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originally appeared in the CamerImage QUESTION: Do you have a philosophy about your role as a cinematographer? ROIZMAN: It is always difficult for cinematographers to explain what they do. Art has so many forms of expression. You can tell any story in so many different ways. Cinematographers happen to do it with images and our interpretation of how the story looks in our minds, and how we want the audience to see it. I love that process. It feels as natural to me as a composer writing music or an author using words to tell a story. I try to subliminally transport the audience into the story as though they are voyeurs observing what is happening without being aware of the camera, lights, director, or the fact that the actors might have done take after take after take that the editor assembled into one scene. What I want is for the audience to forget they are watching a movie and to feel the moment. That's the main ingredient of my philosophy of filmmaking. QUESTION: Can you trace the origins of those feelings? ROIZMAN: I remember when I was a youngster, I would go to movies and I liked the ones where I was never aware there was a camera or people who made the film. When I was aware of over the top acting, forced camera angles or things like that, it always bothered me. So, I guess right from the beginning my tastes were defined by what felt right to me. But, it isn’t quite that simple. Cinematography isn’t just an art form. It’s also a craft where you learn from experience. When I was on Gerald Hirschfeld’s crew shooting commercials, I learned from observing what he did and how he worked. As I moved up the ladder, I gained more and more experience. You have to do the job, put in the long hours and deal with the pressures in order to learn how to master the technical part of the craft. QUESTION: You didn’t start out wanting to become a filmmaker? ROIZMAN: It never entered my mind on a conscious level. In high school, I was an athlete, a baseball player. That was my dream. I could answer any question about any baseball player—batting averages, teams and positions, but I couldn’t tell you the names of the most popular actors, directors, or cinematographers. I had no interest in that at all. I remember going to see movies on Saturdays and seeing The Black Swan, Dracula and Frankenstein films, and My Friend Flicka. They were mainly fairy tales. I also couldn't wait to see the serials. I really loved movies, but I never envisioned myself working in the film business, even though my father was in it. QUESTION: Are there similarities to sports and cinematography? ROIZMAN: I've always been a competitor. That started with sports. I always wanted to win. Whether it was playing baseball or shooting a film, I went after it with a passion and I wanted to win. You don’t really win anything when you shoot a film but it is just the challenge to do your best, which is similar to trying to win at sports. I remember when we were in the middle of shooting The French Connection and one day the production manager was handing out paychecks. He was kidding around, and as he handed me the envelope, he said, ‘and the winner is…’ as though it held the name of the winner of an Academy Award. He told me, ‘You know, you'll be going up for one (an Oscar) for this film.’ I remember thinking how ridiculous that seemed. The thought had never occurred to me, even though I was on a quest to help make the best possible film and to tell the best possible story. Frankly, I was always surprised when I got an Oscar nomination because the competition was so fierce and there are so many talented cinematographers. I always felt fortunate when I was nominated, and make no mistake, I always wanted to win. That’s my competitive nature. QUESTION: Baseball and filmmaking are both team games. ROIZMAN: I never thought of it exactly that way but it certainly is the case. I’ve always been conscious of the fact that along with many other people, I’m there to help tell a story. Painting and still photography are solitary arts. In a movie, there are many people painting on the same canvas. The writer gives you a story, the production designer gives you a set, the director has the final word, and you have to work within those confines. You also work with the art director, set decorator, costume designer, makeup artist, and so many other people. From my point of view I want each shot to be perfect so it fits the film like a piece of a (jigsaw) puzzle. QUESTION: How does the collaborative process between you and the director work? ROIZMAN: It’s different on each film with every director. When I was working with Ulu Grosbard on True Confessions, we were getting ready to shoot a scene one day, and I asked him if he wanted to use a wide, normal or long lens. He asked what I thought. I told him, and he said ‘do it.’ The whole picture went that way. He didn't accept all of my ideas, but he appreciated the fact that I was offering them. I’ve never been reluctant to say what I think. Some directors welcome ideas and others don’t. The fact is that the directors are in charge. It is their film. Everyone else should be trying to implement what he or she wants. Sometimes that is difficult because we all see things a little differently from one another, especially when it comes to art. There is nothing as gratifying to me as a close working relationship with a director. I consider myself fortunate to have worked with so many talented ones. Many directors that I have worked with have become lifelong friends. That is a good feeling. QUESTION: How would you cope with an auteur director who isn’t interested in your ideas? ROIZMAN: I wouldn’t let it bother me, but I don’t personally subscribe to the auteur theory unless it’s a solitary art like painting or still photography. I think it is very difficult for anyone to make a good movie alone. I don't understand how anyone can direct and shoot their own film without making artistic compromises. I suppose there are exceptions, but chances are that even if you are a talented director, there is a cinematographer who can help you tell a better story. A director has got to watch the actors and spend time with them. A cinematographer has got to concentrate on lighting and framing the images. There is always the potential for an exchange of ideas that can enhance both the direction and the cinematography, which can only improve the final product. QUESTION: How do you feel about people who put down the role of the cinematographer
as something that is purely technical and ‘below the line?’ ROIZMAN: Most important, I would have to like the story. I've turned down a lot of scripts, because I didn’t want to waste three months of my life making a film I didn’t believe in. Earlier in my career, I was actually less selective, but luckily most the material that I was offered was very good. I always ask myself, does this script tell a story that I would pay to see in a movie theatre? Over the years, I have also developed relationships with certain directors, and that has often been a factor in choosing a script. QUESTION: What made The Exorcist such a powerful film? ROIZMAN: It was based on an amazing book by William Peter Blatty. Before the picture was in preproduction, Billy Friedkin gave me a tape of an actual exorcism of an eight year old boy in Italy. It was in Italian, so I couldn't understand the words, but the sounds that came out of this little boy’s mouth were terrifying. All of a sudden, he had this amazingly deep voice that couldn’t possibly come from such a young boy. Blatty also arranged for me to read a copy of the archives of an actual exorcism involving a 10 or 11 year old boy that his book was based on. I was totally engaged in the story and believed it wholeheartedly. Friedkin and I agreed that The Exorcist shouldn't look like a horror film. We wanted to make the audience believe that the character is real and she is possessed by a demon. That’s what makes it so scary. We figured that if we made the visuals very realistic then we had a chance to subconsciously bring the audience into the story. It would be easier to impact their religious beliefs that way. QUESTION: What about The Taking of Pelham One Two Three? How was the decision made to shoot that film in anamorphic format? It was counter-culture at the time. ROIZMAN: I research every film as thoroughly as possible. On Pelham, my research included spending time in a subway station and riding trains. I'd stand on the subway platform for long periods of time and watch trains coming in and going out of the station. I’d ride trains looking up and down the aisles to get a feeling for the light, because we wanted the film to be as realistic and believable as possible. One day I realized that a subway car has roughly the same shape as an anamorphic frame. They had been planning to shoot this picture in 1.85:1. I went to the director, Joe Sargent, and the producer, Edgar Sherick, and I told them why I thought it should be shot in anamorphic, and they said, no way. I think they thought I was crazy, but they agreed to let me shoot some tests and make comparisons. I shot tests on the platform when the trains were coming in and out, people were walking around, and getting on and off. When we screened the tests everyone was amazed at what a difference anamorphic made and how much better it looked. It was my first anamorphic movie, so I trusted my instincts, which told me what felt right. It was very unusual for that type of story to be produced in anamorphic format in those days (1974). The following year, I was excited when Sydney Pollack said that he wanted to shoot Three Days of the Condor in anamorphic format. QUESTION: What were the factors that influenced that decision? ROIZMAN: It was my first film with Sydney Pollack. We talked and talked about how we were going to make this film. Sydney knows a lot about photography. We both liked the idea of using long anamorphic lenses and shot some tests. He particularly loved a 360 mm anamorphic lens. I had never used it before, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. That became our basic plan. Wherever possible we would shoot with longer rather than wider lenses. The first day, we were preparing to shoot the very first shot in the movie in a room in the building where the bad guys come in and kill everybody. It was a practical location. Sydney told me he wanted to use a 30 mm lens. In anamorphic that’s the equivalent of a very wide, 15 mm spherical lens. I asked, ‘What happened to our long lens concept?’ He said, Stephen Grimes, the production designer, gave us such a beautiful set, it would be a shame not to see it all. That’s the way we did the movie. Each shot was different. There were times when he loved using long lenses, and other times, he wanted to be standing next to the camera and very close to the actors, so we were using wider lenses. QUESTION: Can you describe Three Days of the Condor in a word? ROIZMAN: Tension QUESTION: How did you make the audience feel the tension? Is it all in the performances, the way the performances were photographed, or both? ROIZMAN: It began with the script, the director’s vision, the actors’ performances, and finally how we photographed it. It was a combination of choices of camera angles, light, and long lenses that really enhanced the feeling of tension. They have a tendency to make you subconsciously feel like you're viewing something through a telescope. It compresses things and the focus is on one plane, rather than on everything. The eye goes to whatever you want to lead it to. Years later, when I did Tootsie with Sydney, he wanted to shoot it in anamorphic, but I thought it was a strange choice for a comedy. We had shot The Electric Horseman in anamorphic and Absence of Malice in 1:85, which I felt could have worked either way. My technical instincts at the time told me that anamorphic would be too difficult to shoot Tootsie because of the nature of the script. It would make composition a lot more complex with a lot of little adjustments required. But, Sydney was right. I credit him for proving to me that no matter what the genre, you can get so much more information on the screen, even in close-ups. The trick is to balance the frame with different elements to achieve the most interesting compositions. The lesson is that you have to look at every film with a fresh eye and decide the best way to tell that story. Although some people might argue that certain films should be shot in spherical format, I eventually became convinced that although it may sometimes be more difficult, anamorphic is the best way to shoot everything. QUESTION: How much do you pre-visualize and plan before you shoot? ROIZMAN: You need a plan, but I don’t really know what the final images will look like until I see the elements before me, before I know exactly what I am shooting. Some directors like Sidney Lumet like to pre-plan every element of a movie. It comes to other directors when they are right there on the set after they've run through rehearsals with the actors. It's the same with cinematographers. Some cinematographers have a preconceived idea of every shot. Others wait until they walk on the set and see the actors in the environment. I’m in that second group. Sometimes it can be really simple. If the set is properly designed, I’ve always felt that I should be able to use one big light source to wash it with light from an interesting direction. It’s the same with lighting actors. If they are doing a great job, you should be able to light them so they seem totally believable. If the actors aren’t performing, you can’t help them with brilliant, creative lighting. QUESTION: A scene in Network has always stuck in my mind. There is a meeting around a long conference table and there are these little green lamps at each seat. ROIZMAN: We shot that scene in what I recall was the New York public library. It was a challenging scene to pull off because they would only allow me to hang one light. Everything else had to be hidden. It starts out as a day scene but Ned Beatty walks into the room and draws the drapes. He then stands at one end of the table and starts preaching to Peter Finch’s character at the other end. Beatty’s character is pontificating and berating Finch. He gets up and walks down the length of the table and stands over him. It is a long dolly shot. I loved the performances and the way Sydney staged that scene, and I was very happy with the lighting in that dark room with the individual green lamps. It was the right mood for an important scene that set up the rest of the film. In that last shot of Ned Beatty, I have a really strong backlight on his hair so it seems to be glowing. It made him seem God-like. There is little light on his face. You can barely see his features. We wanted it to look ethereal without anyone realizing that we lit him. QUESTION: What about Straight Time? Was there anything unusual about it? ROIZMAN: When I first signed onto shoot Straight Time, Dustin Hoffman was going to direct it. I spent about three months in preproduction with him. He decided to try shooting for a day as sort of a preproduction test for himself—to see if he was going to be comfortable with directing. He realized at the end of the day, that directing and acting in the same film was not for him. That is when he decided to bring in Ulu Grosbard to direct. Ulu was wonderful. He is a total gentleman and a dedicated professional. The film presented many challenges and also many opportunities to do some interesting work. In particular, we shot a jewelry heist and a bank robbery that were frighteningly real. Because of the nature of the material, the film wasn’t a big success, but we were able to do some very good work. I later went on to shoot True Confessions with Ulu. He was a pleasure to work with, mostly because of the freedom and support he gave me to do my job. QUESTION: You said True Confessions was one of your favorite films. Why? ROIZMAN: First of all, it was a period piece, 1947 I think, and that’s always fun. Ulu Grosbard asked that I didn’t do anything unusual, like sepia filters or diffusion, to get a period look. He didn’t want it lit like a forties film might have looked. Instead, he preferred that I shoot it like a modern film and just let the wardrobe, the sets, and the props take care of the period. The film featured two of the greatest actors in film today, and maybe of all time, Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall. They are two wonderful guys to work with, and, of course Charles Durning. I just love him. It wasn't the greatest story or a big commercial success, but I liked the way it came out. It was a wonderful experience. It was a murder mystery, and we reveal the killer early in the film. Most people don’t get it. It just slips by them. The film is really a character study about two brothers