though big commercials pay an immense amount of money to DP's, about £1500 a day). When you're in an industry that pays people £1500 a day to light something for beauty, you can either forget why you got into it in the first place or feel lucky that you are where you aspired to reach. DP's come from all sorts of backgrounds and various experiences. I am still surprised when I occasionally read where some studied, trained, what jobs they has before and how they became successful. More often than not, it is both by good fortune and the willingness to shoot.

Despite the small struggles of constantly looking for the next job and the next paid job, i wouldn't take back one day of any shoot. It is mostly work but there can be a lot of fun to be had and it's always a learning experience. And if we can learn as we work, it's one of the best discourses one can have. Many people will watch 10 second clip from a film and won't think it took 4 hours in the freezing cold, being up 16 hours and under some pressure to finish before the sun comes up. But under budgets, equipment, manpower and time, you have to get it done and you have to do it well, under whatever circumstance you come across.

DP's are regarded as the calmer of the Director/DP relationship. DP's can be and normally are a combination of the following attributes: aesthetically guided, technically knowledgable, managerial, diplomatic, decisive, pragmatic, problem solvers, low temprements and it has been said, generally nice people.

I could go on about cinematographers and but there are already a few books on it. Needless to say, they tend to be the unsung major contributors in a film's making (except within the industry). Sometimes when I am asked what I do, I tend to have to explain the role as well because very few people know what a Director Of Photography (DP/DOP) or Cinematographer actually does. And then, I still find it difficult to explain the intricacies and the duties and responsibilities.

Anyway. I hope you find some time to watch some of my work from over the last 4-8 years (with a break in between).

www.busstrikeproductions.co.uk

- J