hate to sound naive but... whats the difference between cinematographer and director?
And answering it will also give me the chance to talk about my 4th class which I haven't mentioned yet which is Advanced Directing. I find it kind of entertaining that they call it Advanced Directing since none of us have had beginning directing. Unless they count all the stumbling around self taught directing that we've all done on our films so far.
The Director is the storyteller. She has the vision of the specific story she's telling and she's sort of the ship's captain making sure everyone is on the same boat and pulling in the same direction. She works with the actors to get the right performance and works with the DP to get the performance photographed correctly to tell the story. The director is ultimately responsible for getting the story from the script to the screen.
What the director doesn't do is any of the organizational or logistical stuff (the folks on the Producer track do that), or ever touch any equipment (the grips and electrics do that), or operate the camera.
The director of photography is responsible for taking the director's vision and making it look right on screen. They don't actually touch much either as far as I can tell, but they are telling all the people who are actually moving stuff around where to put it and what to do with it.
so??? Director of Photography vs cinematographer? same? not?
ReplyDeletewhen one doesn't have much money or influence to get non-paid 'staff' it seems to me like a cinematographer is the 'jane of all trades' --- director, photographer, editor, etc... no
~k2
Director of Photography and Cinematographer are often used interchangeably, yes. Though I imagine there is some nuanced difference between them I haven't figured out yet what that is.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, all of this is based on large scale union shoots. On indie films and especially on student films there is way more overlap. I usually both directed and edited and frankly everyone pitched in with things like setting up and pointing lights. But really one of the things I learned on Memory Sticks, which was the first "serious" film I tried to do, was that you really don't want to both direct and shoot. I had shots out of focus because I stepped back to watch the performance after I got the camera set up and the depth of field was too shallow and he leaned out of it. After that I tried to always have Linda with me so that someone would be looking through the camera and checking for that kind of stuff while I could concentrate on the actors.