“Truth and Film: Images and Film Reality”

All filmmaking is a construct of reality. As Kubrick once put it “We don’t take pictures we take pictures of pictures.” This panel will examine the ties of film truth in both documentary and feature film.

Phil Savoie – Moderator

Phil Savoie

Phil Savoie started his imaging career as a photo editor at Bruce Coleman Inc., a busy New York picture agency. He made the move to cinematography shooting assignments for National Geographic. Phil then joined the Discovery Channel as a producer and helped establish Discovery’s natural history production department. He left the U.S. to join the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, England where he worked for eleven years producing, directing and shooting. His projects have received international awards including EMMY and BAFTA cinematography nominations. Recent work includes acting as a technical advisor and cinematographer for the BBC Planet Earth series and cinematography for Life, now in post production. Three years ago he began teaching film production at Montana State University.

Haskell Wexler A.S.C.

Wexler Haskell

Haskell Wexler is considered to be one of the most important cinematographers working in the film industry today.   Wexler has photographed a wide range of films that have earned him five Academy Award nominations and two Oscars for Best Cinematography.  His nominations came for his work on his first feature documentary, THE LIVING CITY; a short film T FOR TUMBLEWEED; Milos Forman’s ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST; John Sayles’ MATEWAN and Touchstone Pictures BLAZE.  He took home statuettes for his work on Mike Nichols’ WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF and Hal Ashby’s BOUND FOR GLORY.  Other films shot for Ashby include COMING HOME, SECOND-HAND HEART and LOOKIN’ TO GET OUT.

Born in Chicago, Wexler attended the University of California at Berkeley for a year before joining the Merchant Marines.  He stayed at sea for five years, became a second officer, then returned to Chicago where he spent ten years making documentary and educational films before moving to California in 1955.

Among Wexler’s other credits are three films for Norman Jewison: IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR and OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY; George Lucas’ AMERICAN GRAFFITI; Dennis Hopper’s controversial hit, COLORS and Touchstone Pictures’ hit comedy, THREE FUGITIVES; the film, THE BABE, a Universal Picture; the Rolling Stones World Tour AT THE MAX.  This IMAX film was a photographic breakthrough; a second John Sayles film, THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH and a film directed by Michael Moore, CANADIAN BACON; an IMAX film, IMAX:MEXICO, and IMAX: HAIL COLUMBIA; MGM/The Zanuck Co. film MULHOLLAND FALLS; RICH MAN’S WIFE, and a third John Sayles film, LIMBO, HBO 61*, directed by Billy Crystal and has received several Emmy nomination including Outstanding Cinematography. Also including a fourth John Sayles film, SILVER CITY. Another outstanding Wexler credit is A SENSE OF WONDER, Director Christopher Monger. This film is an intimate and poignant reflection of the life of Rachel Carson, pioneering environmentalist.  Recently (2009) the documentary FROM WHARF RATS TO LORDS OF THE DOCKS was shown on PBS.

As a director, Wexler crafted two features, MEDIUM COOL, a groundbreaking film shot during the Democratic convention in Chicago and LATINO in Nicaragua which received a special honor at Canne Film Festival.  Both films broke the mold of conventional story telling by using the immediacy of documentary-style filmmaking.  He has directed over fifty documentaries, rock videos and award winning commercials.  Including THE BUS, BUS II and BUS RIDERS UNION; INTRODUCTION TO THE ENEMY, shot in Vietnam with Jane Fonda; INTERVIEW WITH MY LAI VETERANS, which also won an Academy Award, NO NUKES with Barbara Kopple, BASTARDS OF THE PARTY, HBO, and TARGET NICARAGUA: INSIDE A SECRET WAR. He has recently completed his latest documentary, WHO NEEDS SLEEP?, a film about sleep deprivation and long hours in the motion picture business, which has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Wexler has been elected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to the Board of Governors to represent the Cinematographers Branch.

Wexler has also received many honors, i.e., The American Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award, Liberty Hill Foundation Upton Sinclair Award, Poland’s Camerimage Lifetime Achievement Award, Eastman Kodak Outstanding Photographic Achievement for Blaze and Matewan, UCLA 2009 Prestige “Medal” Award, to name a few.

Wexler has received Honorary Doctorates from Columbia College, American Film Institute, California Institute of the Arts and Brooks Institute of Photography Honorary Master of Science.

