ICG: Nancy, where are you originally from?

SCHREIBER: I was born and raised in Detroit and I lived in New York for years. In fact, I still consider myself a New Yorker hanging out in Los Angeles.

ICG: Was anyone in your family in the film business?

SCHREIBER: My mother was mostly a housewife but also an art dealer. My father was in the roofing business. He had a major artistic side, as well. He passed away when I was young. I’ve often wondered how he might have reacted to me doing what was considered a man's job when I was getting started. At that time there were hardly any women thinking about careers in lighting and cinematography. I often wonder if he would have said, ‘Are you crazy?’ I actually started out as a film electrician and advanced to gaffer, which was extremely physical. I had to deal with electricity and that was dangerous. At that time in New York we dealt with tying into live panels. We didn't have generators.

ICG: I remember you telling me that your father was an amateur filmmaker.

SCHREIBER: I found a picture of my mom and dad where he had a 16 mm camera in his hand. My dad used to take family movies. I think the movies were lost in a flood but I remember that we used to show them quite a bit. I still have the 16 mm projector. When I ran across that picture, I was already working as a cinematographer. I remember thinking maybe it was my fate to do this work.

ICG: Where did you go to school?

SCHREIBER: I went to high school near Detroit in a very well known artists’ community called Cranbrook. Saarinen built much of my school and Charles Eames was also at the art academy. Later, I went to the University of Michigan and majored in psychology and the history of art.

ICG: Weren't you involved in cinema club of some sort?

SCHREIBER: Yes. After graduation, I decided not to go to grad school because I wanted to enter the “real world” and not go to school another five years. I became involved in a very underground film scene in Ann Arbor. The filmmaking was very experimental. We had a prestigious film festival and there were two film societies. I programmed and ran a movie theater that showed mostly foreign films. I had a great time. We showed the French New Wave films and the great Italian films. It was a fabulous experience but the only time I ever made money was on Marx Brothers and Bergman movies. I have no idea why.

ICG: About how long did you do that?

SCHREIBER: I did that for about a year. Then, I went to New York City, where I took a crash course in filmmaking. It was really the only formal filmmaking training I’ve had, except for sitting in on a couple of film courses at Ann Arbor. They didn't have a film school. I think there was a class in the speech department and one other in the art department. I knew a woman who had gone to New York and had taken this wonderful crash course in filmmaking. It was a six-week course and you actually made films. The teacher was Jim Pasternak. He’s in Los Angeles still teaching directing.

ICG: Why did you take that course?

SCHREIBER: There was always art around my home when I was growing up. My mother was a docent at the museum in Detroit. I had been to Europe as an exchange student and I just devoured the art. I was in Holland, and I spent all my spare time looking at Van Gogh, Vermeer and Rembrandt paintings. I’ve felt passionate about film all my life, and decided that I wanted to pursue it as a career. I also took a sound course at NYU in the evenings but I was more of a visual person and didn’t pursue sound.

ICG: How did you get started?

SCHREIBER: After I moved to New York and took this crash course, I answered an ad in the “Village Voice” and got a job as a production assistant on a movie called The Werewolf of Washington. It was a political satire with Dean Stockwell and Michael Dunn. The director, Milton Moses Ginsberg, had a cult following. He also directed Coming Apart with Rip Torn. Milton is still around. He's an editor mostly. It was a great opportunity. I was getting paid $50 a week including the use of my van. I didn't actually have a van but I convinced my roommates to loan me theirs. That’s how I got the job. I learned all about New York City during preproduction because I had to find props and costumes and just about everything else. They had all the department heads but nobody was in the crew underneath them. There was nobody to be in the electric department under the gaffer, so somehow by the end of the movie I became the best boy electric. The director's brother was the best boy grip. I had this unquenchable thirst for learning everything about lighting and electricity. By the end of the movie, the gaffer, Marty Andrews, had taught me enough to find the next job. I was an electrician and gaffer for many years — working primarily in commercials and some documentaries — because that's the work that was being done in New York in those days. There were only a few independent features.

ICG: Did you have another plan for your future?

SCHREIBER: I was taking it a day at a time. I was having a great time in New York, working with wonderful people on great projects. I had a sense of community that was just really fulfilling. It wasn't until I gaffed for some documentary cinematographers who weren't that skilled in lighting that I started thinking about expanding my interests. I got to design a lot of lighting when these people worked on commercials. I was working with one of my mentors, Mark Obenhaus who was the director/cameraman on a Bob Fossi spot with 30 dancers. It was very extravagant and I did all the lighting. When the producers didn't invite me to dailies, I was crushed. That’s when I began thinking about shooting.

ICG: How did you make that jump?