who went in exactly the opposite directions. One was a cop and the other a priest. The amazing Stephen Grimes was the production designer. Every set, all the costumes, everything about this film was exactly right, and everyone was terrific. QUESTION: Tell me about working on The Stepford Wives and your relationship with Bryan Forbes ROIZMAN: I love Bryan Forbes. He is both a serious filmmaker and at the same time has a great sense of humor. We had a delightful time together on Stepford. It was definitely an interesting project and very challenging for me. I wanted it to look very real but at the same time I had to make the women look good. Therefore I had to fudge a little when it came to source lighting and other techniques that help make something look real. There was one scene in particular where we have several of the wives in one room and we pan around from one to another in a medium close up. To get the lighting right for each actress took some careful work on my part. I often was challenged with making something eerie and at the same time believable. Brian always had a positive attitude about everything and the cast couldn’t have been any nicer to work with. QUESTION: What sticks in your mind about Absence of Malice? ROIZMAN: That was another film with thoroughly professional actors, Paul Newman and Sally Field, who were terrific to work with, and Sydney Pollack was great, too. It was one of my favorite projects. There was something about the chemistry that worked. QUESTION: What was your first impression of Tootsie when you read the script? ROIZMAN: I thought it was going to be a good picture if the audience believed Dustin Hoffman looked enough like a woman to fool the other characters. That was risky. There was a lot of testing with different makeups. It was a very difficult picture to work on and there was a lot of tension on the set. Almost every morning, Dustin showed up with rewrites of the script pages that we were going to shoot that day. He and Sydney would sometimes spend hours talking about the changes Dustin wanted. It was pretty tough on Sydney but the picture was much more successful than anyone had anticipated. I think that was because Dustin is a brilliant actor who was obsessed with making the part believable. To his credit, Sydney held his own very well. I think Dustin’s makeup and the way we lit him contributed to his believability. I was working with a new high-speed film that was much grainer and not as saturated in colors. The reason was that I wanted to use less light because the heat would melt his makeup, and we would have had to stop to touch it up too often. Besides that, there was the discomfort that Dustin would have experienced. QUESTION: Do most films have challenges like that, which are only apparent to the cinematographer? ROIZMAN: Absolutely. In The Exorcist I had to work with very small lights in a cold room. We didn't have KinoFlos or other lights like that in those days. If I had worked with bigger units it would heated up the room too fast, so I used a lot of small lamps that kept the room cooler for longer periods. Those things don't show up in anybody's review. QUESTION: One of the claims of the so-called digital auteurs is that you don’t have to light with video cameras, so it is easier on the actors and you save time? ROIZMAN: That is an utterly ridiculous theory. No matter what the medium, whether it is film or digital, someone must create the proper mood with lighting, composition, and movement. That is what cinematography is about. Cinema is an art form. Can you imagine giving a painter some new technologically improved paints and brushes and claim that now he could paint like Rembrandt? QUESTION: You shot 20 films and earned four Oscar nominations in just around 10 years, and then you took a long hiatus shooting commercials. What brought you back to narrative films again after you took that hiatus doing commercials? ROIZMAN: I’ll tell you what happened. I had completed Vision Quest, when I was asked to shoot and direct a very large package of commercials for a new beer product. I was told I could take it to any commercial company I wanted or I could produce it myself. I decided to do it myself. I hired a production manager and we produced these spots. It was interesting visual work. I decided I would shoot commercials for a while, because that would give me more time at home with my family. I'd just been working on location for 21 of the previous 24 months. My son was a teenager and I wanted to be there to give him my support as he grew up. Those are difficult years for any family. I opened my commercial company and took a five-year lease on a building. Near the end of that lease, there was a writers strike in the commercial industry. I decided that was a good time to go back to features. The very next day after I closed my doors I got a call from Charlie Okun, a producer who I knew from my early days in commercials when I lived in New York. He said Larry Kasdan wanted to talk about a film. That’s how I happened to do I Love You To Death. It was the first of four films I did with Larry. If he had called me earlier, before the writers’ strike, chances are I would have told him I was committed to shooting commercials. QUESTION: Grand Canyon was one of my favorites of your films with Larry Kasdan. ROIZMAN: I loved the script. There was a point during the middle of the picture where we were shooting a scene on a hospital set. A nurse is walking down a hallway carrying this baby that was being put up for adoption. It was a very tender scene. I was caught up in the emotion like everyone else on the set. I remember telling Larry (Kasdan), ‘You are making a great film. I just want you to know I feel that way.’ That’s the best gift you can give yourself as a cinematographer. Try to work on films that you believe in and that you would pay to see in a cinema. When you are doing something you really love and telling a story you really believe in, probably subconsciously you are digging a little deeper and making a 1000 percent effort. QUESTION: On a subconscious level? ROIZMAN: Right, because on a conscious level, you make that all out effort on every film, but I think sometimes under the surface you dig a little deeper. QUESTION: You also did Wyatt Earp, a big Western film, with Larry Kasdan, and that effort resulted in your fifth Oscar nomination. What do you remember about that film? ROIZMAN: It was actually my second big Western film. The first was The Return of the Man Called Horse (1976) directed by Irvin Kershner. Somebody brought my name up to the producer and his first reaction was that I was a New York Street shooter. How could I shoot a Western? However, Kershner decided he liked the idea because I might have some new ideas that hadn’t been done on Westerns. We met and there was an immediate connection between us. Kersh is a director who appreciates cinematographers. During our first conversations, we agreed on a concept for a different look for Westerns that was right for telling this story. We talked about long lenses and a warm tone. I used the equivalent of a double 85 filter (on the camera lens), which gave the film a very orangey, warm feeling. It had kind of a subtle period quality. I also used very heavy diffusion on the lens. I varied between a Harrison number four and five fog filter, and sometimes a four or five diffusion filter, and I suggested that we shoot everything in backlight. I exposed the film for the shadow area, so the highlights glowed. QUESTION: Where did you get that idea? ROIZMAN: Again, going back to my research for any film I would work on, it was like a look I saw in some paintings of the old West. I thought it captured the moods, and then it was a matter of how do you create it? That is fairly typical of my whole approach to filmmaking. I see the picture in my imagination, discuss it with the director, and then figure out how to create that look. I remember a big massacre scene in the beginning of the picture. I wanted to shoot it all with three cameras and long lenses, kind of distancing the audience, rather then shooting a series of separate closer-in shots of different stunts. I felt it would be more realistic. QUESTION: So, it was an instinctual feeling? ROIZMAN: It was a combination of instincts and my experiences in creating that type of feeling on other films and also commercials. In retrospect, my early commercial experience was very good training, because it gave me a sense of what you can do with different lenses, composition and light to create visual perspectives for the audience. I learned a lot by shooting commercials. They were my training ground. QUESTION: You shot Wyatt Earp approximately 18 years later. Did time and experience change your approach to shooting a Western? ROIZMAN: Every film is different, so each time you read a new script you are inventing a new approach to shooting a story. You borrow ideas from other films, and rely on your experience to get it done in a practical and believable way. But, the vision for the story comes from inside, and it is something that is unique to each cinematographer. We shot Wyatt Earp in big country, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We mainly used normal and wider angle lenses, because that allowed us to use more of the background, so the audience sees the characters in the immense Western setting. That’s what the story is really about, the fight for this seemingly endless land. Longer lenses tend to compress the images, so we used them selectively when we wanted that feeling. Wyatt presented great opportunities for interesting work. We shot through three seasons and all kinds of weather. It was a long and arduous schedule and very demanding physically. The changing weather presented myriads of problems because it changed so quickly during the course of each day and night. We were shooting a night sequence in a railroad yard that was scheduled for four nights. The first night went very smoothly but on the second night it started to rain heavily. It didn’t stop for the rest of the week. Normally you would shut down for weather like that but Larry (Kasdan) insisted that we keep shooting. It forced me to change the style of lighting that I established on the first night or else we would have seen the rain. That is where experience pays off. If you want to see rain then you use backlight and conversely, if you want to hide the rain, then you don’t use backlight. What I ended up using as the compromise lighting turned out to be even better than with the backlight. I learned an interesting lesson from that experience…there is always more than one way to do something. QUESTION: That brings up an issue that is becoming more important for cinematographers. With advances in digital postproduction technology, it is now possible to change any aspect of an image, the colors, contrast, even composition. How is this going to affect the role of the cinematographer as co-authors of the films they shoot? ROIZMAN: I was talking with Sydney Pollack recently about a tribute to Jane Fonda, where they ran a scene from The Electric Horseman (1979). It was a day for night scene that we completed on the last day of shooting. There were some huge clouds in the background and I was shooting with