Looking Through the Lens of a Cinematographer

By Alec Smith

 

A lot goes into developing a film: Producers are brought in to hire the director, actors, screenwriters, and oversee the entirety of the film.  Actors practice their roles, screenwriters assemble to produce a script, set designers build the writer’s visions, and the director yells “Action.”  What many people don’t see, yet always do see, is how the film is shot.  In a sense, this is one of the most important aspects of the movie.  The cinematographer sets the mood for the audience with specific angles (wide, up-close, shaky, etc...).  Without a skilled camera man, a film will fail to impart the director’s intentions.  With this, I was curious to understand how a film is contrived through the eyes of a cinematographer.  I recently interviewed Santa Cruz born Kevin Atkinson who works in Hollywood filming television and movies.  Without further ado, let’s begin!

 

How did you get into film?  

My parents founded a movie theater in downtown Santa Cruz...the Nickelodeon.  They built it in 1969, the year I was born.  I grew up watching art films.  In high school, I had a dark room in the basement so I got into photography early.  When I turned 30, I moved back to Los Angeles and I enrolled in film school.  I can’t say that I had a plan to become a cinematographer...it happened.

 

What is your job?

To take care of the image of any given film.  What that means is I’m responsible for all the photography of the film.  I work closely with the director to establish a visual tone, mood...and continuity of any given film that is appropriate to the script.

 

How does the camera system work?

There are three department heads that are underneath me. The camera department...I’ll speak to my first AC on the A cam.  Then I have my gaffer who’s responsible for all the lighting and the electrical distribution.  And then I have my key grip who is responsible for shaping the light, cutting the light, and buying overheads.  My big projects I’m involved in usually have teams of say between five and fifteen on each side of the gaffer department.  On the camera side, budget affects everything.  For some really low budget stuff, a lot of time it’s single camera.  Sometime the camera is quite simple.  In the industry standard that they have been shooting in the most popularly in the last five years is the Arri Alexa and also the Red Epic.  It all comes down to budget.  It’s quite expensive at $0.65 a foot for a thousand foot roll you get an eleven minute out of that at 24 frames per second and that’s just $350 for just a 1000 feet.

 

At what point do you know the movie is going to be good or bad?

(laughs) That’s a great question.  It’s funny when I was growing up watching all those films in my parent’s theater I couldn’t understand why anybody would make a bad movie.  Now I realize why it happens...If you have a project you really have to start with a good script.  A lot of times, projects get hit with a green light with a bad script; lots and lots of them do for various reasons...Then if you're lucky enough to get started with a good script, then you have to cast it very well of course and then you also have to have someone at the helm, so the director needs to be talented and then you hope everybody else, your editor your cinematographer, are very talented.  And then the magic happens when you roll the dice and all the project comes together and it comes together in sorts of ways that will make a good film.  Often times if one of those elements is lacking that I just mentioned, the film falls short.  To answer your question...you don't really know when you're on a film.  You can immediately tell if it’s casted poorly or the acting’s bad or the writing’s bad. Sometimes the crew rolls their eyes, but often times you’ll be shooting on a film and once you see the cuts you’ll say, “That doesn’t look quite right.”  Or vice versa.  You may be shooting on a film you think is going to turn out pretty good and then you watch it and it’s not quite as good as you thought it might be.

 

Do you still enjoy going to the movies?  Has your opinion changed since becoming a cinematographer?

My opinion of filmmaking I’m sure it has changed because I can now critique from the inside and I very much enjoy going to the movies.  What’s changed for me now is I enjoy bad movies.  It’s fun to be analytical and it’s fun to break them down.  It’s fun to understand why they didn’t work, even when you haven’t worked on them.  You can watch a film from the outside and really break it down, so that’s enjoyable.  But then also you lose yourself in the picture.  That’s part of the magic really.  Even if you spent 30, 50, 60, 80 days working on a production, when you go watch the same production you shot you still lose yourself in it and that is enjoyable and fascinating in that way.

 

Why do little mistakes like a tie being tied differently or a picture being placed somewhere else in scene occur?  Poor editing?

In terms of continuity, you have a script supervisor who’s on set and that’s usually just one person who is taking notes and looking at the video village and is scrutinizing every single frame of the movie to make sure that doesn’t happen.  But because obviously it’s a lot, often times things get missed.  You do multiple takes of course so you're looking at cigarettes or drinks or food on the table; they’re always very difficult to deal with, but the director might like the performance in take one, but the second half of that take didn’t work so well, so they use the second half of take four and stitch it together.  And so between take one and take four, you might have someone in wardrobe adjust the tie and they realize the actor or something’s not quite right and they run in there and fix it, hoping that the editor doesn’t use that first take.  But in the editing bay, it’s all about performance and it’s all about story.  You’d be surprised about how much people get away with, in terms of continuity.

 

Do you hang out with the actors?

On set you do.  Everybody comes together and you spend the day or the week together and then often times you can become friends and go out.  It’s a very natural process.  When you spend a lot of time working together, yeah, you develop friendship.  It’s interesting to note that the departments are kind of cliquey in a way when people sit down for lunch.  You’ll see the camera department sitting together and the actors sitting together and the writers and producers are sitting at another table.  Everybody just kind of falls in their departments because they know each other.  It’s very natural.

 

Who’s the most interesting actor you’ve met?

About four months ago, I worked with Jim Carrey.  He was very impressive.  Sometimes you get people who come to set and they just knock your tail lights out.  It’s like wow.  You can just see the talent right before your eyes.  They come very prepared.  They know every single line and they’ve already thought about their performance and when the cameras turn on, they turn on.  You can understand why they’re A list stars.