http://www.paoloroversi.com/

APE: I talked to you about a year ago right after Canon announced the new 5d markII that shoots video. I called because I wanted to talk with someone who was actually a filmmaker and a photographer to get their opinion on the new product. We got into this huge conversation about film vs. digital and I’ve always wanted to get you on the phone again so I could record the conversation and make a post about it.

I think our conversation was actually a challenge to me. I have a great affinity for film, and it has been interesting to really start studying and testing new systems like the Red and the Canon 5d Mark II.

APE: Originally you were still stuck on film, as many people are, because of limitations you’d discovered shooting digital.

I think I will always be stuck on film and anyone who grew up on it will be. I understand the client’s point of view on a movie poster or big advertising campaign and why they need it to be shot digitally. They’re building an image sometimes from 36 files and they don’t want to have to deal with the back-end post production of scanning all that film. I get it. Digital is a really a quick way to do something.

APE: Didn’t you have a retoucher who preferred to scan a negative over getting a digital file?

All of the good ones do. The 6×7 negative, there’s not chip that’s that size and film has it’s own look and color palette. We’re never going to lose that. The retoucher I’m working with now, who has done some of the biggest fashion and advertising work for the last decade, would much rather work from a film negative than a digital file in terms of skin tone and color. In fact, he even still sees photographers who prefer shooting only on 8×10 polaroid and scanning those images. There are cases where he is making a composite with the skin from polaroid and the product from a digital file. So, when money is no object, digital is just another tool.

My feeling is, when film is the best thing to be used in a certain situation and you love film then you should use it. I love the way a negative comes out of my Mamiya camera or my Leica camera. I love the way it looks straight out of the chemicals, the first time you see it. I never feel that way with a digital file. With digital you have to work hard to get that feeling. I think most people who became photographers did so because they had that one moment in the darkroom where something came up and they looked at it and went “wow that’s cool.”

In the long run, the idea is still the key to the whole thing. If it’s not a good idea and it’s not a well executed photograph from the get go it doesn’t matter. You can make a bad picture on film and a great picture on digital. The percentage of bad pictures to good pictures is still the same and it always will be.

APE: Tell me about the testing you did?

Well, a large aspect of digital photography is the digital tech, or techs, who come to the shoot and help capture and process files. If you’re a company like Warner Bros. or Fox you want a digital company to manage all those files for you. A photographer comes in does his thing and leaves and you have a digital company manage everything. This has been the bulk of my digital shooting experience, and I wanted to test some of the smaller cameras against the big Hasselblad with the p65 back that we use on big advertising shoots. There is no denying that the file produced this way is very very big and impressive, but it is also a very cumbersome and expensive way to work. So I started comparing those files to the Canon 1ds Mark III and the 5d Mark II.

APE: What’d you come up with?

In some ways I like the Canon better. It looks like a smaller file to someone who isn’t familiar with how things work, but the difference between is negligible in terms of resolution.

APE: What about on a billboard?

I think the distance that you are from the billboard makes it so the resolution is not an issue. You know those billboards they have all over LA now, the digital billboards. Apparently those files are very small, so they have to be down res’d to be usable anyway.

APE: What about the clients? Aren’t they demanding that you shoot with the camera that gives you bigger files?

I’ve been doing both and I show the client on screen and it’s funny how often they pick the shot from the 35mm digital. The Hasselblad is almost too medical in a way. You have to do a lot to it to make the skin look good because it’s so detailed.

APE: Isn’t working with digital difficult on set with publicists and celebrities and the whole gang of people who show up at those shoots? Especially when you’re tethered?

People are now used to seeing everything immediately and so it’s more detrimental to come in and do a job where the client expects immediate gratification and you try and tell them they can’t have it. I think that was also the case making movies in the 70’s and 80’s when all of the sudden the video monitors got good enough that there were separate camps setup so everyone could watch video playback. I’m sure the first generation of directors that were dealing with video assist went absolutely bonkers because their actor was coming up and saying maybe I should do it like this or they were running back to hair and make up. And then they got used to it and figured out ways to make it work.

APE: But, hasn’t that turned a movie production into a $100,000,000 project because they have to do so many different takes?

