Nancy Schreiber, ASC was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan where her mother was an art dealer. Although her father died when she was young, Schreiber remembers seeing a picture of her parents with her father holding a 16 mm camera. It made an indelible impression and maybe presaged her destiny. Schreiber graduated from the University of Michigan where she studied psychology and the history of art. She replied to an ad that led to a $50 a week job as a production assistant on a modest budget film shot in New York. By the end of the film, Schreiber was the best boy on the electrical crew. A year later, she was the gaffer for co-directors Shirley MacLaine and Claudia Weill on an historic documentary, The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir.

Schreiber was the first woman gaffer in New York's NABET guild. Later, she joined the camera Guild as a director of photography. Her breakthrough came with the PBS documentary series Middletown and with her own award winning film Possum Living. She has subsequently compiled an eclectic list of documentary, TV commercial, music videos and narrative credits including Neil LaBute's Your Friends and Neighbors. Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows for Artisan Entertainment, is Schreiber's most recent work and she has two features slated for release in early 2001, including Buying the Cow-a comedy for Destination Films, and Shadow Magic-a period film directed in China by Ann Hui that Sony Classics picked up at Sundance Festival.