SCHREIBER: The same director/cameraman, Mark Obenhaus, loaned me an Éclair NPR 16 mm camera. I also was helped by Bobby V (Bob Veracruz) who owned Filmtrucks. He was a gaffer I had worked with as an electrician on movies. I began shooting little films with borrowed cameras, electrical and grip equipment, which is how I started building my reel. Mostly, they were student films or art projects. Gradually, I got into shooting a great number of music videos during the 1980s. A lot of them were handheld. I also shot some documentaries. It was the one area that seemed to be a little more open to women — whether you were a director, producer or cinematographer. Other women that were shooting in New York at that time were coming out of the news and documentaries including Judy Irola (ASC) and Sandi Sissel (ASC).

ICG: How did that beginning influence you later on?

SCHREIBER: To this day, I still like shooting with a fluid camera.

ICG: Didn’t you work on a documentary in China?

SCHREIBER: Yes. I went to China with Shirley MacLaine and Claudia Weill. I was the gaffer and camera loader. They co-directed a documentary about women in China when Mao was still alive. It was called The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir. It was an amazing experience. I did quite a bit of traveling all over the world during that period, including a Ford Foundation documentary with Joyce Chopra as director, that took me to Africa.

ICG: Then, you started shooting documentaries and music videos in New York?

SCHREIBER: Yes. I worked on a famous PBS documentary called Middletown and later I won many awards for a documentary called Possum Living that I produced and directed myself. Finally, low-budget movies started happening a little bit but it was very hard getting a foothold. There were very few films being made and I didn't really have any recognizable credits.

ICG: When did you move to Los Angeles?

SCHREIBER: I went back and forth for a number of years. I shot a movie in 1992 in New York called Chain of Desire, which I'm very proud of. It was very low budget but it had a terrific cast with Linda Fiorentino and Malcolm McDowell, and a wonderful director Temi Lopez. That was a long time ago but it's still one of my favorites. Then, in 1993 I shot Lush Life in Los Angeles with Jeff Goldblum and Forrest Whitaker. I was still going back and forth probably until about 1994. I wanted to expand my horizons and see what Hollywood was all about. I still have my place in New York. I haven't done a movie there in a couple of years but I did shoot Thicker Than Blood — a TV movie for TNT in New York, two years ago.

ICG: When did you get into the Camera Guild?

SCHREIBER: A really long time ago through NABET 15 in New York. I worked my way up as an electrician and then as a gaffer. NABET had every category except set decorating and the art department. We had props, sound, camera, and so we were able to move within the local. I eventually hit a dead end in NABET, because all the jobs in the Guild were going to foreign cinematographers who were working with NABET crews. I decided to join the camera Local 644, in New York. Later, after spending a fortune to join, we merged.

ICG: Were there any barriers to becoming a member?

SCHREIBER: The biggest barrier was getting into features. People thought of me as a documentarian. It was really disturbing because I believed I had the ability to work in different genres especially with my commercial lighting background. I felt people were putting limits on me that I didn't feel. I shot a lot of no-budget projects and built a reel and concentrated on making connections. Chain of Desire was probably the first movie that I shot which was released and seen by a large audience. I was up for a Spirit Award for that movie, and that pretty much put me on the map.

ICG: It looks like you have had a busy few years.

SCHREIBER: It has been an interesting time. Exactly a year ago, I shot a comedy for Sony and Destination Films. It’s called Buying the Cow and it comes out in April. It's about trying to find your dream girl. It was just a light, fun comedy. I followed that by shooting Blair Witch 2 with (director) Joe Berlinger who conducted Brother’s Keeper, and whom I'm quite fond of. I had worked on some of his documentaries and commercials. He's an amazing storyteller. It was really a great opportunity to work with Joe in a different arena, doing his first dramatic film. When I signed on, there was no script, and that’s kind of risky, because usually a good part of how I pick a project. So, there I was without a script but I trusted that the experience of working with Joe would really be fulfilling, and it was.

ICG:  You also shot a film in China. Was that before Buying the Cow?

SCHREIBER: Yes. It was actually shot in China before Crouching Tiger. When I saw that film come out, all I could think was they used some of the same locations, extras and costumes that we did, and it's in the same period. Our film doesn't come out until the spring, and it’s also released by Sony Classics.

ICG: What is that called?

SCHREIBER: It's called Shadow Magic. It takes place in China at the turn of the century. I went there with a gaffer, Ted Hayash, and we worked with an entire Chinese crew. There is only one English-speaking actor, Jared Harris. It was very demanding working in another culture and not knowing the language. None of the interpreters knew film technology. If they were really good at translating, they wouldn't stay with us for very long because we were considered a low-budget movie — even in China — and they could get incredible wages if they worked for any American corporation.

ICG: Who was the producer?

SCHREIBER: It was a co-production. We were working for the Beijing Film Studio but there was also Taiwanese money, which is pretty unusual. There was also a German co-production company and a U.S. company. I knew the U.S. producer, who put me in touch with the director (Ann Hu) who's a Chinese-American woman. I was thrilled to be able to shoot a period movie in China.

ICG: What’s it about?