Yes, but it’s just the inevitable progression of it. People just expect a different kind of thing. That being said, I think there is a conversation to be had with the actor where you say “look I want to photograph you and get you to not think about me photographing you.” And honestly, I don’t think that people who are being photographed want to see it as it’s happening. They think they do but once they see it they really don’t. They think “I did my stupid thing where I turn up the corner of my mouth, I’ve got to remember not to do that.” Then you’re telling them something and they’re only thinking about the corner of their mouth. We would all do it, we’re human. First thing people think of when they see the picture is not the context, but what they look like in the picture.

So, it makes it harder for a photographer to find the picture. I’ll give you an example. I just photographed an actor for the cover of a magazine. I was shooting digital and I wanted to try a little different lighting thing, so before the shoot I tried it on my assistant and it looked really cool. When I got the actor in the same setup, it was awful lighting for his face. That’s just something you can’t know until you get your subject in front of the camera. Now if I’m shooting film I would just keep going and say now let’s try this next and try to find my light. But, I’ve now got the publicist, the hair and make up and his people seeing these pictures coming up on the monitor. For all I know the publicist is standing behind me pointing at the monitor and shaking her head to the actor, and there goes his trust in me.

It’s really important that the subject feels confident that the photographer knows what they’re doing. Because, if you’re a celebrity you can have anyone you want to take your picture and it’s your career and business on the line so if you don’t look however it is you wanted to appear, it’s a serious problem. So, with people being able to see the first frames the photographer shoots, he doesn’t have time to figure out the face. It’s no different than shooting a still life. Just like Edward Weston figuring out how to shoot that particular pepper. Each one is different, and you have to find your way. It is just, with film, you could find your way without everyone on the whole shoot watching you.

APE: So, how do you do this digitally now?

What we’ve started doing is create almost a video village like on commercials where we have a second monitor setup and we tell everyone there’s a 5 min. delay before you will see what we’re doing. I run back after 30 shots, do some quick edits, make adjustments and throw it up on the other monitor. We put a little color and exposure package together digitally so when they do take a look it’s ready for them to see. I’m trying to get it back to a polaroid experience where the monitor is black in the background and there’s not a bunch of thumbnails where the actor comes back and starts pointing at thumbnails and wants to see them. There’s never been a situation in the past where someone has sat down and gone through all your film and It’s very strange when that happens now. I try to make a black box around the tech and keep him a little like the wizard of oz, you know, don’t look behind the curtain, there’s no one there,that type of thing.

I do think a photographer has to make a stand for what process will make the best picture, and take the time to educate the client about the choices he has made. I think everyone is figuring out their system because there is something you miss when you keep interrupting the moment to examine the moment you just captured.

APE: And, that’s working?

Yes, it’s working although by the end of the shoot they end up crossing the barrier, but you still get that first impression. And quite honestly if I’m shooting someone who gets the whole thing they don’t want to see every picture anyway. Once they see what I’m doing they’re ok with it. So, you have to gage the person and see that they can give you what they need.

APE: On one shoot we were on you told me that earlier in your career you would script everything out beforehand and then later on in your career it evolved into being a little bit more loose and finding those moments.

Yeah, when I was young I was just inexperienced and I felt like I had to do more homework so that if nothing presented itself I had backup plans. I use to even come up with questions to ask to get different responses like surprise or laughter or whatever and I would tape these questions to the back of the camera and I would make sure and pick the right music too. I still do my research but I try to leave enough time to get something that surprises me too. If you’re too intent on getting your list then your subject never gets to their list. I learned that almost more from directing than from photography. If you have notes every single take for the actor they’re so busy trying to do what you want them to do that they never get to do what they want to do. They have a list too. You’re dealing with a professional actor and if you can get them acting a little bit you unlock this whole bag of tricks and experience they have.

I remember a line from a biography about one of my favorite directors where he said, always roll one for them after you get the one you like. After I get what I need then I always say now you do what you want to do and I’ll just follow along. Some people are like no, no you tell me what to do, but some really open up at that point, and great stuff can happen. And, you’ve got to indulge them because even if they go over to a spot where the light isn’t as good or the background’s not good, they might give you something new. I think the thing to remember too with shooting pictures is that it’s just a picture right. It’s just clicking the button and you need to quit being such an editor in your head saying oh, that’s not a good picture. The road to a good picture is through a lot of bad ones.

