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Before making a name for yourself, have you; and if so: how did you deal with uninspiring situations on set were I’ts all about getting the shot no matter what it looks like. I mean the feeling of being a tripod for the director? How have you established a healthy creative communication between the two of you?
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This is a great question and would love to hear Roger’s and other DP’s responses to see if they have encountered this type of situation before and how they handled it. From my point of view every Director is different and some don’t care at all and give me freedom as a DP to shoot a scene however I see fit because they trust me. I don’t think it should be like that. But, the pendulum can swing way to far on the other side especially today’s day in age where you can just feel like a tripod and the Director doesn’t care what you have to say. I tend to never work with those Directors again because it supposed to be a collaborative process. It’s definitely a hard to situation to navigate.
In my experience this can happen when you start out and work on small projects. The more serious the work gets with time, the less this should happen. If you feel you are stuck in the kind of projects (and contacts) that won’t let you progress, try to take it step by step and build a portfolio you are proud to show, however possible.
It happens — ultimately filmmaking is an expensive business and you were hired to deliver a certain level of work within a budget for time and equipment. That’s the reality.
You fight for the quality of the shot when it matters, when you think a drop in quality will be noticeable and everyone in post will be trying to make the problematic shot work and forgetting soon why it was not shot as well as it should have been.
It’s frustrating and depressing when you no choice but to roll cameras on something below your standards but you try and move on because there will be other battles coming up that need your concentration. A producer once said to me (regarding a perfectionist director we were dealing with): “If you make everything equally important then nothing is important”. The other common phrase is “Perfect is the enemy of good.” You have to realize that if you take another ten minutes to make a shot better, you may be robbing yourself of ten minutes later in the day on something even more important.
Yes, “Perfect is the enemy of good’ and it is up to the cinematographer to work within the limitations of a production. And its a given that there is never the time or the equipment you might desire. You are not working in an ideal world and you are hired to deliver “a certain level of work”. But when that level falls below what you can get any satisfaction from – when you feel you are just working for a paycheck – what then?
I feel a little ridiculous following on Rogers comment, but just want to address something that caught my attention from the original post:
“Before making a name for yourself…”
I have been working in the industry as a commercial and music video director for 15+ years, and some of those were grafting through soul-destroying projects with clients from the pits of creative hell, with budgets so small that could make Werner Herzog weep. Sleep-deprived, and with a nervous system shot, sometimes it can feel like you just need to tick a box and go home. BUT…the best DOPs I worked with were the ones who (at the time) had no name for themselves but were right there with me in the thick of it, and they would have an amazing ability to a) know when to speak up, b) would have a simple solution ready to make the shot better…either one of those things, or both, almost always resulted in a better shot, and often inspiring (an exhausted) director to do better. Some of those DOPs have become career-long collaborators, others have gone on to achieve a lot more than I have.
It may take time to learn those timing skills, and it may take time to get the experience needed to build an arsenal of solutions for those kinds of situations but the point I’m trying to make was that in all those cases none, and I mean zero, of those DOPs, commanded my respect because they had a big name, rather they commanded my attention because they got their timing right, picked the right battle, and almost always had a simple solution to a problem I couldn’t articulate.
Hope this helps.
Good comments. Yes, you pick your battles. Never, and I mean never, be critical of a director’s choice without offering an alternative you might prefer. If you don’t see eye to eye with a director then you make your decision to either be there for them regardless or find a tree to sit under instead.
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