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In my opinion being a cinematographer requires a high level of fitness. Age probably is a consideration when a producer and/or a director is hiring but, as I only learn of the offers that come to me, I have no idea if I miss out on a job because of my age.
Is it because you do your own camerawork?
Absolutely! A beautiful sunset doesn’t necessarily further the narrative.
In one of the first podcast episodes you talk about telling a director that the cool shot he wanted was didn’t suit the story and you rejected his idea (i am going by memory, sorry if i am not correct). I find it very interesting.to see a DP “stepping back” to preserve the story. In my ingenuity i thought that should be the director first interest, not the cinematographer’s one. You were caring about the story more than the director himself. Have you ever thought to direct your own movie?
Thanks to you all for your replies and suggestions, about the subject and about the suggested movies to watch!
I think that the point is finding what i really like and focus on that, to understand why i like that. And i realized i tend to like the movies done always by the same cinematographers, so at least i have a starting point, let’s say a style that i constantly like.
About the “bad cinematography”, would you include in it great movies with stunning images but that are so beautiful that you tend to forgot what’s their purpose and you simply stare at them?
Maybe it depends also on the position and duties?
I have no experience about cinema world but i think it’s a situation common to many other fields: young people are preferred by employers because they usually are fine with lower pay rates given the lack of experience, even if the present young generation seems to have a different approach to this way of thinking than the previous ones (that’s why they shift jobs very frequently and refuse low paying jobs).
This said, i think you’ll want someone that actually knows the job for a decision making and responsability position and that’s not related to age (but it’s easy to think that an older person that has been doing that job for years has more experience and knowledge). As i said i have no experience in cinema but honestly i can’t imagine a production that could have the chance to work with a famous artist in a relevant position (as a DP for example) and refuse because that artist is not the younger around.
As far as my little world is concerned, i prefer to work with smart people. I know a lot of stupid young people and clever old ones, as well as i know incredibly smart young people and absolutely stupid old ones. There’s too focus on age, with should focus on stupidity. 🙂
I once wrote my own list of personal favorites of cinematography and there were dozens of titles per decade of the history of cinema. Anyone can recommend five movies with great cinematography… but as soon as you watched them, there would be five more to watch, and so on! I think what movies you want to learn for depends more on what specifically would you like to learn. It’s similar to when someone asks what five books they should read on filmmaking. In my mind, if someone is a fan of a subject, they will read everything they can find, good or bad. Imagine someone saying they were a huge fan of U.S. Civil War history but then saying they want to only read a couple of books on the topic. I would just start watching good movies.
Yes, i understand your point and i agree with you, but that would apply to every subject. There’s always something new to learn , new artists, new scientific discoveries, etc.
Cinematography is a wide subject – and i know so little about it – that i am not aiming to collect a global knowledge about it, let’s say just a valid starting point (even if i realize that there’s a subjective element in it) . 🙂
