One cinematographer has enjoyed a close-knit working relationship with director Jason Reitman spanning features and commercials.
Another was just honored with the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award, is a five-time Oscar nominee and no stranger to the director’s chair for either long-form fare or commercials.
A third DP broke into the industry via music videos, has diversified successfully into spots, made forays into features and even dipped his toe in directing, though cinematography remains his prime focus.
Here’s a close-up look at cinematographers Eric Steelberg, Caleb Deschanel, ASC, and Shawn Kim.
Eric Steelberg Cinematographer Eric Steelberg’s career in commercials started with two directors: Jason Reitman and Carl Erik Rinsch.
For the former, Steelberg shot some early short films, then commercials when Reitman first hooked up with production house Tate & Partners (now Tate USA, which continues to handle the director for spots), followed eventually by two lauded Reitman feature films, first Juno and then this year’s multiple Oscar nominee Up in the Air.
Meanwhile, Steelberg and Rinsch were long-time friends dating all the way back to when they were kids in the seventh grade.
Steelberg initially lensed some spec spots for Rinsch who was looking to establish himself in the ad arena. The specs did just that, piquing the interest of RSA Films which signed the director to its roster. Steelberg lensed a couple of real-world commercials for Rinsch shortly after he joined RSA. The director and DP then reunited years later on a recently wrapped live-action portion of a combo spot (live and CG) for Auto Trader.
While Reitman and Rinsch helped to get his spot career rolling, Steelberg was over the years paying his dues on the low budget feature front before making his first major splash with Quinceañera directed by Richard Glazer and Wash Westmoreland. A coming-of-age story centered on a teenaged Hispanic girl, the film scored the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. That same year Reitman’s Thank You For Smoking premiered at Sundance. Reitman saw Quinceañera, which eventually led to his spot cinematographer colleague landing Juno.
A return engagement with Reitman on Up in the Air wasn’t the only feature highlight for Steelberg in terms of 2009 releases. Steelberg also shot (500) Days of Summer, the acclaimed romantic comedy marking the feature filmmaking debut of Marc Webb, a noted music video and commercial director at production house DNA. (Webb is profiled in this issue’s Directors Series.)
At first Steelberg was reluctant to take on a romantic comedy with a music video helmer. But upon talking to Webb on the phone, he found a sensitive, intelligent director who wanted to be true to story and character–and wasn’t looking to make a music video-like visual splash. The two hit it off, to the point where Steelberg garnered the assignment during a follow-up phone call a week and a half later, without having ever met Webb in person up to that point.
At press time, Steelberg–who is repped by ICM–was about to embark on another Webb-directed project, a one-hour series pilot titled Midland for FOX.
The TV show adds to a diverse mix of disciplines, including commercials and features, for Steelberg who finds that one informs the other.
“Commercials have taught me how to achieve a higher quality at a fast pace,” he observed. “That has helped to shape my decision-making process in terms of how I tackle a task with just a short amount of time while still being able to attain as high a quality as possible for the story whether it’s a commercial or a feature film.”
Conversely features have engendered, he continued, “a perspective of being able to add an element of storytelling to commercials that might not have been there otherwise. I’ll make a suggestion to the director that brings a narrative element that wasn’t scripted. The feature world has given me the mindset of never forgetting about story so in commercials I don’t lose sight of that as well, even if it’s a small element that makes the work just a little bit more relatable to an audience.”
Steelberg has been able to relate to photography since he was a kid. He was active in still photography in high school back when many of his friends were involved in short films.
“I was the only person they knew who had a light meter so before you knew it I was out there shooting Super 8 and 16mm for my friends who wanted to be directors or producers,” Steelberg recalled.
“I fell in love with cinematography the first time I turned on the projector and saw my first Super 8 film. It became an addiction. I loved shooting and kept coming back to it. I was always a movie fan but became even more obsessed with cinema, thinking about ways to best tell stories, which led to my shooting more short films, and then spec commercials.”
