When did you first get interested...

[Matthew Buick]

...in cinematography.

 

I'm going to tot up all the ages and work out the average age that people start getting that interest in cinematography.

 

Me: 12.

 

Best Regards. :D

 

P.S: If you could also tell me your handedness, I'm going to work that into the equation and look for a connection.

 

Me: Left handed.

 

Thanks, and good day/night. :D

[Nicholas Jenkins]

I think when I was an undergrad studying photography, I really got interested in how it all worked in motion pictures. Since I loved films, I started to investigate how things were done. Now I'm DPing for other grads in my department.

[Chad Stockfleth]

Was into music since a young age. At 20 I went to school to be an audio engineer, but started to wonder if I would enjoy it as a career (loved it too much to try to make money off it, long hours in windowless studios) so transfered to the film dept. as I'd always had a passing interest in photography. Sets seemed like a lot more fun to be on.

 

So, 20. Right-handed. Libra/Scorpio cusp. :D

[Robert Hughes]

I got interested about 1982, did film school for a few years, eventually ran outta cash. My instructor told our class to save our money and go shoot video for awhile.

 

Fast forward to 2004-I was in a post house editing a video and saw some Pro8 film transferred to DigiBeta, and thought "wow, that looks great!" Nowadays it's video for money, film for love.

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

I had a knack for lighting at the age of 21, but I used it mainly as a directing tool and I never thought of a career at a cinematographer...however, I suppose that's when my interest was sparked and it's only grown since then.

 

So...

 

Age: 21

Handed: Right

[Jason Debus]

The age where I knew for sure that I wanted to get into motion pictures was 34. Before that there was always an interest in art & photography that goes back to when I was probably 9 or 10 when I shot an 8mm 'Star Wars' ripoff.

 

Right handed.

[J. Michael Whalen]

I was about 18 when I was told that all the credit I've been giving to Directors should have gone to Directors of Photography!

 

18

Right Handed

Taurus

[Matthew Buick]

I was about 18 when I was told that all the credit I've been giving to Directors should have gone to Directors of Photography

 

Could you elaborate, I love these stories.

 

Matthew Buick, the only southpaw in the village. :(

[Harrison Reynolds]

After I had to make a school project last year....i got into it and never looked back, 17.

[Kevin Masuda]

My dad paints but he was also into photography, same thing with my uncle so I was always around this stuff and naturally got interested.

 

 

Kev

 

Forgot the age, I had a small interest in it when I was around 6 but I really didn't start getting really interested until I was in high school. So you could say that I started making movies when I was 16, I'm 27 now.

 

Kev

[Justin Lipetz]

I was 12 when I first was interested. I picked up my parents camcorder and was into it ever since. I started off with making documentaries and now I am in film school.

 

Left handed.

[David Mullen ASC]

I made a silent (with music) 8mm short film -- a comedy version of the Trojan War, ala Monty Python-style -- with my friends in Latin class in high school, for a contest at the state Latin convention. I was 13. That was what got me started making movies.

 

I switched from directing to cinematography when I got to film school at the age of 26. We had to make a Super-8 short in my beginner class, which was easy for me since I had been making Super-8 films for 13 years by that point, so I really showed-off what I could do in Super-8. It was a b&w short with film noir lighting, expressionist camera angles, dolly moves, macro and time-lapse photography.

 

I not only finished my assignment faster than anyone else... what everyone else brought to class was mostly out-of-focus handheld shots of their friends playing around in a park.

 

So I got attacked in class for being too slick and commercial. And then everyone who attacked me asked me to shoot their projects after that. So I ended up being a cinematographer by the time I graduated, having shot over a dozen 16mm thesis projects for other people, plus one 35mm short.

[Deepak Bajracharya]

Namaste,

 

I developed interest in still photography at the age of 14, shot with manual SLR camera at 17, my dad sent me to study engineering in Russia, instead I got admitted to VGIK, where I studied 1st year course of cinematography and shot 4minutes footage for basic camera operating practical at 22, not able to pay the very high admission fee for the second year as demanded by the institute, returned back home and assisted for more than 35 features and did my first feature as a cinematographer at the age of 31.