SCHREIBER: It's a turn of the century story about a traveling salesman who comes to China to show early motion pictures such as the Lumiere films. It explores the resistance he felt in trying to get an audience to see his movies. It’s really a wonderful little film. It went to Sundance and the Toronto Festival. Sony Pictures Classics picked it up and I think it's also coming out in April.

ICG: How difficult was it recreating the period?

SCHREIBER: The art department constructed a motion picture camera that might have actually been used at the turn of the century. Of course, it didn't really have to work but it had to look correct. We also needed a projector that the film would actually have to run partway through. The wardrobe department created fantastic costumes.

ICG: How did you work with the crew?

SCHREIBER: Hand signals and I learned a few words. There was a gentleman who had been a translator on a Woody Allen movie but he was the associate producer and he was usually dealing with shipping the film back to the states. We had the negative processed in New York. He also had to deal with getting the film delivered from Germany. Every time he came on the set, things would move so much quicker because he knew film terminology.

ICG: Why were you bringing film from Germany?

SCHREIBER: It was just part of the deal. One of the co-producers was a German-based company.

ICG: Are there regular equipment rental houses?

SCHREIBER: There are two. There's a bigger one and a much smaller one that’s cheaper. We used the cheaper one. I e-mailed them my equipment list thinking they had an ARRI 535B but when I got to China, it was mysteriously gone. So, I had to use a 535A. It can be a very tricky camera because of all the electronics and we didn’t have a very experienced crew. I begged to get the B but they said it was rented elsewhere. After a while, I found this funky ARRI BL camera but it was really noisy. We used that for a while when we were shooting exteriors and then when we began shooting on stages at the Beijing Film Studio, we were able to get the good 535B for the rest of the movie. I had pretty good lenses but our dolly had one bad wheel. It was funky looking but it boomed up and down. It sort of looked like a Panther but I don't know who made it. The important thing was that we could dolly. They don't really have grips or electricians as we think of them — but they have “laborers”. They were all very sweet, even though they didn't speak English. They tried really hard but they weren't that knowledgeable about cutting light. Fortunately, Ted has great grip skills and he was able to help them with flagging.

ICG: Was this an exterior or interior film?

SCHREIBER: Both. We were shooting outside at the beginning. It was November and it was cold and windy. Half of the set was built under muslin and the other half was open. We thought we wouldn’t have any problems covering the direct sun but they didn't know how to handle a 12x12 frame even though silk was plentiful. After that, I planned how I was going to shoot exterior based on where the sun was moving so that I was always backlit.

ICG: What about lab services?

SCHREIBER: The film was processed at DuArt in New York, and we finished at Technicolor.

ICG: Did you ever see dailies?

SCHREIBER: Maybe a month into production, we got something through customs and we saw a little bit of print film. On the day we wrapped, all of the video dailies came in. They had been held up in customs, so I was flying blind most of the time. I relied on people at DuArt to watch dailies. Our production manager was at the lab in the beginning of the shoot for about a week. After that, our communication was by e-mail.

ICG: Did that make you nervous?

SCHREIBER: No. The first week I was worried about the focus puller. There was a guy there, who was a little more experienced, who said his job was to read meters but I didn’t need him for that and I felt like they were trying to train our focus puller on the job. I think in China, the focus puller is usually like a second AC and the first AC takes light readings and the stills…at least that's what they told us through interpreters. I finally made the more experienced guy pull focus and he did just fine.

ICG: So, this was a comparatively low budget picture even for China?

SCHREIBER: I think our budget was around $2 million, unlike Crouching Tiger, which was $15 million, which are small in American terms which shows that your money goes a long way in China. Pay is terrible especially for the hundreds of extras.

ICG: Did the exterior locations match the period?

SCHREIBER: We had to travel 45 minutes to Old Beijing, where they've sort of fabricated what it looked like in China at the turn of the century. We built a wall and a bridge. We also filmed a little in the Forbidden City. Most of Beijing has been modernized and what I would have to do is smoke up the backgrounds so we didn’t see the modern buildings in the background. I also used a sepia filter, so everything is very warm.

ICG: Does the fact that you started out as an electrician help in situations like that?

SCHREIBER: I'm sure it has. There was a long tradition of gaffers in New York moving up to DP. It gave me a lot of know-how and insight that I use all of the time. If the crew is not that experienced, you can still make it happen.

ICG: Since you didn’t come up through the camera department, how did you end up doing so much operating?

SCHREIBER: Shooting documentaries and music videos, DPs usually operate themselves. When I started shooting independent films we had to operate the camera ourselves also, so I was always looking and lighting through the lens. I still do that today, even with an operator. I light everything through the lens. It’s a great way to see how light falls and very different than watching a video monitor. I try to watch the first take by camera and not by the monitor

ICG: Was Buying the Cow your first big comedy?  

