Director of Photography or Cinematographer? Tigran Mutafyan Explains.
While a DP makes decisions relative to visual storytelling, a cinematographer’s work is focused on the image. Both are focused on visuals but in very different ways. Potential scenarios are perhaps the best way to illustrate the marked differences between these two professional approaches. Let’s say that I am working as a DP with a director whom I’ll refer to as Director M. M sends me references of dramatic lighting, mood, camera movement, colors, compositions, etc., which he wants me to shoot. I ask the director what kind of mise-en-scenes he is planning to shoot and he responds that we are going to have floor plans. I repeat that if he doesn’t want my creative input on these references, I’d love to at least know the mise-en-scenes. Director M wonders if I am asking for blocking, so I communicate in different terms, stating that he can do the animatic if he wants, which will help me understand what he wants to achieve; or I can make it the way he wants even if I don’t understand why. The project’s producer, Ms. S, feels as if this conversation between myself and the director has left me unsatisfied and asks my opinion about the story. Director M. witnesses this interaction and becomes puzzled; asking himself, “Why the hell should a producer ask a cinematographer’s opinion about the story?”
I’m a Stanislavsky school trained director. As such, I’m aware that there’s much more to being a director than just capturing images with photography. The tools a director uses to deliver his message is inconsequential compared to the reasons for what, how, and why he wants to do it. If the director doesn’t want his cinematographer’s opinion on the story, then it would be better served if he shot it by himself, or with a camera operator, or even if he directed the story on the stage. Consider a situation in which you use a translator to convey a message and emotional tone to someone who speaks another language; even an alien from another planet. If you try to force the translator to deliver the exact words in the exact manner you dictate, you sacrifice the benefits of said translator’s expertise in communicating the subtleties and cultural differences into the foreign language. The message that you intended may be received in a completely different manner because your idea must be communicated in a vernacular that is not your strong suit; the idea is exceptional but the method of delivery is clumsy. A cinematographer is this translator in the realm of storytelling who best understands how to best visually connect with the audience.
Returning to the factors which separate a cinematographer and a DP; one must make the literal connection that a director of photography is in fact primarily a director. In this regard we must consider, what does it mean to direct the photography or direct the visuals? Once a writer has finished their book or script, they approach either a publisher or a producer to manifest it. A producer will assemble a director, cast, and crew to do this. In the context of our scenario with director M. and producer S., they need help to execute the director’s visual plan. Let’s consider that in the storyline of this film, the main hero is arrested and his wife becomes the new hero of the story. We were not going to show her more than the hero but we would make sure the audience connects to her more emotionally because of the director’s visuals. The director asks me what would be my choice in that case; how can we make the audience follow and connect to the hero much more than we did on the storyboard? Director M is a very smart person because he uses the word “choice” instead of simply asking for my “opinion” like Ms. S did. In other words, he understood my role as director of photography in making creative choices in terms of the visual language of his movie. I offered to keep both the wife’s story as well as the main character’s story but to focus on her as the main hero. This was my “choice” because, in my estimation, the whole movie was her world and her life. The wife is the vehicle to deliver the director’s message much more clearly than through the perspective of the previous main character [the husband]. Director M smiles and tells me that I’m “So right”, and that he already can see the mood, the dynamics, the colors, and pacing. He even knows exactly which actress can do it, what music would work, and the locations of the story. The director is applying his directing tools to the movie now.
When director M asks if I am a director myself, I respond “Yes. I am but I direct only the visuals in a way that the audience can see the world of the story, just as he saw a couple of minutes ago.” A director of photography is someone who makes visual choices for the story, creating a world where the director can tell the story as he imagined it. When done accurately, it exceeds the director’s imagination. A director of photography has to know drama as well as the director he’s working with. A director of photography has to know the lights and camera movements just as well as a cinematographer does. Only when all these conditions are fulfilled is it possible to achieve the right mise-en-scenes which are the key to what’s happening in the scene. Mise-en-scenes and/or “mise-en-shots” are just a part of the artistic tools which a director of photography uses to communicate to the cinematographer and production designer, directing them visually. He has to be the one who controls the visuals from pre-production till post-production. Working with a director of photography, a cinematographer will get the right directions and answers. Working with a director of photography, a director will be aware that the story is planned and shot the right way, so he can spend much more time with the actors. When the differences between cinematographer and director of photography are clear to everyone, the culmination is a better work environment and a better final product.