 

Right handed.

 

With best regards,

[Greg Gross]

I cannot remember when I was not a photographer. I grew up with all the typical

Kodak cameras. Learned how to develop film in junior high. My first real serious

camera was a Nikon F and just a 50mm/f2 lens. Then over the years I grew to

use almost every Nikon camera that was made. I still use and favor the F4S over

more modern cameras. The film that moved me towards cinematography was the

film "Chinatown". I thought it made the most extraordinary use of color that I had

ever seen in a film. I must admit though that I thought filmmaking was out of reach

for me. I was fortunate to have a movie star in my family and so I got to visit some

movie sets. I'm not going to get in to that here. Anyway that and $1 will buy me a

cup of coffee. From the moment I saw "Chinatown" I was cinema crazy. I did shoot

some 8mm after that and had some problems with exposure and also camera shake

when hand held. I was busy with a phtography business though and had to make time

for filmmaking.

 

Greg Gross

[Dan Salzmann]

I was given a Rolleiflex TLR that my uncle Eddie won in a card game during the war when I was 7 years old.

Apparently I would walk around with it around my neck and look at the world on the ground glass-sort of like a movie in a way. I had to wait a couple of years before I could actually take pictures with it because at that age I could not really understand the concepts of exposure.

So interest in photography started around age 7.

Later made super8 films when I was around 15.

Right handed.

[David Mullen ASC]

Oh yeah, didn't mention that. I'm right-handed. Though my Dad, who has been an avid photographer my whole life, is left-handed.

[Matthew Buick]

So I got attacked in class for being too slick and commercial. And then everyone who attacked me asked me to shoot their projects after that. So I ended up being a cinematographer by the time I graduated, having shot over a dozen 16mm thesis projects for other people, plus one 35mm short.

 

You got attacked!? :blink: You mean with knives and stuff. Boy, I bet they're sorry now.

 

BWAH HA HAH.

[Daniel Smith]

Made my first film at 7, with a black and white video camera plugged into VCR, and after that I got a position as P.A on a short film at 15.

[Phil Rhodes]

I was either going to be an aerospace systems engineer, or a web designer. Neither attracted me, but they both seemed like reasonably profitable career paths. Then, due to a scheduling conflict, I ended up trying to do the necessary science and engineering components at A-level during an evening class, and given that my marks dropped from the mid-nineties to the low teens, I have no hesitation in blaming the nightschool teaching. So, I wasn't going to be an engineer.

 

I then went and spent three years proving to everyone exactly what a dismal software engineer I had the potential to be, and graduated directly into the dot-com crunch, which was of course gigantically helpful regarding that sort of work.

 

So actually I ended up doing little motion-graphics and video jobs for people on the basis that film and TV was what I'd always wanted to do, but had consciously avoided on the basis that it's a fringe artistic interest where I live, not a way to make a living. I spent most of my teenage years watching clever movies and thinking "Cool," but never considered it a realistic career option.

 

And I was right!

 

If I'd been able to pass the physics A-level, I'd probably be finishing my materials science MA and working for British Aerosapce by now, pulling down £50k a year and thinking I was terribly clever. Oh, for what might have been...

 

Phil

 

PS - Daniel, you aren't calling your position on "Leaving" a P.A., are you? That was a vastly more involved job than most digital imaging technicians do, and I suggest that you take the title to match.

[Bhavin Amin]

I picked up interest in photography when I was 15. I couldn't stop shooting on my sister's digital camera. So then I bought a Nikon SLR and began snapping left and right.

 

However, I switched from photography to an interest in motion pictures while being a sophomore in college.