APE: Do you think you’ll ever switch completely over to digital?

Do you remember the transition from chrome to neg? Photographers used to shoot chrome all the time but then they switched over and for a long time I was shooting both because I couldn’t stop shooting chrome in certain situations, the light was too perfect for it. I’m sure it will be the same way with digital.

APE: Ok but some things are still better on chrome but now you shoot neg. Why is that?

I haven’t shot chrome in forever just because it’s less versatile. It takes longer to shoot, you have to be way more precise and it’s harder to make prints out of so that went away a long long time ago once prints got good enough.

APE: Interesting. So, maybe the same will happen with digital eventually. Digital is way more versatile.

Yes, digital is more versatile but film still looks like film to me.

APE: Yeah but how did you transition from chrome to film because nothing looks like chrome, right?

Yes, you’re absolutely right.

APE: How does the current economic climate affect your decision to take on a job?

In my head there’s always three reasons to do a job. It’s either money, creative or relationship, or a combination of those. So, a job is not always about money, but it certainly is tough when budgets are slashed to the point that you can’t have the support crew you need, or you lose out on a job to another photographer who basically decided to “buy” the job in order to get the work in their portfolio.

APE: Photographers are obviously not happy about fees being reduced, and the practice of undercutting. Is this just the new way, and are we in trouble because of that attitude?

No, because there will always be a fee structure based on ability and experience and there’s only a certain number of people who can do these jobs. I think it will roll more with the economy. If everyone is making money you’re going to hire the best person but if the economy is down you need to cut some corners and people need to adjust and restructure their budgets to make it work.

If you’re a freelancer that’s what you sign on for when you get into it. No one promises you that you will always get the fees that you got last year or that people will still call you. This business is littered with people who had really high years and now can’t get work. That’s on every photographers mind. There’s nobody that’s bullet proof to making a living, so you have to be careful. You can’t assume since it went one way one year it’s going to go that way the next year.

APE: But, you’re still confident that there’s a future for photography, right?

Yes, absolutely. When I’ve been successful it’s because I’ve been trying to do something that’s a challenge and that’s interesting to me. As long as I’ve done that I’ve been ok.

APE: So, what does the future hold for Sam Jones?

Shooting pictures is my main emphasis, I just shot U2 for Rolling Stone. I also have some film projects in the works, both dramatic and documentary. One of the things I am excited about is using smaller cameras like the 5d to make films that were simply not affordable a few years ago. I have a few esoteric and decidedly non-commmercial ideas up my sleeve, and being able to make those projects happen without outside financing is very intriguing.

APE: Wait, what? Last time I talked to you we were both trying to figure out how anyone could do something serious with that camera.

Well, they cracked the chip and made it manual so you can manually adjust exposure and shutter speeds and then several companies developed follow focus systems and mounts for it, making it way more viable for a cinematic application than when we last talked.

APE: I think having video in your still camera is awesome but it’s really irrelevant if you have no filmmaking skills, right?

Filmmaking was never about the equipment, except in terms of budget. Filmmaking is storytelling, and if you don’t know how to do that, there is no piece of equipment in the world that will help you.

APE: Ok, so why would you pick a 5d over a Red or 35mm or 16mm then?

Well, I wouldn’t, if I had financing. Having the choice to use any camera at all, I would always still choose 35mm. That is the look all these other systems are trying to duplicate, and it is what I use whenever the money is there. But having the financial freedom to go out and say, make a film about the world’s only giraffe jockey, or a documentary on the best chorizo in Los Angeles, well, maybe the 5d is the perfect camera for that, because you can make something that looks very good for very little money, relatively.

APE: So, you can make a movie in your garage then?

Well, yes and no. You still can’t cut any corners on nuts and bolts of filmmaking. You still need a crew–a soundman, an assistant cameraman, a DP or at least a gaffer, etc. And you can’t skip the finish, it takes a lot of post work to realize the potential of the camera. It’s just an interesting new tool that has many possibilities, and is definitely cheaper than the Red or any film-camera system.

APE: What did you shoot your Wilco documentary on?

16mm black and white film stock. Most of the up front expense of that documentary was in the film, processing, and camera rental. But the post production cost as much as the entire shooting budget.