Wexler is the first Cinematographer in over thirty-five years to receive a “Star” on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

David Klein

David Klein

David was born in St. Louis and raised in a small town just outside of Boise, Idaho. His father and grandfather were both photography and cinematography hobbyists, and his grandfather gave Klein an old 16 mm Bolex camera as a high school graduation gift. After dropping out of college, Klein attended an eight month filmmaking program at a school in Vancouver, Canada. A few months after he completed that program in 1994, Klein’s classmates, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, recruited him to come to New Jersey to shoot a 16mm black and white film they were directing and producing. Clerks drew rave reviews at the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals and has evolved into a cult classic. Klein has subsequently earned 24 cinematography credits, including Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Fool’s Gold, Clerks II, Good Time Max and Flight 29 Down: The Movie and Zack and Miri Make A Porno. Since Hatch 2008, he finished up work on the second and final season of “Pushing Daisies” and spent much of the past year working on his sixth collaboration with Smith currently titled “A Couple of Dicks,” starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. Klein also finds much of his time these days occupied by a precocious 2-year-old daughter named Ivy.

Crayton Smith

Crayton Smith (middle)

In his early career, Smith worked on a variety of on set Production related jobs, including Script Supervisor, on such films as “Camelot”, “Bonnie and Clyde”, “Wait Until Dark”, “The Green Berets”,“The Wild Bunch”, and a stint on the original “Star Trek” series.

Smith was urged to become an agent by some of his mentors. Feeling that the creative talents behind the camera (Cinematographers, Production Designers, Editors, etc.) were not getting the recognition and respect they deserved, he decided to try to make a difference.  Smith accepted employment at International Famous Agency, (which has now morphed into ICM).  Where he became a Literary Agent, representing Writers, Directors and Producers, but was not allowed to represent Cinematographers for his first few years there.  Eventually this led to the opening of The Crayton Smith Agency in 1973 creating the first, exclusive, Below the Line Talent Agency.  Some of his first clients were Vilmos Zsigmond, Laszlo Kovacs, John Alonzo, Billy Williams, Nestor Almendros, Bill Butler, Dean Semler, John Seale, Russell Boyd and many others. Over the years the clients of the agency were nominated for over 40 Academy Awards, winning many of them.

Smith began by changing the way Cinematographers, Production Designers and Editors were represented to the Film Industry.  At that time, Hollywood was still phasing out of the “Studio System” where the employees and crews were assigned projects. Previously, scripts were rarely given to Cinematographers before they accepted work and careers were not managed with a long range perspective. “Below the Line” artists were categorized as “technicians”.  Smith began with suggestions for career guidance, negotiating his clients’ to better salaries, living arrangements, and screen credits to be grouped with the Producer, Director and Writer, because he felt that their creative contributions should be ranked with the “Above the Line” credits.  He negotiated the first paid advertising portions of their contracts, which included posters, billboards, and newspaper ads.  He arranged interviews for cinematographers for articles in magazines (including Time) and books written about Cinematographers and the important creative contributions they made to films.  Smith’s Agenting career has now spanned decades and has led to the formation of numerous Below the Line Talent Agencies, who bargain for many of the precedents that Smith created for his clients, and continues to gain the recognition for these talented Artists that Smith sought.

Crayton Smith and his son Morgan, are now partners at the Crayton Smith Agency, Inc.

Justin Lubke

Justin Lubke

Justin spent his youth taking photographs in the tiny town of Ennis, Montana where he was born. After high school, Justin traveled, studied language and worked with the poor in Brazil and indigenous tribes in India. Inspired and motivated by his experiences, he returned to Montana and graduated from Montana State University with an honors degree in documentary filmmaking. For ten years, Justin has worked in non-fiction film. He has directed, shot and edited a variety of programs with topics ranging from desert foxes to indigenous tribes to basketball. His work has appeared on networks such as PBS, National Geographic, Animal Planet and CBS. Recently Justin directed and shot his first feature length documentary, Class C, a film that has gone on to win multiple film festivals and two Emmy awards. He also edited and shot the feature documentary Where You From which is showing this year at Hatch. Whether in the jungles of India, the streets of Brazil, or on the back roads of his native Montana, Justin is always listening to stories and finding innovative ways to share them.