[Marty Hamrick]

I had some influences that got me interested when I was about 4.My parents had a local TV show where they performed music.I was fascinated by the huge cameras,lights and the control room where I watched them switch between cameras and do the simple special effects of the day.I also had an unlce who had an 8mm Bolex and he had travelled all over the world taking movies.I used to look forward to his visits when he would bring his old Argus projector and screen.I remember one such incident when I was about 5,he took some footage of me running toward the camera and jumping over a shrub.I was captivated by the way he showed how I could run forward and in reverse.

 

At age 12 I picked up the book "Creative Filmaking" by Kirk Smallman and got involved in my school's AV club where we operated 8mm,16mm and 35mm filmstrip projectors (anyone ever have a joker in your class who would try to throw you out of sync by making a "beep" sound to make you advance a frame before it was time?) and later made films for sports,science and history classes.

 

Never grew out of it.

 

I'm right handed.

Edited January 16, 2007 by Marty Hamrick

[Satsuki Murashige]

Hi Matthew,

 

I got interested in making films because of my dad, who is a big film fan. He's Japanese, so I grew up watching Kurosawa films on pirated VHS tapes. He also took me to see my first movie, "Return of the Jedi" when I was three; apparently, I freaked out at the Rancor scene, then asked to go back and see it again the next week. I think this planted the seed in my mind that films were something special.

 

In high school, I had artsy friends who were into Monty Python and Kevin Smith, mainly because their work seemed to suggest that anyone who was clever enough and could find a camera could make a film. So we tried to write horrible rip-off scripts and I storyboarded them. One of my friends had a Hi-8 camera which he had been making stop-motion films with, so we decided to make a short film for U.S. History class about the moon landing. We built a moonscape out of clay, shot a "flying-though-space" sequence with a toy spaceship on a stick in front of a screensaver, then a landing sequence, followed by a claymation sequence of "moon men" attacking the astronauts. I then edited in bits of "Apollo 13" and a moon landing documentary from the public library on two VHS tape recorders (this was right before everyone had desktop editing). It was a big hit, and I was hooked. All of my friends eventually turned to other artistic endeavors and I stuck with filmmaking.

 

When I got to community college, I discovered Super 8. I then borrowed my Dad's old Pentax SLR (an SL)and took up still photography. I learned about exposure and lenses, and decided to be a cinematographer. I took a bunch of classes and shot short films for a few fellow students. About a year and a half ago, I got on an indie 16mm feature shot by Barry Stone, CSC as a PA, and after the first week, got bumped up to 2nd AC. I learned a lot about working on a set (also made tons of embarrassing mistakes) and found that the 1st AC had a great job, always being able to touch the camera! So I decided I wanted to be a professional AC, and eventually work my way up to DP. So that's where I am now (I'm not a professional AC yet, but as soon as I finally graduate from college this semester, I'm going to plunge myself full-time into AC and DP work).

 

Oh, and I'm also left-handed.

[Jason Reimer]

Hello Matthew,

 

Right-handed. Age would either be 7 or 32, depending on how you look at it.

 

I've been drawing and painting since at least the age of four, so the visual arts background has pretty much always been there. When I was a kid, my parents were missionaries in the Central African Republic, and with no TV, entertainment consisted of dusting off an old 16mm projector and watching some ancient science documentaries and some cultural ones as well (there was one about Thailand that still stands out). One of the other missionaries also had an old 8mm projector and some old b&w shorts, including a bunch of Charlie Chaplin films. Since the 8mm stuff was considered old and quaint, they had no problem with us kids playing around with it; now when I look back on it, it's crazy to think that some 7-year old kid was running those films through that projector, splicing them when they would break (which was pretty often). My parents had an 8mm camera, but didn't have the money to let me actually make the movies I wanted to make. Also, before and after our time in Africa, my parents were huge classic movie buffs, so I watched an awful lot of great older movies.

 

In my late 20's I began to get curious about shooting some 8mm stuff just for fun, since now I could afford it. I've always wanted to make a short surf film, along the lines of Thicker Than Water, or the more recent Singlefin:Yellow. Those kinds of films seemed more accessible, since I spend a lot of time in the water anyway, and let's be honest, the cinematography in them tends to be on the rough side. I shot some things on a Christmas-time trip to Europe, all sorts of cathedrals, train rides through snow-covered countryside, etc, and when I finally got to see the footage, I was hooked. In college I also took some international and classic cinema classes (under Greg Kahn at San Diego State University; great classes!)

