Four acclaimed cinematographers are ready to share advice on what young filmmakers should expect upon entering the field.
In an exclusive video roundtable interview with Gold Derby as part of our Meet the Experts: Cinematographers panel, “Fallout” cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, “Shogun” cinematographer Christopher Ross, “Fargo” cinematographer Dana Gonzales and “The Crown” cinematographer Adriano Goldman each shared some tips and suggestions for burgeoning directors of photography. Watch the full roundtable above. Click on each person’s name to watch an individual chat.
“I thought that to be a filmmaker you had to be a director or writer,” Ross says. “Then, when I was 15 years old, I read a book called ‘Scorsese on Scorsese,’ where he talks about his love of Jack Cardiff and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and his work with Michael Ballhaus and Michael Chapman and I discovered what a cinematographer was, and figured that maybe I’d be a good cinema buddy for someone who was a writer-director. I feel like in many ways I’m not really a cinematographer. I am a cinema buddy.”
It’s a sentiment Goldman, a two-time Emmy Award winner for “The Crown,” echoes.
“Find someone you want to collaborate with and be a collaborator,” he says. “I myself don’t want to be a director. But I want to be as influential as I can be as a cinematographer, and be a partner and be a collaborator. So get involved in the storytelling, get involved in the discussions about color and textures, and just be in it 150 percent. Give it all the attention, and create a very strong relationship with the artists around you. And then profit from that.”
There’s value, too, in failure and experimentation, as Dryburgh and Gonzales suggest.
“I say go back to the basics,” Dryburgh, an Oscar nominee for “The Piano” and an Emmy nominee for “Boardwalk Empire,” says. “Pick up a 35mm camera, use black-and-white film, and go to the darkroom. Make some prints and start understanding how that works. And that will inform your work with digital camera testers as well.”
“Make your mistakes now,” adds Gonzales, an Emmy winner for “Fargo.” “Fail now. And then that’s a road to success. That’s the only way to do it. You just have to keep shooting, shooting, and shooting. Then you become better and better. It’s like that 10,000-hours theory. I truly believe that is not only true, but it works.”
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