He came close to applying to film school but didn’t, reasoning, “I’m already doing shorts. That’s what I’ll be doing once I graduate from film school. Why delay shooting in the real world? If it doesn’t work out, I can always go back to film school or figure something out.”
While there were some lean times, Steelberg stayed at it.
“I think it’s partly because many people give up and through that attrition, opportunities ultimately end up emerging for those who persist and keep on trying no matter what.”
Those career opportunities crystallized for Steelberg into varied commercials–including a Reitman-directed national Heineken spot entitled “Mardi Gras”–and then eventually theatrical feature films.
Steelberg’s big-ticket feature endeavors have all been shot on 35 mm film. However, he lensed Quinceañera with the Sony F900 digital camera.
And over the past year and a half or so, most of his commercials have entailed digital cinematography via the Sony F23 and F35 as well as the RED ONE camera.
“Advertising agencies have become more knowledgeable about how to handle digital postproduction, so shooting digitally has become a no brainer for many of them. It can save them money. The digital technology is very good,” assessed Steelberg. “I can work with any camera out there. It all comes down to learning the format and shooting the project in the best way possible. I treat digital like it’s another film stock. You learn the new stock and apply it accordingly. I don’t try to make it look like film. I try to go for a good digital image. There’s a nice immediacy to having the image right there and getting feedback. I kind of enjoy that.
“But that’s not to say I don’t relish the beauty and emotional reaction to film,” he continued. “I still think as a whole, people will enjoy the experience of expertly shot film as compared to watching expertly shot digital. There’s an emotional quality to film that hasn’t been realized yet digitally. But that breakthrough is just around the corner, maybe in the next year and a half to two years for digital. As a cinematographer, I love having many tools and options so I try to embrace them all.”
Caleb Deschanel, ASC
The legend of cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, ASC, grew even greater when he received the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Lifetime Achievement Award last month in Los Angeles.
In his acceptance speech, Deschanel talked of his unabashed love for the film medium, “I don’t care about comparison tests,” he related. “Digital is wonderful but it lacks mystery and surprise.”
Deschanel observed that while film doesn’t provide “instant” gratification like digital, there’s something to be said for waiting for dailies and for attaining movie magic over time. He shared that such magic comes when you discover in dailies that what you have managed to capture on film turns out to be “better and filled with a life you never imagined when the camera was rolling.”
In a separate chat with SHOOT, Deschanel related, “I enjoy the digital tools. I have a bunch of digital cameras which I shoot stills with. I use them as reference. But ultimately I still prefer film. It’s great from an archival point of view but there’s so much more. The fact is that I simply love the process of shooting film, It’s what I’ve long embraced. I love the artistry of film.”
Deschanel’s artistry spans short and long form. He earned Best Cinematography Academy Award nominations for The Right Stuff in 1984, The Natural in ’85, Fly Away Home in ’97, The Patriot in ’01, and The Passion of the Christ in ’05.
Deschanel also won an ASC Award for his cinematography on The Patriot, and received two other ASC Award nominations for The Passion of the Christ, and for Fly Away Home.
His body of work also includes such memorable films as The Black Stallion, Being There, The Spiderwick Chronicles, My Sister’s Keeper, National Treasure, Ask the Dust, and the Rolling Stones concert film Let’s Spend The Night Together.
Deschanel has additionally earned an array of credits as a director of theatrical motion pictures, television programs and commercials.
On the latter front, Deschanel co-founded spot production house Dark Light Pictures in ’93 with executive producer Vincent Arcaro. Deschanel continues as a director/cameraman on the commercialmaking roster of the Hollywood-based Dark Light Pictures. He remains repped as a cinematographer by The Gersh Agency.
Deschanel’s alluded to directorial experiences in other disciplines include, for example, Trains, a short film he wrote, directed and shot that went on to win the Silver Bear at the ’76 Berlin Film Festival.
Deschanel later made his feature directing debut wih The Escape Artist (’82), shot by Stephen Burum, ASC.
As for what the ASC’s Lifetime honor means to him, Deschanel related, “It’s wonderful to be recognized by the people who you know understand what you do. What’s also great about the honor is that it has been won by my mentors–Conrad Hall, Haskell Wexler, Gordon Willis. To follow in their footsteps and get the same award is quite special.”