 

When I was 30, I spent a month in Saudi Arabia scuba diving and following the Hejaz Railway through the desert (a bit of a Lawrence pilgrimage), and my brother, who had wanted to come with but couldn't, let me borrow his digital camcorder so he could travel vicariously through the video footage. When I came home I got a cheap video editing program, and started teaching myself how to edit, which in turn got me thinking about cinematography, particularly when I was trying to salvage the bad shots (and there were many).

 

Fast forward to a year ago. I approached the pastor at my church about the idea of us producing some documentaries related to some of the missions trips we were planning. The trips are great for the people involved, but I thought that people living their comfortable lives here in the US could probably benefit from learning about AIDS orphans in Africa, or kids sold into sex slavery whether it be in India or Africa or wherever. He jumped at the idea, and I figured if I was lucky, I'd maybe get to be camera operator, after a year or two of rounding up people with actual experience in film and documentary production. Instead, he handed the whole thing to me and said run with it. The last twelve months have been like drinking from a firehose, reading as many film production-related books as possible, scouring this forum, and studying films (The New World blew my mind!). We've now got a DVX 100B and some other goodies to go along with it, and I'm just finishing up a 10 episode series of shorts for the church, as well as a promo video and short documentary for a non-profit that assists families with special-needs children. This year we're hoping to finally do a mercy-ministry related documentary, a narrative short, and possibly some other projects. But while I'm basically doing all of it right now, with the exception of some volunteer boom operating by my girlfriend, the cinematography side of production is what I enjoy the most. I'm not sure where this will end up, but regardless of whether or not it ever earns me a living, I've definitely found my calling in life.

 

PS- Sorry, this post went a bit long, but I get fired up about film. Thanks to all of you guys here for not only the answers you give, but the great questions you're all asking. I browse the forums here at least 3 times a day, and it helps bridge the gap between my inexperience and the technical stuff I read in the books. Keep it up!

[Christophe Collette]

Hi, I got into cinematography about 8 months ago, so 28 years old it was but I have been into photography since I was 17. Right after high school, I went to Indonesia volunteering a year for an NGO in northern Sumatra, my dad gave me his still camera, a Nikon FM2 which I still use nowaday, so that I took back memories from the trip, he said shoot slides, it'll look better... Well not much came out from that trip! So I took a photography class when I got back to make sure that next time I would expose right and bring back something...

 

Three years after, after living and working and taking some slightly better photos in South East Asia for the most of it, I came back to Canada and registered in a photo school. I dropped out soon after to go travelling again but from then I started considering myself a photographer althought I made a living from something else, I started freelancing for travel magazines and stuff... A few more years after, I went back to photo school in southern France but I could not bear with Deleuze and all that so I dropped out again and got a job as a photographer onboard a tall ship sailing around the world. 5 months on the way, I quit. I had gotten sick of travelling, really really sick! I came back to Montreal, got my first appartment, started working as an editorial photographer. That was two years ago.

 

As for Dping, a friend of mine, director, offered me a job as a DP althought I had never touched a movie cam in my life... I managed alright and subsequently got offers from other directors... And so it went, I am now more or less a full time DP and I love it, photography even took the side.

 

I am left handed. Scorpio.

 

 

Cheers!!

 

 

Christophe

[Marc Shap]

I started getting into photography at a young age, got my first camcorder at 13. I would make a lot of silly stories/ expierements with my camera. I then did AV class for two years in high school, and did the news/projects/segments for the school. I shot my first music video my junior year.

I wound up going to Music school to study film scoring and guitar. Turns out the whole time in music schol, I was making films, so i transfered to film school, got a reputation as a DP and shot a lot of projects there. I was fortuante to shoot a lot of film while there, both 16 and 35

 

I am right handed.

 

marc