Kodak Interview
In 2002, Danny was interviewed by kodak.com regarding his thoughts on the art of cinematography and his experience in the field.
“Filmmaking is a great collaboration between different artists. My favorite part of the entire process is that first meeting or two with the director. It’s exciting to have these wonderful ideas pour out, and we bounce our inspirations off each other. Cinematographers have the best job in the world. Like an oil painter you explore your canvas with textures, color and shapes. Film is like your little brother. You know it inside out and you can depend on it. Often on a film shoot you’re in a hasty situation, and you rely on the quality and technology built into the stock to really come through for you. It’s almost like a living thing. It seems organic. It’s not hard to light a scene pretty, I suppose, but illuminating the subtext and telling the story with the progression of visuals is what is really interesting.”
Danny Nowak, CSC studied filmmaking at Simon Fraser University in his native Vancouver. His feature credits include The Big Hit, Hard Core Logo, Downdraft, Heaven’s Tears, A Twist of Faith, Bone Daddy, Barenaked in America, Men With Guns, and the upcoming The Burial Society. His work for television includes Dead Like Me, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, Dead In A Heartbeat, Night Terrors, The Sports Pages, La Femme Nikita, and Twitch City.
Q: How did you become interested in motion picture photography?
A: When I was about nine years old, growing up in Vancouver, my grandfather bought me a copy of a fan magazine called Famous Monsters. I was immediately enthralled with Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, and I became obsessed with the whole horror genre. By the time I was 13 or so, I was making 8 mm films in my backyard using kids on my block as actors. I learned a lot of the basics without ever taking it too seriously, but I never for a minute thought that I would work some day in the film industry. Later these little films began to win local school awards and festivals. At one of these festivals, the judge was a film professor at Simon Fraser University, and they invited me to come study. Suddenly I was surrounded by other filmmakers who were just like myself and had this great enthusiasm for movies. It was at that point that I considered getting into film as a career. I was lucky that everyone else in the class wanted to be a director, so I ended up shooting a lot of their films. We lived and breathed cinema up there.
Q: Most of your work has been in the feature area. Is that by design?
A: Yes. I’ve always thought of myself as a big screen shooter. The tradeoff that I made in order to shoot features was that some of the early films weren’t exactly epics. I guess everybody has to kiss their frogs to meet their prince. The first 35mm film I did was the sequel to Flesh Gordon. We had great fun shooting those movies all right. The thing that I got out of it was watching film rushes every day, seeing them on the big screen, and learning from the subtleties of the film stocks and processes. We did a lot of experimenting, whether it be with light, filters or exposure or looking at composition on the big screen. That’s completely different than on a little TV. I’m surprised that so many directors watch the performances on a tiny 9-inch screen, 25 feet away from the actors. They say that they can translate or imagine what it will be like on the big screen. I find that I’m always sitting right over the operator’s shoulder watching it, because there are all kinds of little things that you’d miss on a little monitor way in the background.
Q: How have the advances in film stocks changed the way you work?
A: It’s a slow growth, and it’s beautiful to watch. When I was shooting my earliest films, I was very appreciative of the quality of the stocks. That was 15 years ago. They’ve gotten so much better and diversified now. You can absolutely rely on them. Often you’re in an emergency situation. The sun may be going down or you don’t have enough time to shoot and you have to draw on your experiences as well as the quality and technology built into the film to really come through for you. It makes you appreciate what the old time cinematographers had to do, and the incredible art that they were achieving with the really slow ASA films. It’s fun to trace general cinematography through the decades and see how the style of lighting has changed with the sensitivity of film stocks. Decades ago they’d use such strong, hard light because the stocks weren’t so sensitive. You can watch a DVD or a movie and really scrutinize it and imagine that they used 10Ks where nowadays we can use a 2K. New tools continue to emerge, and make it easier than it used to be to achieve certain effects, but they also allow you to explore new ways of expressing yourself. The audiences seem to change too. I think John Bailey’s (ASC) term was the ‘post-literate generation’. A lot of these new directors are being brought up on rock videos and do-it-at-home computer editing. The highly charged pace of entertainment and media infiltrates everything in your life. They don’t seem to be coming from a more thoughtful cinematic background. The top creative people in the world earn livings making detergent look sexy. But at the same time, there is an evolution happening, and who’s to say whether it’s for better or worse. The future is always crazy.
