Cinematography : Female DPs Should Be Front & Center This Awards Season by Karen "Kay" Ross

We can only hope. I have a dream, that one day we will see a mainstream media (film, television, news, sports) that more accurately represents our real world -- aka 50% female and at least 45% multicultural.

What do you see as the differences in a production based upon the sex of the DP. What in the images reveals the sex of the DP to you?

For awards, what about the grand illusion that they are presented to the best achievement, preferably voted upon by peers. If that is not the case, is the award meaningful.?

Andrew - First, seeing a woman win, if her work merits it of course, will help to encourage other women to attempt the role should they feel compelled (the same way that there was a surge in chess sales after 'The Queen's Gambit'). All too often women are actively discouraged if not outright sabotaged in this industry, so it would be incredibly inspirational. I challenge you to watch the documentary "This Changes Everything" to understand further: https://www.amazon.com/This-Changes-Everything-Geena-Davis/dp/B07VDNBKC9/ref=tmm_aiv_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1637103216&sr=8-2

Second, concerted efforts have had to be made in an attempt to overcome inherent bias against women - across the board professionally. Inherent bias has been identified, addressed, and, as such, has seen a rise in achievements in the arts for women because the bias is no longer allowed to dictate their success. For example, female musicians benefitting from blind auditions to the point where they had to carpet the floors and/or take off their shoes so their auditioners could not tell their gender - and saw noticeable increases of 1st chair females because of the effort: https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditi...

Finally, female cinematographers are more likely to help steer the camera's POV to reflect the "Female Gaze" and not perpetuate the generally accepted "Male Gaze": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCPD7Mi9504 You'll note the section about how women tend to "personify" while men tend to "objectify". When you add value to the women informing the camera's POV, then you add value to the content (i.e. adding value to women everywhere), ideally influencing all cinematographers/filmmakers to consider a different, more in-depth POV.

And I sincerely hope that the judges have a similar "blind" approach so that they continue to award female creatives without risk of bias, in either direction.

Kay, I asked a simple question. I will take deflection as a no, you cannot tell the gender of the DP by the images on the screen. If you cannot tell the difference on the screen then gender is an extraneous issue at best. The “male gaze” is simply cliched discredited BS. If a female DP was shooting the insipid exploitation comedies used as examples in that “documentary” the images would be almost the same because that is what the director and producer wanted and the DP shoots their story or gets fired for not.

I would love for the industry be a meritocracy and operating on a basis of knowledge skill and ability. That would help everyone who was capable regardless of any special considerations being asked for by some groups. “Democratization” seems to have had the opposite effect. Sadly, it seems merit is often well down the list in these productions, from staffing to the laughable level “awards” have become. Seems more and.more awards fall into the Make Everyone Happy, category. Thankfully, MEH awards will never even replace toddler art works on the fridges of the world in importance.

The biggest boost to the number of females below the line has been technological changes that made equipment physically much lighter. The weight of a blimped 35mm camera with a zoom lens was not fun to handhold, M/R big eye 10K’s were awful to get up onto a snow and ice covered scaffold. The lighter weight of the gear has lessened the physical strength needed to utilize it. THAT has probably made more of an actual real world change to crew makeup than all the hand wringing huffy-puffy self-serving “documentaries” on YouTube. The result is a lot more opportunities are open to more people, and that is better.

I kind of agree and disagree with both of your certain strong views. Karen "Kay" Ross Andrew Sobkovich

Personally speaking, I "never" hired/teamed up based on appeasing any gender or color, or religion. I see it as an insulting, discouraging thing to do for everyone there. For example, I had a guy friend during my engineering time who was technically pretty strong slightly weak in communication, but a company that was supposed to hire him instead chose 4 other women who actually wasn't any good match for the role, technically below-average skills in there just because a woman HR and 4 of her men-woman colleagues who came for hiring were acting like torchbearers of this kind of gender appeasement, picked those 4 women. I tried hard to back him up during that hiring process, but they didn't budge and we're adamant about this toxic way of segregating gender activism perspective.