SCHREIBER: I have shot several comedies during the '80s and early ‘90s but most of them weren’t released or they were only released on video. They were also dark comedies. This one was probably the most physical comedy that I have ever done. Walt Becker, the director, and I were totally in sync from the beginning about the look and the mood and contrast. It’s not a bright sit-com look. Much of the movie takes place in bars and restaurants and these places have an ambiance that we wanted to maintain with moody lighting and lots of colors. I had worked with the producers on another movie and that also helped because they knew I could come in on time and on budget.

ICG: Is there an aesthetic difference between shooting a comedy and a drama?

SCHREIBER: There is comedy in drama, just like in real life. There are some heavy elements to this story. This guy screws up a relationship he's in because he can't get over his dream girl, so there were moments of heavy drama. One of the interesting things is that I've been getting lots of comedy scripts since I shot this film. When I was in New York, I think I was stereotyped as someone who shoots depressing movies. I really try hard not to get pigeonholed in any category.

ICG: What appealed to you about Buying The Cow?

SCHREIBER: I really liked the director, Walt Becker. He also co-authored the script. I also respected the producers. The script has some very funny elements. This one actor in particular, Ryan Reynolds, pulled off some difficult physical comedy. We would sit in dailies and laugh, and that hasn't happened to me before. It was just great sitting in the trailer with everybody rolling on the floor laughing. I saw that possibility in the script and they did some great casting. This movie is going to be out in a couple of months, so I don’t want to go into too much detail…but the physical humor is very good. I think this guy could be the next Jim Carey.

ICG: Where did you shoot this?

SCHREIBER: It was filmed in Los Angeles, entirely at practical locations.

ICG: Do you have a different mindset when you're shooting a comedy?

SCHREIBER: I didn't light it any differently. I made sure you can see the actors' eyes but I usually do that anyway, unless there’s some dramatic reason not to. No matter how moody it is, I'll give them a little glint in their eyes. I didn't really approach this film differently except maybe for the placement of the camera… but it wasn't over the top. Walt didn't want it to be stylized like an early Coen brothers comedy. We wanted it to be natural, so you need to know where to put the camera for comedy.

ICG: That's interesting; can you tell us what that means?

SCHREIBER: Sometimes you have to work wider because you want the audience to see the whole physical scene and how people are reacting. On a straight drama, there are times when you go for a tight close. During rehearsals, I watched what was happening and then I would discuss the best way to cover those scenes with Walt. What would enhance comic moments? You need to see the physicality of the actors but it can’t be so wide that you can’t see the expressions on their faces. Often, it is other people’s reactions. We shot a lot of varied coverage so there was a choice editorially.

ICG: How much prep time did you have on this film?   

SCHREIBER: About three weeks. The hardest part was that we had a company move every day and all in practical locations — including bars and restaurants that often had low ceilings. We were shooting in some large locations with lots of extras and we did it all in about a 30-day schedule.

ICG: You said something about lighting through the lens rather than looking at a monitor. Can you amplify that point?

SCHREIBER: There weren’t any video tap monitors when I started shooting low budget films in New York, so I’m use to working without them. I think color monitors can be very deceptive. I’ve noticed that on commercials. People from the agency will think the colors are what they are going to see on film. I think sometimes black-and-white monitors are safer. What I usually do is watch the first take including lighting, by the camera. I like to light through the lens. I always have. It frames the world differently, so you can see how the light falls on faces, the balance and composition.

ICG: Can you tell if a movie's going to be a hit or is it always a surprise?

SCHREIBER: Well, it’s difficult because the movie you think you shot isn’t necessarily what comes out of postproduction. It can be very difficult for a director who has a different vision than the studio and one never knows how the audience will embrace a film.

ICG: You’ve also shot a couple of other films last year.

SCREIBER: I did a prison film called Stranger Inside, which mainly features African-American women in the cast. We shot it at a practical location in East Los Angeles. It was a very low budget movie that we shot it in 24 days. I just really liked the script and also the director, a woman named Cheryl Dunye. I think Cheryl's very gifted. She’s a writer/director — this washer second movie directing. We wrapped on October 1 and then I went off to Hawaii to shoot a pilot for HBO that takes place supposedly in Vietnam. The director is Patrick Duncan. It's for a new series called Lessons Learned. It has a down and dirty look. We shot it in Super 16 format, mostly with handheld cameras.

ICG: Who’s distributing Stranger Inside?

SCHREIBER: It was an independent production for Michael Stipes’ company, and HBO is now involved through their low budget theatrical division. It will be screening at Sundance even though it was incredibly rushed in post.

ICG: Besides being a prison film, can you give us some more details?

SCHREIBER: It's a really heavy film. This young woman (played by Yolanda Ross) turns 21 at the beginning of the movie. She's in the youth authority prison system. When you turn 21, you are transferred to the women's prison. She's really happy to be going there because she going to meet her mother for the first time. Her mother is a lifer there. What happens is that when she gets to the prison, some of her old gang girls are there. She finds out that this woman, her mother, Brownie (Davenia McFadden), is pretty much running the show including the drug trade. She’s very powerful within the prison. Treasure, our 21-year-old, starts gravitating towards Brownie. Later, after Brownie is knifed and needs blood, Treasure discovers that she’s not the same blood type. She discovers that Brownie killed her mother 18 years ago in prison and took her name.

