FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS


You can read this FAQ top to bottom, however - all questions and answers are hyperlinked, so please feel free to use the index below to jump to whatever you’re looking for:




  • Why don’t I take general meetings with aspiring DPs ?

  • What was my early childhood like ?

  • What was my early relationship with cinema ?

  • How did I get into filmmaking ?

  • What about my teenage years?

  • What was my experience with film school?

  • How did I get started in the film industry?

  • How did I start becoming successful?

  • How did I make the transition into narrative?

  • What do I want from my career, what are my goals?

  • How do I approach life / work balance?

  • What have I learned about managing my money as a freelancer?

  • How do I network, sell, and position myself to get more work?

  • How do you get an agent?

  • What does the agent do for you?

  • What cameras and lenses do I shoot on?

  • What is my approach to preproduction?

  • What is my approach to lighting?

  • What is my approach to working with directors?

  • What is my approach to color?

  • What are my favorite books on filmmaking?

  • What are my favorite films?

  • What am I interested in outside of work?

  • What advice would I give to a young DP in the first few years of their career?

  • Do I own equipment?

  • Can I shadow you? Will you be my mentor?

 

WHY DON'T I TAKE GENERAL MEETINGS WITH ASPIRING DPS?

If you’re reading this, you may have reached out to me and asked to meet up in person. I’d love to have the time to meet with every person who reaches out to me. Unfortunately, I do not have the time, and I do not take general meetings in any form - in person, on the phone, or over Zoom.

My schedule is fully blocked out between my commitments to health, career, family, (close) friends, and personal projects. Bottom line: I don’t have as much time as I’d like to get coffee or lunch with my best friends, so how can I justify it with a stranger?

However, I believe there’s nothing more important in life than helping others. My intent is not to withhold knowledge or advice that might be of value to others. In fact, I’d like to be a source of information and experience for younger filmmakers. That’s where this FAQ comes into play.

First of all, I suggest you start by listening to the podcast interviews I’ve done over the years. They will give you a good sense of my personality and general perspective on filmmaking. Those are available here.

For more specific and in-depth information, please consult this FAQ. If there is a specific question you have that is not addressed in it, let me know and I will update it.

 

WHAT WAS MY EARLY CHILDHOOD LIKE?

I was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania during the summer of 1987. Bucks County is the outer edge of Philadelphia’s outer suburbs. It’s gorgeous - heavily forested, with rolling agricultural fields and dotted with historic, farmhouse stone homes and hundred + year old Victorians. The kind of classic New England (although not technically in New England) environment where Stephen King’s novels take place.

My mother was a dermatologist and my father was a magazine publisher. My mother had been raised Catholic in an impoverished central Pennsylvania mining town, by austere and devoutly religious parents. My father was raised Jewish, in the suburbs of New Jersey. His parents could not have been more different from my mother’s. His father worked in business, commuting to New York City to work, while his mother was a classic 1950s suburban housewife.

My parents met in Philadelphia, at a Super Bowl party in 1981. They married, to the displeasure of both of their families, and after a few years were pregnant with their firstborn, yours truly. Not long after I was born, my mother became pregnant with my sister, Olivia.

We were raised in a small townhouse in the modest, lower middle class township of Chalfont. Our family life was relatively peaceful, and quite good. By the time I was eight, my parents had both independently become successful in their careers, and we moved to a larger home in the more affluent town of Doylestown.

I went to elementary school much closer to the city, near my father’s office in Blue Bell, at a small, liberal kind of private school called Oak Lane Day School, in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. 

The art program at Oak Lane was exceptional, taught by Belgian holocaust survivor, Armand Mednick, in the basement of an old barn on campus. We divided our time between working with clay, and sitting in a dusty room with a projector, as Armand used a slide machine to guide us on a visual tour through the history of art.

One thing Armand made clear, again and again, was that art wasn’t just something to admire, to learn about, and to do for fun; it was something you could build your entire life around. It was something you could do do. Armand, and his insistence on the feasibility of an artistic life were influential in my own decision to become a professional artist.

 

WHAT WAS MY EARLY RELATIONSHIP WITH CINEMA?