Look, the bottom line is, there are so many ways to produce a project these days, and there is so much speculation about where the photography and film businesses are heading, but one core thing hasn’t changed. Quality work will always be rewarded, and there will always be an audience for powerful images and storytelling. As equipment becomes more affordable, maybe more people will have a chance to make something interesting, and that is always a good thing.

I consider Sam Jones to be one of the top photographers in the country at shooting men. And there are plenty of people who shoot men as people or fashionable or sexy but very few who shoot them “manly,” which is something I love about Sam’s photography. So, that’s a very thin category that I put him in and of course he does a lot of things very well but I’ve worked with him a lot on covers and feature stories because he was at the top of that list. I also discovered that he loves to surf, so I put him on some portrait and cover shoots with the big surfers that worked our really well for me. I also noticed something when working on set with Sam that really makes a difference when he’s shooting celebrities. He knows a lot of Hollywood insiders and not just actors, but the cinematographers, editors and sound guys who are respected by actors for their craft. He’ll get into a conversation at the beginning of a shoot with the subject and start talking about the industry, the people they both know and you can see the I’m-on-a-shoot patina start to fade away. Sam made a critically acclaimed documentary in 2002 on the band Wilco called I Am Trying to Break Your Heart and was rumored to be working on an Infinite Jest movie with David Foster Wallace at the time of his death.

Here’s part one of the interview:

APE: Tell me how you got started and how you got into shooting actors and doing the Hollywood thing?

In college at Cal State Fullerton I was a photojournalist at our college newspaper and they had a really good daily newspaper that won the equivalent of the pac 10 competition of newspapers. That led to being a stringer for the associated press, where I worked for over 3 years covering news, sports, and entertainment. I moved to downtown LA and lived 2 miles from the bureau and just threw myself in it. I actually had one stretch where I shot for 61 days without a break.

APE: Did you know before college that you wanted to be a photographer?

No, not at all. I was in bands and always thought I was going to be a musician and make records. I was doing both but I got so busy with photography. Working for the AP was amazing, because we were photographing the national news. You weren’t sent in if it didn’t have some kind of national appeal and in LA we had the Dodgers, Raiders, Lakers, UCLA, Academy Awards, Riots, Savings and Loan Fraud, Courthouse Stakeouts; ­that whole era was just crazy. If it was national news and it happened in LA you were expected to shoot it. That was 1989 – 1992.

The Associated Press had a syndication company called AP Wide World at the time and they would syndicate the images we shot to magazines. They would take the photos that stringers made for very little money and resell them to publications like Vanity Fair. They resold some of my Los Angeles Riots images to VF, and the actor Tim Robbins saw it. He was getting ready to direct a movie called Bob Roberts at the time, and he wanted those kinds of photojournalistic pictures to publicize his movie. So, he found me and called up and asked if I knew how to shoot actors. Part of the AP job was you had to go to those 20-minutes-in-a-hotel-room-with-Harrison-Ford-and-make-a-portrait-of-him movie junkets. I was always doing that stuff so I told him yes, no problem.

So, I got hired to be a still photographer on Bob Roberts and got to shoot the movie poster and the whole thing. He had a bunch of big actors playing small rolls in that movie like Susan Sarandon, James Spader and John Cusack. During the shooting of the movie I would pull these actors aside and make large and medium format portraits of them.

APE: Wait, is it common that someone shooting a movie is going to be making portraits on the side too?

No, I don’t think that it was, but this was not a normal shoot at all. Tim wanted the film to have a very realistic feel, so he let me do a lot of my shooting, especially of press scenes, from wherever I wanted. This included being able to walk into the scene, shoot without a blimp, and even bump the cinematographer during press scrums.

APE: You were in the movie too?

Oh yeah, the back of my head is all over the movie. He wanted me to be like a press photographer who was assigned to the beat of this politician [Bob Roberts]. They would set up the scene for a press conference and Tim would go “does this look right?” I remember once telling him that the person handling the press conference should not be saying “you there” because they would know everyone by name.  I told him to use reporters first names, and they actually changed the script to reflect this advice. I was having a blast and was thinking this still photography gig is awesome.

