American Cinematographer - February 2017 - 24

Cinematographer Pieter Vermeer.

shot a professor's movie before graduating
- and she then moved on to projects like
Girlfriend (2010), a $150,000 feature starring a young man with Down syndrome.
"On that set I learned a lot about people
with Down syndrome, and it really changed
me," she says. "It made me a more
compassionate human being."
Tran was similarly affected by her
work on the award-winning documentary
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of
Grace Lee Boggs. "Director Grace Lee and I
worked on that for six years, and it really
changed the way I see the world today. It's
the reason I started gardening, it's the
reason why I became more interested in
politics, and all of that makes me a better
storyteller."
Tran's interest in conservation
informs not only her approach to storytelling, but also her feelings regarding the
film-versus-digital debate. "I used to love

Pieter Vermeer
Dutch director of photography Pieter
Vermeer also found his way to cinema via
still photography. "Both of my parents are
artists, so I grew up in a visual environment," he explains. At the same time,
Vermeer was becoming exposed to the
work of filmmakers like Bertolucci, Fassbinder, Polanski and Scorsese. "I became
more and more interested in telling stories
with a camera as opposed to just dealing
with a single image," he says.
His first break came with an internship operating a primitive form of video
assist for director Pieter Verhoeff. "Eventually, Pieter took me on to his next movie,
where I worked in the electrical department," Vermeer recalls. Vermeer went on
to work as a grip and gaffer on a number of
films in the Netherlands, ultimately becoming a director of photography in commercials. "I went international, shooting
commercials in France, England, the U.S. -
which led me to relocate to New York in
1997."
Through music videos and commercials, Vermeer met director Elliott Lester,
who asked the cinematographer to shoot
his features Nightingale (2014) and After-

On diplomacy and
collaboration:
"You're dealing with people all day
long when you make films, and
your talent will stay in a box if
you don't figure people out - a
director or producer who doesn't
know what they want or
communicates in a way you're not
used to. It's more than just your
art; it's a collaborative medium,
and you're dealing with different
people and different scenarios,
schedules, budgets and conditions.
There are so many variables that
go into it. You have to be able to
adapt and figure it out."
- Paul Hook, ICM Partners
math (2016). These films allowed Vermeer
to flex different creative muscles than he
had been accustomed to with his shorterform work. "Commercials and features are
quite different animals," he says. "In a film,
you have so much more time to tell your
story and to develop your shots and scenes;
in commercials, you have 30 to 60 seconds
and generally the main purpose is to sell
something."
While working in features, commercials and music videos has allowed Vermeer
to shoot extensively on film negative, he has
fully embraced the digital revolution. "I like
the latitude and color space of digital," he
says, having shot his last three features on
Arri Alexa cameras. "Don't get me wrong, I
sometimes miss the texture and grain that
come with shooting film. Unfortunately, in
my experience the infrastructure for shooting on film is slowly disappearing; it's difficult to find the right people and the right
labs."
When shooting digital anamorphic,
Vermeer tries to take the sharp edges off by
using older glass like Panavision C and E
lenses. "I'm always trying to deconstruct the

On making a good impression:
"What comes first: the agent or the project? Often it's the project, so how do you get the project? Socializing. You
need to make the contacts. There are some cinematographers whose talent may be no better than the next person's,
but they still rise to the top because people like them. As agents, we have to sell your disposition as well as your
talent. Do the producer and director want to see your face every day at 7:30 in the morning? We often look for
people who aren't divas - that can be career suicide when you're just starting out."
- Jonathan Silverman, Intrinsic

February 2017

American Cinematographer

Vermeer photo by Jan Welters.

printing in the darkroom, and as a still
photographer I was one of the last photojournalists to switch to digital," she says.
"However, I quickly learned to adapt to the
new format, and there seemed to be a lot
less waste, which is important to me."
At the time of this writing, Tran had
just shot a pilot for HBO called Mogadishu,
Minnesota, and was prepping for the
presentation of two narrative features at
Sundance entitled The Little Hours and
Deidra & Laney Rob a Train. She reiterates
her belief that it's ultimately all about story:
"Technical aspects aside, as long as I'm
telling meaningful and impactful stories, I'm
a happy shooter."

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