Q: How do you devise your approach to the photography of a movie?
A: It’s easy to light a scene pretty, I suppose, and do a nice clever shot. One thing that I’ve always loved in cinematography is telling a story with visuals, revealing the subtext of the script. It’s not just a static shot, like still photography. You’re actually telling a story with the progression of the visuals. I try to do that in all the films I do. I’ll meet up with the director, and after we have several discussions, I’ll sit down and go through the script and make up what I consider the major visual beats of the story. Sometimes it will be like six general beats, but each one of those may be divided into three. I’ll map that on a piece of paper, bring it to the director and then we’ll talk about it. He might say for example, that there’s an important moment that’s not spelled out in the script when this particular character has a profound transformation. That improves and changes my little map. It becomes a really good road map that I can glance back at throughout the shooting of the film and put things into perspective. I’ll make several copies of the map. On one, I’ll jot down notes of different film stocks, and on another one I’ll jot down notes of composition and lenses and maybe camera movement. It’s very helpful in understanding the story, and also when it comes to more practical matters like renting your equipment.
Q: Have you ever considered directing?
A: Cinematography is the best job in the world. Why would I want to direct? I’ve got the best job here. The tools are wonderful and fascinating to work with. It’s like an oil painter exploring his canvas with textures, colour and shapes, but at the same time, you can tell a story. Filmmaking is a great combination of talents. It is a great collaboration between different artists. It also draws from all the different arts as well: theater, movement and painting for composition. It’s very exciting. The odd time you’ll get the dream project, but other times you have to pay the bills and shoot scenes or projects that you have to compromise more than you’d want to.
Q: What’s your dream project?
A: Time is so important that any project with enough time to do your job properly would be a dream project. It’s that important. It all starts with the script and a sensitive director who has a strong storytelling style. I’ve worked with all sorts of directors, and it is fascinating talking to them and watching them work from such a close point of view. When you actually are on set, just a few feet away from where all this creativity is percolating, and you witness the director who’s got that wonderful talent to draw out a performance or devise a scene from an unconventional point of view, that’s so interesting to me. I learn so much from some directors. Some are very technical, and they’ll tell me exactly where to put the camera and what lens to put on, and they’ve got it all pre-edited in their minds. On the other hand, other directors who I love working with, have a lot less technical background, and they might just say to me in very broad terms, ‘I want to cover this scene distant from the actors.’ Some of those directors, especially the ones who come from a strong theatrical background, formed my most satisfying collaborations because they gave me the freedom to excel at what I’m best at. You expect that, because if they’re hiring a supposed expert in imagery, they’re hopefully going to trust you to bring your vision along to meld with their own. Often with these directors, it’s quite an honour being on set with them and watching them work with the actors.
Q: What’s your response to the current hype about digital imaging?
A: Hype is too merciful a word. Frenzy may be better. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about HD and DV, mostly driven by bean-counters. I do agree that if it’s conceptually the right medium for the job, by all means use it. There’s no doubt in my mind that HD is going to match the look of film at some point in the future. Obviously it hasn’t happened yet. Sure, it is amazing when you compare it to traditional video and what has gone before, but in comparisons to film, it’s not the same quality. HD is still in its infancy, and it really does have to be babied. It is suitable for productions that are mainly shot on stages, with minimal location work. In other words, no extremes. Without doubt, HD will grow up, but for the time being, film is more rugged, flexible and beautiful. Film is like your little brother. You know it inside out and you can depend on it. It’s almost like a living thing. It seems organic. I feel I can almost will the film stock to capture some images. I guess a lot of that is from working with it for decades. If you’re under the gun and have to move fast, or you don’t have as much gear as you need, as with a lower budget show, you can really rely on the latest stocks to give you an acceptable image. Whereas HD doesn’t have the latitude, and you may end up using a lot more lights than if you were shooting in film, and using more overhead butterflies to knock down that latitude so that it can be captured by the video properly. It doesn’t have the flexibility to make as good an image as film does right now. Fourteen year old kids might not care, but then you’re underestimating the audiences and making films for the lowest common denominator. You have to give the audience some credit as being intelligent moviegoers if you’re going to be the best that you can be.
June 2002