When I was very young, my father let me watch R rated films. By the time I was five, I’d seen Arnold Schwarzenegger films like The Terminator, Commando,Total Recall, and Conan the Barbarian.

In addition to a healthy diet of late 80’s / early 90’s action cinema, my father introduced me to Star Trek, which became an obsession. He’d bought all of the Original Series and what had been released of The Next Generation on VHS, and I would watch and rewatch them again and again.

Somewhere in there, I developed a strong, early love of cinema. It was an important part of my childhood, and I considered my relationship with cinema to be a significant part of my identity. I would fantasize for hours about the films I’d make someday, even before I was totally conscious of the process of filmmaking beyond the final product.

 

HOW DID I GET INTO FILMMAKING?

Throughout my early childhood, my father had a Hi-8 camcorder he used to shoot home movies. When I was nine years old, I decided it was time to make some movies of my own. My sister and I had built relatively well-developed Lego worlds of our own. Hers was an idyllic, suburban town. Mine was a space station.

I shot a trilogy of films concerning the relationship between my space station and her town. The first is a blur, it happened somewhat spontaneously and I can’t remember the details. 

The second film was a Kaiju story, about a giant cat terrorizing the inhabitants of my sister’s town, played by our cat Maxime. The crew of the space station come down to the planet to battle and ultimately defeat this feline menace. 

The third film in the trilogy was the most sophisticated. 

In it, the townsfolk become infected by a plague, their existence yet again thrust into jeopardy. And again, the heroic crew of the space station travel down to the planet and embark on a quest across its surface to find ingredients for a cure to this viral agent. During their journey, they encounter obstacles such as cyborgs, sharks, and savage natives - who are killed (in self defense) in a brutal stop-motion sequence which included mild gore and caused my mother to become terribly upset.

The films were a huge step for me, but for some reason I didn’t continue making them, and it wouldn’t be until my teenage years that I resumed filmmaking.

 

What about my teenage years?


When I was twelve, my family moved to California. Long story short: both of my parents had low-key midlife crises at the same time, rebooted their careers, and we ended up in Palo Alto, CA.

Palo Alto was a crazy place to be a teenager. There was a lot of academic pressure put on students - many people’s parents were very successful in Silicon Valley, or affiliated with next-door Stanford University. There was a palpable sense that your performance as a student in each class, each homework assignment, and each test could be a pivotal moment in determining the direction and outcome of your future life. That one Spanish test could mean the difference between the Ivy League, and a state school. And the difference between the Ivy League and the UC system could mean the difference between wealth, success, and security, or failure, poverty and misery.

Many buckled under this pressure, forgoing a social life entirely - living in isolated worlds of study and “achievement.” Palo Alto had (has?) the highest levels of teen suicide in the nation. By leaps and bounds. There was so much teen suicide in Palo Alto that the CDC launched their first-ever investigation into our “suicide cluster,” to determine if there could possibly be a viral / biological / environmental factor. I won’t get into specifics, but I had several peers who ended their own lives. One of them was a good friend.

On the other hand, perhaps as a counter-reaction to the specter of great expectations and academic pressure, we partied hard. Smoked a lot of weed. A hell of a lot. Drank a lot. Fucked a lot. Got in a lot of trouble. General not giving a fuck, and hell raising. Normal teenage behavior, but I suspect somewhat amplified by our circumstances.

Paly, as Palo Alto High School is referred, had a great video production program.

It was run by a 70s-era NYU / Tisch grad, Ron Williamson. He was intense - fiery, energetic, wild-eyed, and deeply passionate about cinema. Specifically, he taught and pushed us toward what he referred to as “post-modern” cinema. I’m not sure the term is used today the way he used it, but when he used it, he meant mid/late 90s and early 2000s movement defined by unconventional story structure and formal techniques. Non-linear and/or meta plots, heightened visual style, and sometimes avant garde editing. This included films such as:


For every one of those films, there was a poster on the classroom wall.

The classroom was a computer lab, about twenty old-school Bondi Blue plastic iMacs for students to edit on. And there were about twenty camcorders. 

