American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 49

someone had thrown a javelin through
my jugular. I was stunned to see something so negative about what I was
doing. There are all kinds of lessons you
have to learn in this business, and a big
one is to develop a thick-enough skin.
There is always the next thing. You have
to take reviews with a grain of salt and
move along."
He thus resolved to make the 40mile voyage and move to Hollywood,
though it seemed all his competitors
had better reels. Carpenter notes, "It was
a time when shooting features, documentaries, corporate work - anything!"
seemed out of his grasp. Yet, "as formidable as Hollywood was, even if people
couldn't offer me anything, a lot of them
were pretty nice about it. Some people
were really gracious and encouraging."
While he searched for work, he
used available resources as his own
version of film school. "I was watching a
lot of movies and starting to read
American Cinematographer to find out
what was happening behind the scenes
of films that I really enjoyed," Carpenter
says. "I was starting to devour the magazine, which, at that time, was just about
the only thing you could turn to that
had anything to do with the filmmaking
process, especially in terms of cinematography." He complemented his
studies with weekend screenings and
filmmaker presentations at the AFI.
"Caleb Deschanel [ASC] showed The
Black Stallion, and later The Right Stuff,"
Carpenter recalls. "And I was just going,
'Oh my god, he's so young and look at
the magnificence of his work, and I'm
still skiing on the bunny slopes of cinematography.' That wasn't exactly
encouraging, but at least I knew I could
learn something from the incredible
people who came and spoke."
(Deschanel and Carpenter would later
both work on Titanic, with the former
shooting the modern-day sequences.)
During these formative years,
colleagues Carpenter had worked with
in Orange County were also coming up
to L.A., and some who found work at
companies that produced features would
help Carpenter land interviews for "no-

Top: The cinematographer and his crew share a moment on the set of Titanic. Above, left: After winning
the ASC Award for his work on Titanic, Carpenter celebrates with Cameron. Above, right: Carpenter
poses with his Academy Award, also for his work on Titanic.

budget" films. "One person in particular
was Daryl Kass," Carpenter says. "He'd
been a sound recordist on these documentaries I'd been involved with, and
now he was learning about producing. I
didn't get most of the jobs, but it really
helped me to get in front of people, and
get more 'fluid' and relaxed in an interwww.ascmag.com

view situation. I'm so grateful to Daryl,
because he just kept getting me into
things. He introduced me to John Woo,
for whom I shot Hard Target, his first
picture in the United States. I also got
the opportunity to shoot a cult classic,
The Wizard of Speed and Time, which
featured Mike Jittlov's amazing 'lo-fi'
February 2018

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