ICG: Was that all out of somebody's mind or is that actually a true story?

SCHREIBER: Cheryl (who co-authored the script with Catherine Crouch) spoke with a lot of women in prison over several years and fabricated this story. It's not true but it's composite portrait.

ICG: Where did you shoot this?

SCHREIBER: We shot it in a prison that's used a lot because it's closed, Sybil Brand. It is located in East L.A. There are some really dynamic scenes including group therapy sessions that we shot very much like a documentary with two cameras and a lot of improvising. There are four of these sessions interspersed throughout the film. I think it's a pretty interesting film and it cost nothing to shoot.

ICG: I'm just imagining that is had to be pretty drab?

SCHREIBER: Well, we had that choice and Cheryl didn't want it to be too drab; so the young women have coral-colored walls rather than your usual monochromatic scheme. But when Treasure goes to visit Brownie, who's in with the hardened criminals, that world is grayer and more depressing. I worked closely with the production designer (Candi Guterres) to play with color.

ICG: Were there reasons you used particular colors in particular places?

SCHREIBER: Cheryl didn't want Treasure's world to be drab because this is where she lives her day-to-day existence. I thought that was a really interesting decision because you think of a prison movie as only being depressing and moody but people find a way to make their own world palatable and we saw when visiting prisons that women in particular had added touches to make their home personal and bearable.

ICG: What type of research did you do to prepare?

SCHREIBER: We went to various prisons, including one downtown and another in Pomona. I met all the Manson women. It was fascinating. We also looked at some prison movies and documentaries. What we lacked in money and time, we made up for in spirit and passion.

ICG: How did shooting in a prison affect camera movement? Is it pretty static?

SCHREIBER: No, there’s a lot of camera movement, and much of it is handheld. We didn't want the slickness of a Steadicam, like I used extensively in Blair Witch 2, so we used a Bodycam, which is a lower budget version of a Steadicam. It is a horizontal rig and a little rougher, and we wanted that edge. Michael Santy was the Bodycam operator. This was a low budget union film. I think it was only $2 million. There were basketball scenes with a lot of movement. The filmhas moments of grittiness and other moments that are naturalistic and moody lighting. It ran the gamut of looks. We also did some bleach by-pass in some scenes.

ICG: Which lab did you work with?

SCHREIBER: On this film it was Deluxe. I also worked with Technicolor and Photo-Kem last year. Beverly Woods at Deluxe was a big help especially regarding my bleach bypass testing. We also utilized speed changes in the camera and I used different stocks depending on the look I wanted. I used a non-Vision high-speed stock (Eastman EXR 500T 5298) for the group therapy sessions, and (Kodak) Vision stock for other scenes. Early on, before we started shooting — this is when HBO first got involved — Cheryl had this notion that she just didn't want a really totally gritty prison movie. I shot some tests with the (52)98 and the (52)79 Vision (film). They are both 500-speed films. We looked at them side by side and everybody pretty much liked the Vision stock. The differences weren’t that pronounced. It was subtle and not everybody saw it. But we decided to save money because the group therapy sessions were going to be 10-minute magazines, one after another, after another, shooting with two cameras. We also used it (5298) for some funkier things later in the film. There are all kinds of fun techniques throughout the movie. We also have cleaner, slicker images for a lot of the movie but it's mixed with other looks including bleach by-pass.

ICG: Where do decisions like that come from? Is it instinct or more structured?

SCHREIBER: When Cheryl and I were talking about the script, we discussed the visual style for different scenes and then we did some testing just to be sure it worked. There are montages interspersed throughout Stranger Inside that we shot in slow-mo and mostly bleach by-pass. We looked at another process at a different lab and decided to stay with Deluxe.

ICG: That brings up an interesting point. There are a million choices that cinematographers have today that didn't exist 10 years ago…in the choice of films, lenses, the way you move the camera, special processes…does that make the job easier or more difficult?

SCHREIBER: There have always been people doing experimental things like flashing the film, which was so hard to control. I remember once Vilmos (Zsigmond, ASC) told me, ‘don't flash in this day and age, it is too inconsistent.’ He was famous for taking those chances. I think people have always pushed the envelope in terms of lab work, pushing and pulling film and finding ways to manipulate the raw stock. I certainly did quite a bit of manipulating when I was shooting all those music videos and also in commercials. When you are shooting for television, you can do so much more in the electronic suite. With film that is printed there is not the same flexibility.         

ICG: I wanted to come back to something you said about the camera in Stranger Inside. Weren’t you working in confined spaces?

