Week 2: Executing the Vision
Topic: Leader/Follower Relationship
This past week of shooting has been so much fun and already, I feel like I am learning so much. Because much of my film career thus far has been relatively independent, I’ve grown accustomed to framing my own shots, developing my own intuition of what camera movement suits what agenda, and calling “cut” to myself subconsciously. Something really funny happened while on set yesterday; my director yelled cut and I was so focused on the shot, I swear I didn’t even hear her and we all ended up laughing because I legitimately had no reaction. Even though it was a humorous moment, it made me recognize how consume I am by this art. I’ve never really taken a step back to realize it but when I am in the zone of filming, it is almost therapeutic because I am not thinking about anything else. However, this is something I will have to change as now I am no longer working as an individual. I am a part of a team and it is my job to help forward the group’s greater vision.
The way our organization is structured is that Aida, our director, comes out on our shoots with myself (the cinematographer), Florent (the audio engineer), and Amal (our main subject). Before we meet with Amal for whatever we are shooting that day, Aida meets with myself and Florent individually to discuss what she wants from both of us, then we have a team meeting to make sure we are all on the same page. Something I really respect about Aida is even though she is the director and is renowned for her work in journalism with New York Times, Washington Post, Aljazeera English, and so on – she is incredibly humble and encourages others’ opinion. The other day, while we were storyboarding ideas for our big shoot – the opening of the documentary – she asked for my opinion and later in the conversation, brought it up again and said she liked my idea. Even though this was a small moment, it made me feel really good as she does not treat me as a young intern, but as a creative who is capable of giving insightful suggestions.
This trust is incredibly important – not only for our work relationship – but for the work we produce. Personally, I think the relationship between the director and cinematographer is one of the most important in influencing how a film manifests on screen. Once it’s quiet on set and we’re rolling, my job is to execute the vision of the director as closely as possible. It’s actually not as easy as it sounds because once we’re rolling, she can’t really vocalize things to me and so she has to trust my judgment. Though I was really nervous on some of our big shoots this week (an activist talk, an important phone call in the car, and a Ramadan celebration) – Aida made me feel at ease by reminding me it’s okay to exercise my creative vision and telling me “great day of work” after our shoots. These little things mean a lot to me and says a lot about Aida’s leadership as it encourages me to lose the fear and just be excited to be doing what I love!
As I’ve said before – wow – what an amazing opportunity you secured for yourself this summer. What a really interesting environment, much different than many others, in that you’re making decisions that must be somewhat understood before starting as you cannot receive feedback/get additional clarification once cameras are rolling. That does require a lot of trust, and it seems it also requires exceptionally strong communication so that you can be on the same page (and wavelength) with the director. So a potential weakness may be that you can’t check in – the way others might be able to – when working on a shoot (akin to another intern’s project), though of course you can always reshoot – though this is costly. Perhaps it is a weakness as you are not getting feedback in the moment, but sounds like you are getting feedback in the end (all positive thus far!).