Then I got my rude awakening. Someone referred me to New Line Cinema for another film, and they said we’ll give you a job being a still photographer on this movie but it shoots in Chicago and we can’t afford to send you there so you have to work as a local. I had to call an acquaintance that I went to school with to ask if I could sleep on his floor for $100/month. It was freezing and the crew was pretty shitty to me.

APE: So, you went from acting in a movie you were shooting and giving the director notes to just another guy on set?

Oh yeah and on the Tim Robbins movie his cinematographer was Robert Altman’s cinematographer Jean Lepine and he totally took me under his wing. I used to come in and ask him how he was lighting this scene, why are you doing this, why are you doing that, why are you changing all the bulbs out? I learned so much from him and looking back on it I was probably a total pain in the ass, but he was so nice. So the main people I talked to on set were the DP, Producer and the Actors. Then I go to this job in Chicago and I’m persona non grata. It’s winter and all the shoots are night shoots, the blimp is freezing to my face and the camera would just stop working. It pretty much sucked, and I barely got paid a living wage.

So, I did that and got another New Line job doing a film called Loaded Weapon and I’m a pretty friendly guy so I made friends with Sam Jackson and some other people in the cast and crew.  New Line says they’re going to put me up to do the poster. Then they came back to me and said Emilio Estevez doesn’t want you to shoot the poster he want’s Bonnie Schiffman to shoot it. I was a kid at the time, like 22 and I got kind of pissed off so I walked up the Emilio and said “hey man why didn’t you want me to shoot the poster.” I’m sure he was like, what is this still photographer doing talking to me? After that I decided I wasn’t going to do any more still jobs, because I basically don’t like doing jobs where I’m not wanted. With photojournalism there was a little of that, but being the still photographer on set there was a lot of that. It takes a totally different kind of personality. I think the photographers who do amazing work on films are stealth people who like not being seen and staying in the shadows getting the picture and not talking to anyone.

APE: Yeah, not asking the DP why he’s lighting something a certain way or helping the director with a scene.

Yeah, exactly. If it wasn’t clear what my calling was after that, it was clear it was not doing something behind the scenes.

APE: So, how did you move past that?

I just started flying to New York and meeting with people. I don’t know if it was just out of stupidity, but when you call a photo editor and they say portfolio drop off day is this and pickup day is this and if you’re out of town FedEx it to here, I just figured my portfolio didn’t have much of a chance of being looked at. I decided I’m just going to go there and tell them that I’ve flown here all the way from LA just to see them. I picked my ten favorite magazines and told them I only have one portfolio and I’m only here for 3 days, so If I drop it off I won’t have it for my next meeting. It worked. Maybe they took pity on me, but I had a lot of face to face meetings, and Entertainment Weekly ended up giving me my first magazine job.

APE: How was your book at the time? Was it a decent book?

It was all 4×5 chromes in these black mattes so you had to look at them on a light table, but 4×5 chromes were impressive to look at. I had Tim Robbins, John Cusack, Susan Sarandon and Gore Vidal. It was pretty much a mixture of the film stuff and some AP portraits.

Then, I started getting little tiny jobs at magazines. My first EW job was a parking space. I had to shoot Tom Arnold’s parking space. It was the dumbest job ever. He was feuding with some other actor over a parking space.

APE: And, you crushed it [laughing].

Oh my god, I must have shot 20 rolls. I brought lights and grabbed some security guard and said ok you walk through the background. I lost sleep over the parking spot shoot thinking, I’ve got to impress them.

APE: Right, you were thinking this has to be the best parking space they’ve ever seen in their life. And it was, right?

Quarter page in the back of EW. They ended up using the shot with the security guard’s feet in it.

APE: And they called you the next week to shoot Tom Cruise?

Ha, No. I moved from parking space to Doogie Howser and that was 1/4 page as well. Then there was also a bunch of business stuff that I was shooting. There were some AP environmental business shots that I had blown up in my portfolio, like the president of Bank of America, that kind of thing. So I ended up getting work from some business magazines right off too.

APE: I think a lot of people want to know how you go from 1/4 page of a parking spot to shooting the cover?

