#buzz moyer

[pablolf]

I would add, from my point of view, that’s the difference between a camera operator and a cinematographer. Janusz, during his prep, will come up with a lighting scheme, a color palette, filter choices, and all sorts of decisions he can make in advance to create a certain look to the film. What was the term you used, a heightened reality? That’s the job of a cinematographer to come up with these looks, but as a camera operator, you cannot have any preconceived notions about anything. You must be open, accessible, and responsive to the moment of creation when it happens inside your frame. If I start thinking about, “I need to frame that more to the right because that will make it look more like heightened reality,” I would be dead in the water on day one. You just can’t think that way. So, all that stuff about look and heightened reality, that might be done in pre-production, but when you’re actually shooting, you have to be able to execute the shots gracefully and cinematically, but it has to be without thought sometimes. It’s like this gut, instinctual, intuitive response.

West Side Story: An interview with Mitch Dubin, and John “Buzz” Moyer (Society of Camera Operators)

[pablolf]

I’m gonna preface this interview with—and I’m sure Buzz will agree—the fact that we shot this movie two-and-a-half years ago. It was the summer of 2019. That in combination with the fact that I know personally, for me as a camera operator, we get sometimes so focused on the frame and what we’re doing that you get completely absorbed and tune everything else out. Once we finish the shot, check the gate, and walk away, I forget everything. Even if we had shot this film last week, I still wouldn’t remember a lot of things because it’s the nature of a camera operator’s mind; you have to concentrate so diligently on the specific frames that you don’t remember anything. I would go to dailies—in the days we used to have dailies—and I’d say, “I don’t remember shooting this.” Or you go to see the movie in the theater and you say, “God, did I shoot this film?”

West Side Story: An interview with Mitch Dubin, and John “Buzz” Moyer (Society of Camera Operators)