This is the first interview in a series that will explore the world of indie digital filmmaking through discussions with Directors of Photography working on DV and other independent digital features.

Phil Parmet is a Director of Photography whose credits include everything from a Led Zeppelin concert film and numerous documentaries through dramatic features including Rob Zombie's upcoming horror film, The Devil's Rejects. We talked about his experience as the DP for Steve Buscemi's film, Lonesome Jim, which premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, as well as his thoughts on DV filmmaking.

How about a bit about your background to start out? When did you first pick up a movie camera and what was your very first film?

I started shooting stills when I was about 14. After college I took a graduate course in documentary filmmaking and became excited by the theatrical “art” films coming out of Europe and Japan. The first film I shot was a documentary film about gangs in South Philadelphia, it was called Walk Proud in the Street A few years later I got a grant and shot and directed a documentary film called Meadowlands. Almost everybody who was shooting l6 mm in those days was using reversal, but I shot this film on color negative and the results were incredible. When people saw the film they asked me to shoot for them. Later I shot docs for the networks and worked as a news stringer in various hot spots around the world. I only started shooting features in the late 80’s in New York. When I couldn’t get work in New York because of a producers strike I picked up my family and moved to LA. I’ve been lucky, I think I’ve shot maybe 30 films since I moved to LA., some good, some pretty bad, a few really good ones. I’ve met great people and traveled the world and certainly haven’t gotten rich, but I can say I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone’s.

I notice that like many cinematographers, you're also a still photographer. Does still work influence your cinematography style?

I shoot stills whenever I can. It keeps me out of trouble. For one thing as a professional you spend a lot of time not shooting film and when you don’t work you get rusty, your visual reflexes get slow. The analogy is perhaps obvious, but shooting film is like hunting, particularly grouse hunting which I did as a kid. If you haven't been practicing you will go out and the birds will fly and you will still have your gun at your side and your mouth will be hanging open. If you have been practicing when the birds fly you will have anticipated it and the gun or the camera in this case will be in the correct position to capture what is in its sights. Check out my stills on my web site, http://www.byeye.com

What set you on the path to becoming a cinematographer?

Fate, love, and not being able to do anything else.

You've previously worked on a number of Steve Buscemi projects. How did your collaboration begin?

I met Steve when he was a NYC Firefighter. My girlfriend at the time was a painter and she and Steve lived in the same building on 10th Street on the Lower East Side. We met briefly then when I was trying to produce a play and Steve helped me out. Later he starred in Alex Rockwell’s In the Soup which I shot and which went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. I did Steve’s first short film Big Al’s, then I shot Animal Factory, his second feature.

How about working with In|Dig|Ent? What kind of a partner were they?

Lonesome Jim had studio financing deal which fell out at the last moment. To their credit, Indigent stepped to the plate and financed the film, albeit with an extremely abbreviated schedule. The original budget was something like 5 million and Indigent budgets are more like under 500K. Indigent is a great group of people, who I must say supported everything we tried to do. They also have a lot of experience using the DV medium and were quite helpful in providing resources and information. It is great that they do what they do.

How did the budget influence the final film?

The budget determined that we would shoot the film in 19 days, in Mini-DV, finish it on Final Cut and blow it up to hi-def for festival projection. It probably could not have been done any other way for the money. Given the alternative that the film would not have been made at all, it was the way to go in this case.

Can you describe your involvement in the preproduction for Lonesome Jim? Did you get a chance to visit most of the locations beforehand? If so, what are you looking for when you go to a location?

The first time I saw the locations was when we arrived to shoot in Indiana. Steve had a already scouted locations with another DP who was later unable to do the film. It was unfortunate in the sense that I was not able to see the locations before hand, but it then again I wouldn't have shot the film if all had gone according to plan. I did have two weeks of prep before we started to shoot, however.

How did your use of the DVX100 for Lonesome Jim come about?

It was suggested by Indigent. They only shoot Mini DV and had used the DVX-100 on several films. I suggested that they get the newer model, the 100A which had a few more bells and whistles and they got us two of them.

What are your thoughts on the use of the DVX in general? Things you love, things you hate.

The biggest limitation is the quality of the image and the strongest point are the light weight the initial low acquisition and operating costs. I love that these cameras are so small, so light, and so inexpensive to use. I love that nobody notices you when you are shooting DV video. It is like you are shooting a home movie. I hate that the prosumer DV cameras are so cheesy; the zoom controls are terrible, the focus slips, the plugs are too fragile and short out. I don't want to come off like a film snob, but I hate that the quality of the image that is so inferior to even 16 mm film in terms of sharpness, resolution, and color rendition. I hate the "current" inability of video to capture the subtle qualities of light and atmosphere. It will be a great day when producers appreciate the added value of high quality images in terms of enhancing content and and ultimate worth of a film over bottom line. On the other hand Mini DV is what we had to work with this time out, and it's only going to get better. I understand film is already a dinosaur: my hope is that it is not going to be extinct before image quality of its digital replacement is at least as good, if not a magnitude better.

