Film Courage: How do you know that the director is the real deal? Brad Rushing, Cinematographer:
I'm not especially big on judging people in an absolute way so what I would characterize
is directors I am most fulfilled working with and that would be interactive ones. You know
I want somebody who both brings ideas and has very strong feelings but is also collaborative
and is willing to if a better idea is presented, whether it's the producer or the actor or
the craft services person, is open to considering that because it's about the movie we are all
making not about their ego. So that's my preferred archetype. The ones who aren't prepared frustrate
me because we should all be prepared. The ones who when I say how would you like to
shoot this? And they say What do you think? A few times, that's okay. I mean I've asked
my lighting crew before I'm a little stymied do you have any ideas but but if that is the
standard mo well i'm carrying them and it's it's not fun for me i mean maybe it would
be fun for somebody else maybe there's you know a dp out there who just has delusions
of grandeur and as a wannabe director who would be thrilled to work with that person
but for me um it's a collaboration you know i want to feel like we're we're doing something
together and if i'm getting nothing from them then it's kind of like it's just not that
much fun and same on the other hand if i have somebody who is really overbearing and controlling
and i feel like i have no input then i just you know i don't it's not fun it's not exciting
it's kind of like i just feel like i'm um you know just a i don't even know what you'd
call it just a um a worker drone you know just taking instructions and not not interpreting
at all so you know again to me the sweet spot is in the middle and there's a range too i
mean you know it could be you know a little more me or a little more of them i mean that's
okay you know it could tilt and and you know with with good people sometimes it does tilt
you know sometimes you know like i said you know sometimes you know somebody may say to
me why don't you take the lead on this one i'm like okay let's do that you know or sometimes
they're like no i know exactly how i want this um so so you know that dynamic being
being flexible and throughout that's okay but it's it's really that when you get in
that default mode if it tilts too far one way or the other and just every day is like
that then you know it's that's not the thing that gets me excited to get out of bed in
the morning what is not being prepared um well not having a sense of how you want to
cover a scene not having a sense of of the type of coverage you want not having some
sense of how you want to cut the scene and and i will qualify this by saying it's perfectly
okay to have that idea and get on set and have an epiphany and throw it all away and
say let's do something different that's fine you know but at least we have a fallback plan
we are never going to get to set and go i i don't know what i want to do you know and
then you know time drags to a stop anytime that stuff happens you know in my mind it's
sand going out of my hourglass to do nice lighting you know somebody's eating up time
if time is being wasted i'm gonna have to make up for it because somebody's gonna say
light it's simpler light it quicker shoot it unless you know less coverage um you know
that's that's where the the the the buck is gonna stop and it's it's depressing to me
you know in the same way that i don't want the director waiting on me to light a scene
you know i want the people to have that already roughed in so that when we walk in there it
comes in and maybe just some tweaks in that same way i don't really want to be sitting
there waiting on somebody else whether it's the director or wardrobe or the actor because
you know if we're i've worked with there's a particular music video artist i worked with
who just showed up six hours late you know that's that's that person's money you know
they paid for it they paid our salaries but you know it's like that's again that's not
why i'm there is to make that money i mean i want you know you show up and i show up
i don't want to show up at six a.m you know but we do because we are supposed to and we
get the thing done and and you have the time as the director or the actor to to make your
magic and i have the time to make my magic and and and that happens in being prepared
and not you know waiting for being on set to get that [ __ ] sorted out how do you handle
a director not liking your suggestions um well as a general thing i'm ambivalent and
i defer to them because they're the director you know if they never liked my suggestions
i would feel we weren't a good match you know i mean i wouldn't hold it against them i don't
again i'm not going to judge them just because their aesthetic is different than mine you
know but we may have an incompatible aesthetic and that's just what my judgment would be
but but yeah i mean if they were belligerent and insulting and made it personal well that
would be weird i've never had that happen you know but for them to say no i don't like
that idea i'm not attached to it i look we're all putting something in the pot to make something
amazing like i said you know if if if the pa comes up and gives me a lighting idea and
it's better than mine i'm gonna do it and i'll give them credit for it you know it's
it's you know all for one and one for all i'm not an ego person at all i'm not i'm i'm
not that way and i don't particularly care to work with people who are generally speaking
how much time does it take to light a scene that is a range between zero seconds and infinity
okay i mean what's the scene are we you know standing outside in a in a close-up with beautiful
backlight and and a cliff face that's bouncing light so it's perfect and i just turn on the
camera or are we shooting a shot that starts in um you know uh uh you know the the the
101 freeway and and somebody's walking down into hollywood boulevard i mean well that
would probably be available lighting but or or is it like a a steady cam shot where we
we walk into this house and we walk through the back and we go into the neighbor's yard
and across the street you know what i'm saying it's you can't there's no generic answer it's
like it's like it could be simple it could be complicated you'd have to you'd have to
give me a specific scene and even inside of a specific scene i can say well here's how
long it would take if i wanted to do a really good job and if we don't have a lot of time
here's an abbreviated version so in california christmas when we first see them sitting at
the kitchen nook or the breakfast table and we're finding out different things about the
characters i don't want spoilers i don't want to give too much away but that there's an
issue and i think it's a daylight scene it looks like it's more morning i think they're
making breakfast how long did it take to light that scene this beautiful light thank you
um 20 minutes maybe um but uh i had it roughed in before we got there you know we didn't
wait on it that was already set up and we walked into it ah okay so you're talking about
20 minutes once you walked in no oh okay i took the guys who went over there to do it
20 minutes while we were shooting something else and then we got there and while the actors
were getting set and the props were getting set and the camera was getting set the lighting
crew tweaked it and did not infringe upon our time at all ah okay but the sun went down
so then we had to put a silk over that back window i don't know if it was that scene but
we shot you know we block shot a whole bunch of stuff in there um i should i do we didn't
block you that's not that's not correct we we shot we would move the cameras around between
the scenes but um but you know we shot all of the scenes in that space at the same time
and when the sun went down i had to cover that front window with diffusion so if you
pay close attention at a certain point you're seeing detail out there and then it's just
white and so that took a little bit of a reset and we did have to wait on that because we
were in the middle of that set but it wasn't long i mean it took um i don't know five five
ten minutes to reset that but you know the barn took a long time you know that barn we
had them in there pre i had a we were on a shoot and i had we were on a day and and i
was like okay let's shoot exteriors so i can spin the crew off and get them started on
that barn because it's going to take a long time so you know and also the bar the bar
took a while and that was i was nervous because we did not have a pre-light but we we did
it so that we started small we started on a small area of the bar and as we were shooting
that behind us they were finishing the lighting but that's just another thing is like you
know you do not want to wait you want you want to get up shooting as fast as possible.
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