At the same time, Deschanel observed that the Lifetime Achievement Award “is a bit embarrassing. I feel like I still have to let people know that I’m not retired–that I’m still shooting.”
At press time, Deschanel was indeed still working, shooting a feature in Toronto titled Dream House, being directed by Jim Sheridan and with a cast headlined by Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz.
“Every project you do informs the next one,” related Deschanel. “I like commercials, for instance, because they represent a change from the feature mindset. But no matter whether it’s a feature or commercial, the experiences are all different–if you direct, if you work with different directors. What I love is the adventure of working new ways and with new people all the time. I feel blessed in that I’ve never done the same job twice.”
Shawn Kim Music videos proved to be the springboard propelling cinematographer Shawn Kim into a well rounded career in commercials.
Out of the gate in the mid to late 1990s, he paid his dues on fairly nondescript hip-hop music clips, then got on the map with the video “Maps” for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and singer Karen O, directed by Patrick Daughters.
Kim and Daughters got to know one another during their formal filmmaking education in New York, dating back to when Daughters was studying at NYU and Kim at the nearby School of Visual Arts. The two initially worked together on several short films before eventually broadening out into music videos and commercials.
“Maps” helped build momentum for Kim who then took on music videos for other notable directors, including the likes of Michel Gondry and Roman Coppola.
And when these and other directors with whom Kim collaborated started to diversify meaningfully into commercials, so too did the DP along with them.
“It was a great time to be in videos because so many talented directors started branching out into spots,” related Kim, whose dual discipline lensing includes such examples as a Beck music video and an American Airlines commercial campaign, both directed by Gondry.
To this day, commercials continue to account for the lion’s share of Kim’s workload, with recent projects including a Kayak.com campaign and an Ebay spot, both directed by Randy Krallman of Smuggler for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco; Motorola helmed by the Snorri Brothers of The Cartel for Anomaly, New York; the New York Lottery directed by Mike Maguire of The Directors Bureau for DDB New York; U.S. Census spots helmed by Roman Coppola, also of The Directors Bureau; a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) commercial directed by Grady Hall of Motion Theory for Young & Rubicam, Irvine, Calif.; and Daughters-helmed work, produced by The Directors Bureau, for such clients as LG via Y&R, and ESPN.
Yet at the same time, Kim hasn’t turned his back on his music video lineage. He continues to be active in videos, albeit on a select basis.
Kim and director Daughters reteamed on a Depeche Mode clip, “Wrong,” which recently won a best cinematography honor at Camerimage in Poland.
A year earlier, Kim’s cinematography on the Death Cabs For Cutie video “I Will Possess Your Heart” won Camerimage’s Audience Award. Kim and Aaron Stewart Aha co-directed the clip.
Kim has gotten his feet wet directorially, represented by production house Paydirt in Beverly Hills. But he affirms that his priority is cinematography spanning commercials, videos and features–he is repped as a DP across all disciplines by the Sheldon Prosnit Agency.
On the theatrical feature front, his most prominent credit thus far would be Smiley Face, directed by Gregg Araki, the filmmaker behind the lauded Mysterious Skin.
Over the past year, the bulk of Kim’s spot assignments find him shooting 35mm film.
Prior to that, a good share of his commercials entailed digital cinematography, deploying such cameras as RED, Genesis and the Arriflex D-21. His experience in digital experimentation goes back to ’97 when he shot a short film with what was billed as the first HD camera.
Some of Kim’s alluded to directorial pursuits allow him to stretch his cinematography muscles.
For example, he helmed and shot an Audi spec commercial in order to test the RED camera’s Epic chip, putting it through its paces.
“I direct at times to create a proving ground to experiment and try out new ideas in cinematography,” said Kim. “It’s the kind of work you can’t push on other directors’ jobs, and it allows me to grow as a cinematographer. I simply love shooting, interpreting other’s visions and infusing your own style somehow into the work while helping to realize that overriding story and vision.”