I understand you worked with Jan Crittendan Livingston (DVX100 product manager) for some technical support. What kind of assistance did she and Panasonic provide?

Jan was great. Whenever I had any sort of technical questions about the cameras, she had the answers.

Can you detail the camera settings you used for Lonesome Jim? Extra points if you can dig out your notes and describe the complete scene file.

I think I ended up pretty much using the factory settings that came with scene file 6 advanced 24. V-resolution was set to thin, detail level was 4.

How much did your intention to go for a film out influence your camera settings?

I planned from the start to increase the contrast and tweak the color in thevideo post. I aimed to capture an image which was fairly flat, and then crushed the blacks a bit and pushed up the whites; My experience is the current state of " video to film" is quite accurate. That is, what is on the video is pretty much what you will see on the final film out. You can control contrast and color a bit by choosing one printing stock or another, but that is about it.

What kinds of tests did you run before production started?

I shot all sorts of tests with various settings on the camera. I played with the detail levels, the chroma, master ped, skin tone dtl, and sent most to a film out which I was able to view in a local theater before we began principal photography.

Who did you work with on the film out and maybe you could share a few lessons learned from the process. Is there anything you'd do differently the next time?

We are just now in the process of doing the film out. We are doing tests at various houses to determine who will do it. I can tell you this much from my recent experience doing a DI for Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects, the most important part of the process in the timing of the digital image. We did the color correction and timing for Lonesome Jim in Final Cut using After Effects to track specific areas with a simulated power windows. With Rejects we had more time and more sophisticated equipment because we were working at 2K and we shot on film, but essentially the process was the same. In the end the film out for Rob's film was almost an exact one to one copy of what we had seen in the DI room. On the bigger budget film we were able to see the film blown up to theater size projection for the correction aspect of the process, whereas with Lonesome Jim we did the correction on a Hi-Def studio monitor and never saw it blown up until I looked at the film out tests. I have seen the Lonesome Jim projected in excellent conditions at Sundance with a 2K projector and I think it looked pretty close to the 35mm. film out.

How many cameras did you use on the production?

Mostly one, sometimes two.

Tell me your philosophy of camera movement and what kind of camera supports you used in Lonesome Jim.

No strict philosophy, but I do like a hand held camera a lot, because it gets you into the action. The camera becomes a live part of the movie, essentially another character. I think it injects a very personal point of view. Generally I don't like hand held shots on things that don't move, like architecture, I find it distracting. Occasionally I like completely static frames because it gives the audience a rest for their eyes and brains, it also tends to formalizes an image which allows you to use composition to dramatize your intentions.

What kind of lighting package did you use for the film?

Kinos, Dedo's, 1200 watt HMI PARs, 575 watt Fresnel PARs.

How did you approach the lighting design for Lonesome Jim?

We didn't want to go with all natural light. Subtle, naturalistic, but still dramatic lighting was the way we wanted to go. My concern were initially what kind of lighting can I do that won't cost an arm and a leg and what sorts of units can I use that a small, mostly inexperienced crew could place and operate, and finally what can a use that won't blow the fuse boxes in our locations, since we had no generators. One upside of DV which I failed to mention earlier is that is generally requires smaller units than does film to do the same job. On Lonesome Jim I basically lit everything with various sized Kino-Flos (4x4’s down to 1x1's), a Dedo kit, and three 1200W HMI Pars. I did have a pretty decent grip package due largely to my regular key grip Vince Palomino who drove out to Indiana from LA with his big Caddy trunk loaded with C-stands, griffs, sandbags, rolls of ND (gel), and other necessary items we never could have afforded on our budget.

Do you have a particular style you normally use for lighting lighting design?

Whatever works for the particular film. It is a process of discovery.

Maybe you could describe how you did the lighting for some of the key scenes.

The exterior of Anika's house was a bit of a challenge. The idea was to create a realistic looking night exterior with practically no equipment. We were able to get a local tree surgeon to lend us his truck with a small cherry picker which we parked across the street. We put two 1200 HMI PARs in the bucket and ran the cables to a small Honda generator placed in back of the house where you wouldn't hear it. We gelled the HMI with CTO and plus green to make them to look like sodium vapor street lights and bounced them in to white cards. This gave us a general ambience so the house which was dark wood was visible and looked like it was illuminated by a street lights. The actors were lit by Kino Flo with similar gels. I also used some flat panel battery operated slide viewers to light the inside of the car.

It looked like some of the interiors were fairly cramped. Did that affect your shooting style or setups?

There were a lot of rather small locations and having these small cameras definitely made it easier.