I took the class an elective, starting my first semester Freshmen year. Immediately, I threw myself into it with a passion, dedication, and boundless creativity that surprised myself, and everyone around me. It never felt like work - it was pure fun. 

Over the next four years, I made about two dozen short films. Funny, psychedelic, violent, and experimental.  Heavily influenced by the “post modern” style favored by Mr. Williamson. By the end of Senior year, I had become deeply experienced in writing, producing, directing, shooting, and editing no budget short films.

 

Seedling (2004)

 

As the question of college applications loomed, it felt like my only option was film school. I was a smart kid - but a bad student, with poor grades. I wasn’t interested in anything else, and I certainly wasn’t good at anything else. So, film school it was.

Despite my poor grades, I got into the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. I had a great SAT score and rounded my application out with genuinely bold, dark writing samples. I swung for the fences, and it worked.

I graduated Paly in Spring 2006.

 

What was my experience with Film School?


At USC, I floundered. My first semester, I didn’t make any friends - and I didn’t make any films either. Due to some unfortunate “general eduction” requimrent blunders, it would be two years before I got to the introduction to film production class.

On my way there, I took many great, enriching Critical Studies classes. Classes focused on Kubrick, Hitchcock, Sci-Fi & Horror, Race, Class & Gender, among others. I loved it. But I still wasn’t making films. 

One day I was getting high, and it hit me: I was a loser. I’d come to USC film school - an expensive, prestigious program - to become a filmmaker, and I hadn’t made a single film in two years.

The next day I snapped into it. I pitched an idea to my friend and classmate Victor Mathieu, and we got right to it. Within six weeks we had completed a horror short film, Now We Can Be Together (2008).

 

Now We Can Be Together (2008)

 

The second semester of my Junior year, I finally made it to 190, the first course of the official Production program - titled Intro the Film Production.. The experience I brought to my work in was much deeper than the other students, many of whom were making films for the first time. My experience and already-developed eye caught the attention of a classmate, Lee Roy Kunz.

Lee Roy was interested in collaborating with me - he writing and directing, me shooting.This was the first time I’d ever been asked to shoot someone else’s film, and it caught me off guard. Thus far, I had always considered myself a director, because I’d directing every one of the many films I’d made, up to that point. I’d never considered for a moment becoming anything other than a director.

I politely declined the opportunity to work with Lee Roy a couple times, preferring to focus on my own directional ambitions.

Near the end of the semester, Lee pitched me on shooting his first feature. It was a coming-of-age dramedy, that would shoot over the summer in Denver, Colorado. I didn’t want to be a DP, but being offered a tiny-yet-real indie feature while you’re still ion film school? Couldn’t turn it down.

But as we prepped the film, we realized we needed the entire summer to prep it, and production would have to be in the fall - during the next semester. Both Lee Roy and I took an official leave of absence from school, and headed to Colorado.

 

HOW DID I GET STARTED IN THE FILM INDUSTRY


The film was called A Beer Tale. It’s about two orphaned brothers who inherent their parents brewery, and their misadventures growing up, making beer and falling in love. It was a small, simple indie film. Worth noting - although we shot the film in September 2009, but it was not released until 2012.

A Beer Tale (2009) trailer



Production was intense. Shooting a feature in twenty days is an incredible challenge under any circumstances, and on top of that we were all so green. But we had a great time, and I learned a lot of lessons about filmmaking. I probably learned more about filmmaking over that month than I would have in four years of film school twice over.

By the time we wrapped, I had decided to pursue cinematography full time. I loved the experience so much, and realized that it had been the camera and photography I’d enjoyed about filmmaking all along.

I officially dropped out of USC, bought a Canon 5D Mark II package, and started putting myself out there. I worked my limited network, and responded to Craigslist postings for gigs. Before long, I was moderately busy shooting extremely low budget rap videos and short films. 

On almost every job I did, the only qualifications required were owning a limited DSLR package. So by owning that package, I could guarantee steady-ish work on the absolute rock bottom of what could loosely be called the film industry.