SCHREIBER: The hallways were large and we did a lot of dolly moves. The cells were very small, so we had to build two hero cells in the auditorium at the prison. Those cells were larger but not so big that it felt phony. The young girls had a double cell with four bunks. The other cells were about half that size. The cells we built had wild walls, so that helped with out lighting. It was in an empty auditorium with high ceilings, so we had to put a grid over the set.

ICG: How did you deal with lighting skin tones with a mainly black cast?

SCHREIBER: The skin tones were more rainbow than Black. The principal characters ran the gamut tonally. Yolanda Ross, who's just an incredibly talented actress, is extremely dark and she always needed her own little light. Then, we had a character who was called the hip-hop geisha, who was quite light. In these ensemble scenes there were Asians, Latinos, Blacks, and Whites. It was tricky because people moved around a lot. I usually did have a special light on Yolanda that was almost more than half a stop hotter than everybody else. Sometimes the gaffer John Priebe would have a special light on her that was handheld, and other times if she was in a scene and didn't move very much, we would flag the light off of the other people or add one to her.

ICG: How did you separate the characters from the walls?

SCHREIBER: I had a grid overhead that the key grip, Sean Crowell, made with a truss because we couldn't really rig into the ceilings. There was asbestos up above so it was free-standing, coming over the walls. We avoided too much glitzy hair light because that wouldn't have looked realistic.

ICG: When you're shooting a movie like this, do you motivate light with sources or is it okay to take some dramatic license with where is coming from?

SCHREIBER: It depends. I tried to work with motivated light sources but on the group therapy sequences, for example, it was a library with windows and we had to cover 360 degrees, so there wasn't a lot of cutting of light. We just had to get everybody fairly even. We again had a rainbow coalition of skin tones with 15 women in the scene, so it was tricky but it wasn't impossible. It was a library with sort of overall lighting and light was also coming through the windows. We used some fluorescents and added some Kinos. In other scenes it was more dramatic hard light. It ran the gamut.

ICG: In a movie with that low of a budget, do you ever see film dailies?

SCHREIBER: No. In fact, they were locking the picture today, after two months, and there were certain shots that we could tell on the Avid might be able for focus so we printed them.

ICG: You mentioned shooting certain scenes at different frame rates?

SCHREIBER: We did some ramping in certain montage sequences, ranging from 24 to 60 (frames a second) and back to 24 of course. These are not sync-sound montage sequences. All the montages are women doing different activities… seasons passing…this was all done pretty much shot at 40 or 60 frames, nothing at a higher frame rate than 60.

ICG: So, it is a way of telling the audience visually that time is passing by?    

SCHREIBER: Yes, you have to be careful not to overdo it and make it too dreamy and commercial-like… say at 120 frames (a second) or more… we just wanted to slow it down a bit.

ICG: How did you work this out with the director? Did she ask, ‘Nancy, could we slow this down,’ or did you make that suggestion…what was the dialogue?

SCHREIBER: I don't know if Cheryl really envisioned that much slow-mo but I felt it was the correct decision, so I would shoot scenes at both 30 and 40 frames and in editing, they usually ended up using the 40 frames shots because it felt right to them. It took people a while to trust and get that concept. I see this happen in a lot of small movies. You want to take a risk, and the producers usually want you to play it safe, so you shoot it both ways. Sometimes you're able to fight before you have to shoot two versions. It just depends.

ICG: So, is one of the messages today is that you have to be willing to take risks?

SCHREIBER: I like to take risks but I don't always get the opportunity. It depends on the script and situation. I felt that Stranger Inside allowed me to take some risks. If we had more time and money for testing, I would have probably taken more risks and put the producers at ease. I believe these small movies need to take risks because they can’t compete with the slickness of a large Hollywood movie — fewer toys, less time, etc., and the subject matter usually dictates a more adventurous style.

ICG: Do you think a film like this is more than pure entertainment?

SCHREIBER: Well, it certainly tells the story of different cultures that you wouldn't necessarily get to see and hear otherwise. I think these stories need to be told. There are so many women in prison today. We get to see some documentaries but telling it dramatically is powerful in a different way. Also, how many black filmmakers are making movies with black actors that aren’t hip-hop films? When I read the script, I just had to be part of telling this powerful story.

ICG: How does your early documentary experience help on projects like this?

SCHREIBER: My documentary work fuels my fiction work, in terms of seeing the world and seeing how people live their lives; how their homes are lit and the colors they use. There's nothing like that experience and, of course, you take license with it. When I was in high school, I worked in the inner city of Detroit a lot. I thought I'd be a social worker and I've always just gravitated to going out into the community and meeting people who are different than myself. It wasn't an accident that I started working in documentaries, where you get to travel and meet all kinds of people. I think that's why I am attracted to different genres in the fiction world too.

ICG: What else makes you want to work on a specific project?

