American Cinematographer - April 2010 - 90

‘Well, if I gave you an electric guitar, would you instantly become Eric Clapton?’ He didn’t know who Eric Clapton was, so the point was lost. Okun: It’s the auteur theory gone berserk. There weren’t auteurs before the 1960s; they were egomaniacs, which is different from an auteur. Then auteurs hit big in the ’60s and ’70s, and we had an explosion of creative people and product. But for an auteur to work, people who know what they’re doing have to support the auteur — quietly. None of these auteurs acted, wrote, directed, lit, shot, edited, created visual effects, answer-printed and did the marketing. They’re auteurs in that they have final say, not because they’re doing it all. And one of the reasons we called the Production Summit was to try to address this ‘auteurism,’ which is isolationism. What we’re breeding by working this way is insecurity. There’s no time for learning or growth; you’ve got to hit a home run right out of the gate. What’s the path for directors these days? They do their commercials and music videos, then they

get their feature film, and then they disappear. Nobody hears from them again. Goi: I’ve seen some very sophisticated work by a lot of young filmmakers, and what gives me hope is that many of

“The greatest images have always come through a spirit of collaboration.”

them recognize the value of what came before them. They recognize the value of great cinematography of the past while also recognizing that they have access to a wonderful technical toolbox today.

Okun: There are a number of visualeffects schools that teach all the tools, and the successful schools are teaching two other things. One is how to see, which is really vital, because nobody seems to understand how to see anything any more. On one film, I had to take the entire visualeffects crew out to lunch in a park once a week and point out things like how the shadows fell; they’d never paid attention to that stuff. The other thing the successful schools are teaching is the study of art. This is where my industry is really suffering. So many people don’t understand that you can tell a story with a stationary image. Look at any great painting, and there’s a story. Your eye goes somewhere, and something is transmitted. Goi: One of my favorite short films is Chris Marker’s La Jetée, which almost entirely comprises still images. I bought a book with every still image from the film in it, and I found it was very unsatisfying. What makes the movie satisfying is that the progression of those images is edited to a certain pace and combined with music and

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American Cinematographer - April 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2010