I thought things would pick up quicker, and I’d be able to make another film again, but that didn’t happen. I spent a few years in the no budget rap video game, paying my dues. Shooting videos like this, and this.

 

HOW DID I START BECOMING SUCCESSFUL?


In summer 2010, I reconnected with a peripheral social acquaintance from college, Sam Pressman, who had learned that I been pursuing DPing, and asked me to shoot a video he was going to direct. He didn’t have a concept, or any resources, but the track was killer. Blackbird Blackbird’s “Pure.”

I drove up to Oakland, where we would shoot. As the shoot loomed, we still had no concept, only a beautiful friend of mine from Paly as talent, my camera package, and a warehouse location. Two days before we were to shoot, I had a dream unlike any I’d had before or sense - it was purely visual, more similar to visions I’ve had on LSD than any dream I’ve had. Abstract, a ball of matter, like mud and yarn, forming at high velocity wind and crushing gravity. It felt like a comsmological event.

The next day, the day before we shot, Sam reported a similar experience. We’d had the same dream. I knew then that it meant something. Still, it didn’t directly influence our approach to the video, but I believe it did influence the editorial process.


Blackbird Blackbird - Pure (2010)

Got fired from Royal Interactive Media, assistant editor job.

Sam had gone to Stanford with Abteen Bagheri. Abteen saw Pure, and a year later when it was time for him to make his first post-College video, I was the only DP he knew of. He reached out to me, and the next thing I knew I was on a plane to New York to shoot another no budget rap video, for an unknown artist, ASAP Rocky.

ASAP Rocky - Peso (2011)

Abteen and I rolled right into a series of videos that would create a strong foundation for my career. The first breakthrough video we did, about six months after Peso, was Delta Spirit - California.

Delta Spirit - California (2012)


After Delta Spirit, we moved right into Blood Orange, I’m Sorry We Lied.

Blood Orange - I’m Sorry We Lied (2012)


Abteen and I followed Delta Spirit with a remarkable run of projects that defined both of our careers.

Through my work with Abteen, I came across the radar of Saman Kesh. Saman and I also had a run of quite a number of memorable projects that caught a lot of attention over the next couple of years.


Not long after my work with Saman, I caught the attention of Ace Norton. Ace and I had a quick run of fashion films that all hit hard, and boosted my career and brough his back on track.


Rhie - The Purgatory of Monotony (2014)

Between my work with Abteen and Saman, and Ace, I established myself in the eyes of the young music video filmmaker scene of that era.

I made dozens and dozens of music videos over the next few years, along with short films, and starting to do some commercials. At this point, I had momentum and a lot of cool projects and relationships with filmmakers happened - too many to detail play-by-play here. If you are interested in more depth, all notable projects I have made of any kind are listed in chronological order on my Archive page.

HOW DID I MAKE THE TRANSITION INTO NARRATIVE?


Fairly early on, Saman and I made a Sci-Fi short film, Controller (2013).

Controller (2013)


We made another short fil, Hit TV (2016)

Hit TV (2016)

Another filmmaker I’d been working with in music video and commercials, was Luke Gilford. He hired me to shoot his Sci-Fi short Connected (2016), with Pam Anderson.

Connected (2016)


Through Luke, I met Oliver Daly, and we made Miles (2015).

Miles (2016)

I also made a really cool Gremlins fan film with Ryan Something, Gremlins: Recall (2017).

Gremlins: Recall (2017)

The short films caught the attention of Nick Antosca, then a budding screenwriter who had just gotten his first TV show greenlit, a horror anthology series for NBCUniversal through the SYFY, Channel Zero. Each season was to be a different run of six hourlong episodes helmed by a single director.

I came on board to shoot Season 2, titled No-End House. It turned out well, production went went smoothly, and Nick brought me back to shoot the next season, and the next after that - until its cancellation after Season 4.

Channel Zero, Seasons 2 - 4


Steven Piet directed Season 2, No-End House.

Channel Zero: No-End House (2017)


Arkasha Stevenson directed Season 3, Butcher’s Block.

Channel Zero: No-End House (2017)

E.L. Katz directed Season 4, The Dream Door.

Channel Zero: No-End House (2017)