long lenses exposing the film like it was dusk, though it was actually the middle of the day in the sunlight. I used filters that gave us kinds of a cool blue look with very rich clouds. It was exquisite in the original film, and it really amplified the mood at a climatic moment. Sydney told me that whoever printed the scene for the tribute made a mistake. They printed it as a bright, sunlit scene. I wasn’t surprised, because I had just recently re-timed a print for the studio. The timer made the same mistake on his first try. There is a moral to this story. The cinematographer is the author of the light. If we aren’t there supervising postproduction when the film is timed for release, the chances are good that you are going to compromise the artistic quality of the film. That happened to me on French Kiss (1995). We shot a sequence on mock up of a train on a stage against a green screen background. We had a second unit shoot plates for the background in very early morning light. It was pre-sunrise. I lit the scene on the train to create a feeling of early morning, using cool, soft light coming through the windows knowing that we were balancing with the plates that were going to be composited into those spaces. The reason for staging the scene at that time of day was to motivate a mood that Larry (Kasdan) wanted. Unfortunately, I wasn’t called to supervise that part of the matting process, so the first time I saw it was as a composited print…too late to make changes. The digital facility had made the exterior plates look like it was the middle of the day. It was the wrong mood at the wrong time of day and the wrong feeling for that scene. Unfortunately this was a forerunner of a real problem for cinematographers and for the art of filmmaking. QUESTION: Is there a solution? ROIZMAN: I’m not against the use of digital technology, when it is appropriate. Cinematographers are almost always the first people in the industry to embrace new technology and new ideas. But, somehow, someway, cinematographers must have final control over color timing whether it is done in a film lab or digital suite. No self-respecting novelist would allow someone else to write a different ending for his manuscript. Changing the look of a film without the cinematographer’s input is like changing the author’s words or the composer’s score. The truth is that with digital technology, you can change the colors in a set or costume, an actor’s hair and even their features, so it’s not just cinematography at risk. It is the entire collaborative process. Digital technology is a great tool in postproduction. You can fix things and enhance images in almost any way, but if someone else assumes that role for the cinematographer, the chances are that you are going to diminish the storytelling and that wouldn’t be progress. It would be technology for the sake of technology. QUESTION: I understand that there will be some 700 students in the audience at the CamerImage festival where you are receiving a career achievement award. What is your advice for them as they begin their careers? ROIZMAN: Be true to yourself. Fight hard for what you believe in. Learn as much as you can about the craft as well as the art. You can never stop learning. You have to master all of the possibilities about every aspect of filmmaking. Most of all, be passionate about your work. Follow your heart and learn to trust your instincts. Looking back, I’ve never regretted a decision I ever made, even turning down films that became very successful. Usually, something else came along that was just as good or better. I’ve always had a positive attitude. You never know when or where your next opportunity will come form. In 1976, I had a memorable experience shooting a 20-minute, short film called Independence. It was just two weeks in production, and we all worked for scale. It was 20th Century Fox's contribution to the bicentennial celebration. John Huston directed the film. What a great experience that was. It was a little story about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I think it ran for 20 years in Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, and millions and millions of people have seen it. I got to shoot that film because Stephen Grimes was the production designer, and he recommended me to John Huston. I’m grateful I had that opportunity. That’s one of the great things about this industry. You get to meet and work with a lot of wonderful people, actors, directors, producers, production designers and so many others. I remember films I did with a talented director named Harold Becker. I shot Taps with Harold, and it was Tom Cruise’s and Sean Penn’s first film. The list of names of people who I’ve worked with seems endless. I also had opportunities to touch the lives of millions and millions of people all over the world. There aren’t a lot of careers where you can say that. When I was entering the industry, the opportunities were very limited. There were no film schools, no DVDs, videocassettes or movie channels. There are many more film schools and much better tools for learning today. There is more access to media, including DVDs and videocassettes. You can watch films over and over and see if you can figure out why and how the filmmakers did the things they did. The industry is more open to new talent today but, it is still a very tough and competitive business, and only the best-prepared, most competitive people survive. My advice for young filmmakers is that if you have the talent and desire, stick with it, because if you quit, some day you’ll look back with regret wondering what you could have achieved. |