Did you actually have a train run over a DVX?

The camera was a mess of tangled wires and broken glass afterward, but luckily the tape survived.

There overall style of the cinematography struck me as very naturalistic as opposed to a more stylized look I see a lot these days. Is that consistent with your general philosophy or was it done more for this particular film?

That was something that Steve and I discussed. Steve mention the John Huston film Fat City during the preproduction and I knew exactly what he was going for. We both thought that Lonesome Jim should look naturalistic. That is, it should have almost a documentary reality, but in reality we altered so called "nature" by manipulating time, motion, as well as the quality and direction of the light to enhance the emotional and dramatic direction of our story.

I think my favorite shot was when Jim was sitting in the dark hallway of the gym, while the girls basketball team he was supposed to be coaching aimlessly ran back and forth with no seeming direction. It sort of summed up the character and the situation for me. Can you tell me a little about the shot?

It was pretty simple, there is a back light hidden in a doorway off to the left behind the actor serving to outline his face so that he is more than a silhouette.

The opening shot looked like it was taken with a pretty long telephoto. Was that shot with a DVX? Did you use any supplemental lenses for that shot or at other times during the course of production

We had a 2X multiplier. I believe it was a Century.

Did you use an anamorphic lens at all? If not, did you mask in camera or in post?

No anamorphic. We used the 4X3 format in the camera and masked off the frame. Later we blacked out the 16X9 with a matte in the post. The reason for this was primarily because you cannot view an unsqueezed image in the camera's finder. That is a drag.

Any funny stories from the shoot? With that cast and Steve, there must be something.

When character Evil played by Mark Boone Jr. crashed the motorbike it was not intentional, but never fails to get a laugh in a screening.

What kind of filtration did you use for the shoot? Something tells me Liv Tyler didn't need a heavy ProMist. Where do you stand on achieving an in-camera look using filtration vs. doing it in post-production for a format like DV?

I don't use filtration with the exception of Polas, ND's, and sky grads. You really don't want to degrade the image any more than it already is.

What was the biggest technical challenge you faced during the shoot?

Dealing with the low image quality of the medium made me wonder how it would look when blown up for a big screen. I must say that if came out pretty much as I expected. It is what it is.

What kind of involvement did you have in the postproduction process?

I was very involved after the film was edited. I worked with the colorists and the film lab making sure that the visual design was carried through to completion.

Can you tell me a bit about the workflow in the postproduction process? I know this may be a difficult question, but how much influence and control did you have over the final look of the film. What kind of director is Steve Buscemi in terms of having a specific look in mind vs. giving you a lot of latitude to create a look?

Determining the look of the film was process that began the day I started working on the film and continued to the very end. Steve is a very collaborative director who wants to hear all your ideas. He is very supportive of experimentation which is great for a D/P. If there is no fear of failing you can really push the envelope. Sometimes it is desirable and possible to design the look of a film from the very beginning. In this case and I must say with most films I've shot, the look is a process that begins by looking for outside visual references which ring true, then finding within the script and the locations, elements that seem to enhance the story you are trying to tell.

Has Lonesome Jim been picked up for distribution? When can we expect to see it?

The film has a international deal, but I believe they are still working on putting together the domestic.

The film is dark, but there’s a humorous undercurrent that keeps it from being depressing. How was the reception at Sundance?

The film is totally Steve’s sensibility, not that he is a depressed person, but rather he is someone who can find humor in those very dark reaches of our lives. The Sundance reception was really good, people laughed in all the right places. Audiences are so used to having their food chewed for them, it is nice to see them respond to a film that reaches for something deeper than cheap thrills. I have heard that it getting a great reception at the various festivals that are showing it, Philly, Boston, etc.... That's all great, but I hope it gets some kind of real theatrical release as well.

What kind of advice can you offer beginning cinematographers?

Study the history of art. Artists throughout history have worked on many of same problems that a cinematographer must solve. Shoot as much as you can--stills, film, video. Carry a camera with you all the time. The more you shoot the better you will understand how you see. Documentary film making is a great way to sharpen your reflexes and to learn about what elements you need to construct a scene.

What's on the horizon for you? Any more productions with the DVX? How about some of the upcoming low cost HD cameras? Is that somewhere you're planning to go?

The great thing about DV is that it's getting better all the time. I have little doubt that the next generation of cameras will be even better. I'm interested in the Hi-Def DV. I plan to use it as soon as the bugs are worked out.

Any observations on where the indie industry is heading these days?

There will always be good and great film makers who for whatever reason cannot or will not work within the corporate or studio systems and there always be ideas and films that are out of the mainstream, but have artistic merit and/or important ideas to express. Due in large part to the availability of inexpensive shooting and finishing tools, I’d say the health of independent film has never been better, and with the internet there is access to literally the entire world. Just do it, as they say.