SCHREIBER: It depends. When I read the script for Your Friends and Neighbors (1998), I really wanted to work with (director) Neil LaBute. I thought he was an interesting filmmaker. A lot of people thought the script was too dark but I thought it would be a great opportunity to work with some amazing actors. Life is not all happy all the time. There are times when its dark, but I also saw the humor in it. We wanted to shoot anamorphic but the production company really dissuaded us. We ended up shooting Super 35. There's not one exterior in the whole movie and both Neil and I thought it could be unusual to shoot an interior movie widescreen. We shot in L.A. but it kind of looks like Chicago, New York or wherever. I still prefer anamorphic over Super 35 but we had a very quick schedule, only 22 days, so there was an advantage in working with spherical lenses. I was able to use less light and I was pleased with the results.

ICG: Do you think there's a different look or feeling in anamorphic than Super 35?

SCHREIBER: It is different. I would have loved to shoot Shadow Magic in anamorphic format because there is such a large feeling of scope. There were hundreds of extras when we shot the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. But I would have been worried about never seeing dailies if we were shooting in anamorphic format.

ICG: What was the pilot you shot in Hawaii for HBO?

SCHREIBER: Patrick Duncan, who is well known for writing two great movies Mr. Holland’s Opus and Courage Under Fire, directed Lessons Learned. He's a terrific writer. I met him at Sundance in the mid-'80s when I was just starting. I was shooting these little projects at Sundance that summer and he was one of the directors developing 84 Charlie Mopic. He was in Vietnam and he's very focused on the war to this day. This series is also about Vietnam and he wanted it mainly handheld. It's irreverent, funny and really gutsy; so the camerawork is rough and ready. I always had two cameras running and when I could, I used three. For a lighting person that's hard to stomach but I managed to find ways not to compromise.

ICG: Give us an example.

SCHREIBER: Most of the interiors are more controlled. I had the cameras side by side, so I was never crossing directions and the lighting wasn’t compromised. For exteriors, we never had to worry about sunlight in the jungle, so I was able to shoot in cloud cover most of the time. I was able to work very quickly. I could just put cameras everywhere and it would match. We had 12 days to shoot and we used a lot of film.        

ICG: Did you do anything different because it was a pilot for a TV show?

SCHREIBER: No, we shot it like a movie except we used multiple cameras because that was the only way we were going to get enough coverage in 12 days. When I first met the producers, they were very skeptical. They just couldn't believe that we would be able to shoot with three cameras. They said we’d be stepping over each other, and getting in each other's way. I had two great operators. Jamie Maxtone-Graham was the A camera operator. We’d block shots for his camera during rehearsals. James Jansen operated the B camera. He was also terrific. He’d find a way to be out on a longer lens and pick up other action that they could use for cutting. Somehow, I'd find a way to use a third camera much of the time as well. I worked with the same production designer, Richard Toyon, as I had on Buying The Cow, so we had a relationship going in. He built this whole Army base on a privately-owned banana plantation of 22 buildings that was fabulous. HBO was very supportive. I was able to bring my gaffer, two camera operators and three first Acs: Boots Shelton, Lillith Simcox, Michelle de Lormier. The rest of the crew was mainly Hawaiian, except we kept losing people because we were the lowest budget production shooting on the island. For example, because someone backed out at the last minute, I had to fly a second AC, Abe Martinez, in from LA on a Saturday and we started shooting on Monday.

ICG: What was the infrastructure for supporting production like in Hawaii?

SCHREIBER: We brought the camera package, but there were two lighting rental houses and we used local grips and electricians but I did bring a gaffer, John Priebe. The loader was also local and a second AC.

ICG: Is there a Vietnam War look?

SCHREIBER: We were in the jungle in a lot of heavy brush. I didn't want to saturate the greens too much, so I decided to use the (Eastman EXR 72)48 stock. The look is designed to be a little rough and tumble, which mainly comes from the Aaton handheld cameras. There’s an ensemble cast with many people. About two-thirds of the pilot were split between day and night exteriors. When the sun came out, we would wait for it to go away and since we were in the mountains it usually did. Our interiors were mainly in bars and barracks. The Super 16 format gave us a lot of flexibility. We worked with some pretty long lenses. I had two new Angenieux lens with an amazing range — 7 to 84 mm. I also had an 8 to 64 mm Canon lens, a 10 to 52 mm Cooke lens, a couple of other really long lenses, and a few primes for handheld work at night.

ICG: What did you shoot at night?

SCHREIBER: I used the (Kodak Vision 500T 72)79 at night. I used (Kodak Vision 250D 72)46 quite a bit. I used it for day interiors and in some areas in the jungle where the daylight didn't get through until around 10 a.m. I also love (72)48. I really think it's a great stock. I used it a lot on Stranger Inside. It just depends on the situation.

ICG: On a TV film like this, do you get an opportunity to stay involved through post?

SCHREIBER: This is my first pilot, so I tried to stay involved but I have to wait to get the color correction right for the final airing. They are doing post at Modern (in Los Angeles). Photo-Kem was the lab.

ICG: When you're shooting a film like this on a tight schedule, do you sometimes tell yourself you can fix something later in the telecine suit?

