School [2021] — Realized I Wanted To Be A Cinematographer Film

I spent twenty minutes trying to make it “cinematic.” Three-point lighting. A slash of motivated window light. A rim light that screamed drama . It looked like a car commercial.

I went home that night and shot my roommate making coffee with a single window and a bed sheet clipped to a broomstick. The footage was grainy, slightly underexposed, and completely alive. For the first time, I wasn’t trying to be right. I was trying to be true . realized i wanted to be a cinematographer film school

Her face wasn’t perfectly lit. The shadow side wasn’t “correct.” But the falloff on her cheek felt like three in the morning. Like a secret. Like she was telling the camera something she hadn’t told anyone else. I spent twenty minutes trying to make it “cinematic

Not when I learned what an f-stop was. But when I saw what an f-stop could feel like. It looked like a car commercial

The shift happened during a lighting workshop in the fall of my second year. A guest DP brought in an old Arri 2C. No monitors, no false color—just a light meter and a viewfinder. He asked each of us to light a single close-up of a person sitting at a table. No dialogue. Just a face. Just light.

Film school didn’t teach me how to be a cinematographer. It taught me how to notice the way light changes on someone’s face five minutes before sunset—and how selfish it would be to keep that noticing to myself.

I wanted to hold the frame steady for what the rest of the world walks past. That’s when I knew.