Matthew Kakaris

David and Stuart, thanks for your insight. On such a tight, network-controlled production, would the DP have any involvement in color grading, or is that a privilege reserved for A-list cinematographers? Or perhaps on productions with less control from "above" so to speak? How do you feel about these productions relative to your career? Positively? Negatively? Were they training grounds as alluded to by David? Jobs to put food on the table? Would you say that belonging to a union should be a goal of any cinematographer?

Does anyone here ever work on these films? Is it a separate world from studio or indie pictures? I assume that there's not a huge amount of overlap because there seems to be a distinctive cinematic quality specific to the flicks I see. There are obviously exceptions, quite a few I'm sure, but the trend seems to be that this style of film is of lower image quality. (Lighting, framing. Etc) Is this mostly due to budget/time constraints? What would you say causes this? Also if anyone has a more extensive knowledge of this style of film, I think it'd be a worthwhile discussion to point out the characteristics common to this style of film/how it differs from the other styles. Thanks in advance for your replies. Hopefully I can contribute to the conversation as well!

Wow, Thanks. One can really see the difference between the two methods.

Thanks Everyone! This was really helpful!

What exactly is a net? Pardon my ignorance here.

What I'm talking about can really be seen during after the diner scene, watch the reflections of lights on chrome parts of cars and such. This looks sort of makes everything shiny. Is it caused by a filter? a film stock? enLIGHTen me please...