SCHREIBER: I always try to do as much as I can during photography. I really do. There were times in the jungle when I ran out of light and I knew that I could pull it up in telecine better than I could in print. I was getting reports from the people doing our video dailies that everything was fine. There were a couple of times when I had to shoot dusk scenes in the middle of the day when we were in a covered area. I knew that as long as I kept the cameras off the sky, we could make it happen. I didn't use an 85 filter and kept it cool; I didn't fill and underexposed it a bit. It can be tough with one-light video dailies when you're trying to do tricky things.

ICG: Are you optimistic about the role cinematographers will play in the future?

SCHREIBER: I am. I think there are going to be amazing advances and we shouldn't be afraid of the future. There have been constant changes since the film industry began. Someone is always predicting the end of film. When television came out, people thought no one would go to the movies anymore. That proved false. Not so long ago, the prevalence of video rentals made people worry that theatre attendance would decrease, but it only increased the boxoffice. The new digital projectors are terrific but expensive for theatre owners everywhere. I don’t pretend to know what is going to happen but I do believe we will be originating on celluloid for a while longer.

ICG: What do you base that on?

SCHREIBER: Hope. No, really, there's just nothing like the grain structure, the texture, the color rendition and the selective sharpness that you can get with film. I've shot a lot of HD but no matter how hard I try to lose depth of field and keep the light soft I still prefer the texture of film. I worked on a feature length documentary about boxing that was all HD. Another time, I went around the country shooting for an NHK documentary along Route 66, or what's left of it, tracing the music across the country from Chicago to Los Angeles. It was all HD. I also shot the interviews for Visions of Light on HD but that was in the dark ages, around 1993-94, when we were still using tube cameras not chip cameras. I own a Sony mini DV camera and I think it's amazing. I’ve gotten some beautiful transfers from digibeta to film but it’s a different look. When I work in HD or video I try to trick it into not looking so electronic. I went to Vietnam to shoot a documentary last summer with veterans who took their 20-year-old kids with them. It was a terrific experience. I thought it was very freeing to work in mini DV in that kind of a situation. It was produced for German television, although it did show at Toronto Film Festival last year. I felt it didn't work well at dusk and in other low light situations. That was one of the reasons why I chose DigiBeta for the video portions of Blair Witch 2. We used it for scenes seen through the eye of a video camera.

ICG: What’s your advice for someone who is now at the beginning of his or her careers. They are just graduating from school. What do they do to get started?

SCHREIBER: Shoot as much as you can. Work on anything you can get. Get as much experience as a crew person as you can, so you understand all the roles whether it's camera, grip or electric. That will help you when you become a cinematographer. You’ll understand what to expect and how to work with your crew. I advise young people to get some industry experience any way they can rather than coming out of school shooting. It's different for everyone. I started as a gaffer and that helped me understand lighting but I had to go back and learn about cameras and techniques. I own some cameras and I've learned to maintain them but that's not my true love. I’d rather hire a really great AC and not worry about it. But, I think it's crucial to have that experience. One possibility is working at a rental house, or as a camera intern. I've helped to train a lot of interns.

ICG: What do you make of the perception that digital video is easier to shoot? Even Emmy Magazine said that producers could now put the camera on their shoulder and point and shoot.

SCHREIBER: I think there are things you can shoot with a DV camera that will be faster because you're not lighting and sometimes that’s okay because it looks more natural. But unfortunately there is this perception that the crew can be smaller and everything's going to be cheaper, faster and you can shoot everything like a documentary. All of those things are true but it doesn’t mean you are going to shoot a movie that anyone will want to see. I went to Sundance last year, while I was preparing for Blair Witch 2, to look at the digital work being done and I saw a lot of films that shouldn't have been made. There were two films that were the exception: Chuck and Buck and Everything Put Together. Both used professional DPs. There is this perception that’s been sold that anyone who can get his or her hands on a DV camera can make a movie and that’s not true. The DV camera is giving people who can't afford to make films a way to tell their stories. I'm all for that, but it should be used only if the content warrants that kind of style. I'm on the Independent Spirit Awards nominating committee this year. I've seen about 150 films and few of them were on DV except for the aforementioned Chuck and Buck and Everything Put Together, so there are still a lot of people out there who are making “films” on film.

ICG: Are there things that you haven't done that you want to do in your career?

SCHREIBER: I want to shoot some bigger budget films but only if the script really interests me.

ICG: Why?

SCHREIBER: Because you get more time.

ICG: What else?

SCHREIBER: There are a lot of directors that I’d like to work with. Mainly, I just want to keep working and learning new thing; get new experiences and tell stories that are worth telling. I thought when I started that I'd be further along than I am today — whatever that means. I guess I thought I would be doing movies that always get released and always get seen. That’s the hardest thing, making a good film that doesn’t get good distribution because it doesn’t have a massive advertising budget behind it. You just learn to live with it and go on to the next project.

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