Contemporary Cinematographers on Their Art

Rating:
Summary: The mix is good.
Review: This book attempts to redress the fact that cinematographers tend to be underrated, even invisible, in the making of films. Even though they are "below-the-line" contractors (they don't participate in the profits of the project), the DP is responsible for the entire look of the show. Rarely are they acknowledged, let alone celebrated alongside Directors or Actors.

Author Pauline Rogers has been a staff writer for International Cinematographer, the monthly magazine of the IATSE local 600 Guild, for over 10 years and as such has enjoyed access to many sets and conversations with many cinematographers. This then is a distillation of her work, containing thirteen in-depth interviews with individual DP's.

Feature Film DP's Dean Cundey (Apollo 13), Donald Burgess (Forest Gump), Roger Deakins (Fargo), Stephen Goldblatt (Batman and Robin), Emmanuel Lubezki (The Birdcage) and Thomas Ackerman (Jumanji), join TV DP's John Bartley (X-Files), Jo Mayer (Good Morning America), Donald A. Morgan (Home Improvement) and Donald M. Morgan (Geronimo), and SFX DP Dennis Muren (Star Wars), Aerial DP David Nowell (Jurassic Park) and Music Video DP Salvatore Totino.

The mix is good. I've read a lot about feature film guys, perhaps most notably in the 1984 book "Masters of Light", but little of contemporary shooters and even less from those working in TV or second-unit and special effects. All have interesting stories of how they got their career breaks and moved up through the ranks, telling interesting anecdotes on how the industry has changed as they go. Many offer technical tips, along with "how we did it" notes from their projects.

If you like reading technical "behind-the-scenes" interviews such as those found in the cinematography magazines, if you like photography and film-making in general, you'll like this book. If there is one coda (and why I give it 4 out of 5 stars), it is that the book seems to have been sloppily edited. This is perhaps understandable given that these are interviews assembled from a number of sessions, probably casual conversations recorded on tape, and which haven't made the translation to print quite as well as they might have. Still, this is a minor point ... both this and the follow-up second book are well worth the cheap price.