Film Courage: When you were hired as a cinematographer on your first film how prepared were you
that first day? Bruce Logan, cinematographer/writer/director: I think the first live-action film I shot was
for a guy called Roy Cannon who was Stanley Kubrick's prop master on 2001
and he had this little dark, noir mystery that he wanted to film so we
shot in them in a three-story walk-up in London and you know I have to say
ignorant so arrogance, I don't know which it was? You know it's like I knew how to
load an Arriflex and I had a couple of sun lamps which a
handheld lights and I knew how to read an exposure meter and I said I could do
this yeah and that was the first live-action tour my I show as as a DP
for somebody else you know I obviously shot stuff for myself growing up but you
know that was the first so I was probably very am prepared but I think
they have a natural error bent for it you know and then the next live-action
feature that I shot was with a friend that he was making canopy a music movie
and so it was it was a very bizarre it was my was like a long music video and I
shot that and I have a knack for moving people into lighting that was really
good so I I don't think I used the light on that movie but I was able to move the
action of the movie into really great lighting situations and shoot with
natural light and everybody everybody looked at the footage and say hey this
is really great it looks so natural and you know alive you know and that's
because it was you know so there wasn't until much later that I learned about
lighting and then I think as I learned about lighting I think my I think might
work worse in terms of it had a very kind of lit look to it and then once I
had mastered those tools I was able to use those same tools to create very
naturalistic lighting but with with artificial sources so there was a
progression that but luckily I don't I never screwed up bad enough not to get
the next gig so you know so the old saying you need to know the rules before
you can break them kind of thing applies to the lighting yes I think so but also
I think the last night alone that I tell people that ask me what what they should
do is you know what should I be should I get a job as a loader and then be an
assistant cameraman and then be an operator and then be a DP and my answer
that if you want to be a DP that you go ahead and be a DP and start shooting and
you know learn learn from what you see from your results and you're probably
going to find a level as you work your way up that you're you're good enough
for a particular project you know but I think taking the taking the bit by the
horns and saying I'm going to do this job and just try your hardest every
opportunity that you get to shoot then that that that was my path not the or
not the conventional path you know at what point in your career and which
project where you headed off to set and you realize wow this is I you know I
need to be really prepared I can't mess up and then it might have gotten in your
head a little bit because the stakes were higher
you know everybody kind of hopes to get to a certain point and then there's a
new problem of Wow no there's all this pressure on you right I think the most
pressure I ever felt was I did a project called incredible shrinking woman which
was a movie with Lily Tomlin and I had decided to do all the visual if I was
the effects the visual effects director and the director of photography and I
decided to do all the only effects is rear projection and front projection
which is a technique where you shoot the actors in front of the life-life plates
that are being projected so once you send that film to the lab that's you're
done there's no optical process there's no post process to that footage and this
was I mean I was kind of out on a limb with that so I was using equipment that
hadn't been used for a long time which was VistaVision
rear projectors and front projection equipment and I think there was a there
was a time when that process wasn't going really well you know and I felt
that I felt scared that the process wasn't going to come together you know
but it did so it paid off you know but I think I don't think there's ever a day
that I go to work if you know if I if I wake up for a shoot day and I'm not
nervous or I haven't had a chip last night the night before you know then
there's something wrong I'm not doing my job you know so it's always been it's
always been very stressful because if you're not stressed then I don't think
you do any job and then that's a great point because I feel like now especially
in the kind of current state there's like this I got this mentality and it's
almost considered a negative I feel like to some people to show or to be nervous
and I'm not talking about fumbling and shaking and
tripping over yourself nervous but just to have some humanity to it and and you
you know it almost seems like now there's a new breed of of mindset any
generation of just sort of this I got this and yeah I'm fine
well I think a lot of people's work that I see these days that are kind of up and
coming there's a bunch of stuff that they don't know that they don't know so
so they've got what they think is required but if you're going to take it
to a higher art form there's a lot more than you need to know in order to get
there but I think it's I think it's a combination you've got to have that you
gotta have that attitude that you know I can do this it's going to be great but
you've also got to have you you know you've got to know realistically what
your problems are going to be and to do everything that you can to overcome
those so I think I think it's a combination of the two things you know
you