American Cinematographer - May 2020 - 31

India-based
cinematographer
Prakash Velayudhan
was paired with Irwin
for a virtual
mentorship through
email
correspondences.

The exchanges have paid off.
When a filmmaker friend asked
Velayudhan for some guidance in
lighting a low-budget, self-financed
feature, Velayudhan recalled some
photos Irwin had shared with him. "I
was getting location stills of Mark's
lighting setups [where] he used some
custom-made lights, China balls and
practical bulbs for some sequences,"
says Velayudhan, who used a similar
approach on his friend's film. "In this
feature film, I did not use any film
lights. That was a great help for the
production and also a big achievement for myself - only because of
Mark."
The mentee adds: "I feel like I
have a great master guru to guide me
in my career!"
Representation a priority
The participants in the mentorship program are not only varied in
their geographical locations but also
diverse in their personal backgrounds. As a transgender woman,
cinematographer and mentee Ava
Benjamin Shorr must navigate sets
that are not always accommodating.

"When you're trans, you are going
through a lot of things that bodily
don't make you as equipped as a
[cisgender] dude who's just walking
through the world of being on set,"
she says. "When you transition, you
lose muscle mass; I've had a couple
transition-related surgeries that have
put me out of work for months at a
time."
Just before applying for the
mentorship program, Shorr went
through a particularly tough shoot on
a low-budget feature. "It was a really,
really hard job for me," she says. "I
felt that between the producers and
the production and sort of the toxicity
of that environment, I was looking for
a mentor or someone who could help
me navigate some of the trials that
would be coming up in my career."
After being accepted into the
program, Shorr was paired with
Rachel Morrison, ASC. In addition to
meeting over coffee, mentor and
mentee have traded text messages.
"Rachel is just so generous with her
thoughts and her energy," says Shorr.
Noting that Morrison shot a feature
while pregnant, Shorr adds, "Things
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like that give me the permission to be
myself and to own who I am."
For Morrison, the experience
was a way of providing another cinematographer with the sort of support
she lacked early in her career. "I felt
like I always had to learn by doing,"
Morrison says. "Every set that I was
on, as they got bigger, was the biggest
set I'd ever been on because I had
never really been mentored by
anyone. Now that I'm in a position to
help, my hope is that it would make it
one step easier for Ava."
In the end, Morrison was so
impressed with Shorr's talent and
energy that she helped her secure an
agent and recommended her for an
HBO series, Equal. Shorr got the job,
and at press time, she had shot three
episodes of the show.
"There are people you hesitate
to recommend because you feel like
the skill might be there, but their
personality isn't always a good fit,"
Morrison notes. "And then there are
people you take real pleasure in
recommending because you know
they'll knock it out of the park - Ava
was one of those people."
➔
May 2020

31
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American Cinematographer - May 2020

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