You know what it is? The photo editor sees the whole shoot and so it’s not just the one picture in the magazine that they judge you by. I shot features for a long time before I got to shoot a cover. Even when I was doing a 1 page shot I was always trying 3, 4 and 5 setups. I was shooting like it was a cover and full feature because you never know, it could get bumped up. I think there was a couple photo editors early on at Time, EW, US and Premiere who just started making a case to their Art Director and their Editor that this photographer is working his ass off and is good and they should let him do it. That was the case with me, where someone finally said we should give him the cover, or at least I remember it being a cover try. I think back at what I made actors do for 1 page, because I was telling them it might be more pages, so we need to shoot more setups and try a bunch of ideas and we had extra clothes and locations ready. I was syndicating my pictures with Gamma Liaison at the time and because of all these setups, I actually had several syndicated covers before I was assigned an actual cover. So, those tear sheets were in my book and that helped me out as well.

APE: I recall a really big cover run you had at Esquire and GQ. You seemed to be the cover guy for those magazines.

It was funny because there was a period where I was shooting covers for both, and often in the same month. I don’t think that went over too well.

APE: I don’t think it would really. How did you pull that off.

I didn’t have a contract with either one so in my mind I figured it wasn’t a problem. I had originally thought having a contract was the way to go, especially since a lot of photographers that I admired had them, but for me, it turned out to be a better thing not to have one. I never wanted to have to shoot an assignment I wasn’t interested in, just because I was contracted to do so.

APE: It seems like a lot of actors and publicists have a list of photographers they want to work with, so how much does it help to be on an actors list? Like Clooney, I’ve seen you shoot a lot of George Clooney covers and heard you two are friends.

That cover with the hats for Esquire was the first shoot I did with him and he didn’t know me from Adam at the time but the magazine suggested me and he said ok. Then I shot him and we had a good time, so we developed a pretty good working relationship. I will say I feel lucky to have done so many shoots with him, because he is not the type of guy to demand a certain photographer. He’s a lot more low maintenance about that kind of stuff. However, he has been very loyal, and he will ask for me when he has a commercial shoot in Japan or something like that, and I’m very grateful for that.

APE: Ok, but on the other hand if I have a Clooney shoot I might hire Sam Jones because I know I’ll get more than 30 minutes, because you guys are friends.

That’s true, but there’s also the other side of that. A magazine isn’t always going to want the same photographer to shoot the same actor, and I get that. No magazine wants to be told they have to use a certain photographer. I have certainly lost out on jobs where the magazine wanted to use me, but the actor requested someone else, so it works both ways. I have, like a lot of photographers, a few actors that regularly request me, and it is great to have that security of knowing you will be asked to do a lot of shoots with that person.

APE: What about the publicists who are pushing certain photographers?

There’s publicists who really know their job and who really want to match up the right photographer with their client. If you’re an actor, one of the things you expect your publicist to do is make sure that when the cover comes out and you’re on it, that the shoot worked out. That is a publicists job, so I understand the really pushing for a photographer they trust. However, this focus can become rather narrow, and it is tough to lose a job you know you are right for because a publicist stayed with a familiar choice. Anyone that’s been taking pictures in Hollywood is so used to not getting the job for some weird reason that makes no sense. You have to accept it too. I was just on hold for two weeks for a movie poster, and had even started production on the job when the lead actor informed the studio he wanted to work with another photographer who is a good friend of his. You have to just say ok, because I’ve been in the position where I’ve done that to another photographer, so it all comes around. And then sometimes you will be in a situation where there’s several actors and publicists involved and one actor says they want to use a different photographer, where the other actors and publicists may not even know or care about the decision, so it’s crazy.

I understand the element of sucking up that goes on, I’m just not very good at it. I always try to come at it from the perspective of making great pictures, and making sure the magazine, or client gets what they need. This may mean pushing for more risky set-ups or pushing the actor a bit to try something new, which can be uncomfortable for some publicists.

APE: That’s probably removed you from a couple lists.

Yes, but also it’s kept me working in the editorial environment, where pictures need to be more than just safe and pretty. I always loved working for magazines because that’s where I started and you go out and spend a day, or a few hours, with an actor and a writer spends a day with them as well and you photograph them at that one moment in their lives where you try to get something that’s revealing, interesting and compelling about them. If the story and pictures work well together it’s still one of my favorite things to read. I always want to be able to do that.

Part 2 tomorrow.

I’m hearing via email sources and twitter that the great Irving Penn has died (age, 92).

NYTimes Obit: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/arts/design/08penn.html