It's been 10 years, guess what happened so far, that guy is still hard-working as a teacher teaching computer science to kids for extremely low pay, as well as working in farmland, living pretty bad. And those 4 women, earned good but left that company in no less than 2 years, joined a few other companies, couldn't stick there as well and tried getting management degree, tried banking, and now married and all 4 are doing a completely different profession without having any technical skill whatsoever still and earning pretty good. That HR and 4 Recruiters not only ruined the life of my friend who was very passionate, strong in technical skills but in a way trying to pamper their view on gender appeasement, supported those 4 women but unknowingly distancing them from trying to figure out what they truly capable of doing to their own interests, skills.. And this is happening around the world for many years now. We are basically ripping off many people's potential skills, talents from their jobs trying hard to quick-fix a sociological problem by an approach that isn't anywhere helpful for anybody. I tried hard to explain this, but their professional ego was like a hard nut to get this.

Now, yes I understand both of your views on having women, men have a different way of seeing visual imagery, editing from gender role for instance "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" has cinematography bringing a distinct style, so are other movies which were especially more appealing to we men. And I can also add that, women have more ability to recognize color patterns, variations than men can which is biologically/scientifically, and psychologically proven fact.

But... But... we also got to accept this biological fact that the physically strenuous jobs like holding heavy cameras, equipment or in any profession is quite different for genders as Andrew said and the end profit is all about how a Director, Editor, Writer's vision comes through.

So I feel, as a writer, director, if my characters have a lead woman, and I have to chose among multiple DPs. I will first see who is skilled enough and if both are equally skilled for DP role then I see if woman DP have a distinct taste suiting the character, then surely I would go for her. But if the woman is less skilled and don't have anything adding to the character of the story then would go with male DP who have a better experience. Rather than symbolic presentation to the world that, LOOK I'm hiring woman, to prove I hired a woman DP to pamper world and myself. I would better hire a Bisexual or Gay or Lesbian or such DPs instead to give both woman and men's perspective isn't it.

To me, first priority is FILM, Story and how I do that better, cost effective way and keep an environment where everyone respects each other with all being fine having those gender or race or color differences, expertise so on. Rather than to prove my passion towards social activism of fixing societal issue, I wouldn't be knee bent trying hard to do stuff things in a certain way to make woman or black or whatever only crew and ruining the film's overall nature , dynamics itself.

I can't really fix society and if I wanted to, I would have done NGO for that from earning making commercial films. However what I can do is, give a good film to make society see through social issues and let people decide and let them change their own way.. That's my view.

This is Jessica Lopez (https://www.instagram.com/steadijess/), a union, well-known camera operator, including steadicam. Emily Skye (https://www.instagram.com/shewolffilms/), who started as a cinematographer before moving on as a director, often chooses handheld over sticks because she has more control over the shot. The women looking to be in the entertainment industry don't need lighter cameras, they need more exposure to the women already doing the job so that all people, men and women, don't make asinine assumptions that women need lighter equipment to have more opportunities as a cinematographer.

Kay, let me apologize for not being the person you’ve conjured up for your strawman argument. I’ve no idea why you seemingly think I don’t believe women are capable on crews. Gender is simply not a consideration to me in crewing while to you it seems to be a primary consideration although that may not be the case.

I hire the best people I can. It means that the women on my crews know I have full confidence in what they can do. It means that the men on my crews know I have full confidence in what they can do. There are no us/them dynamics allowed. Ever, about anything. And that includes gender. I bring in folks who earned the right to be there without first passing any sort of purity test.

An Arri BL4 with a zoom lens, matte box, follow focus, and 1000’ roll weighed 50lbs or more, then batteries plus a few other accessories were often added. Yeah, after a few minutes with an all up weight of around 70lbs. it felt a little heavy. If you had it on a Steadicam, you were now into a total weight that approached 100lbs. M/R Big Eye 10K weighs just under 150lbs. Yes, physical weight was a big deal and the strength to deal with heavy equipment was necessary. That is changing a lot, allowing those with less physical strength to fill those positions. The weight change in gear has taken away a serious impediment and opened entry positions in the industry to more people. Those entry level positions provide the necessary first hand experiential grounding needed for a person to become an actual DP. Yes, weight makes an actual difference as everyone who has done these jobs knows and appreciates.

Perhaps the final solution to women sweeping awards would simply be to have no male DPs.

Karen "Kay" Ross Why do you think we have awards or such competitions?

It's basically a representation of Archetypal achievement which as a society people can look up to. The reason in the west we started to see the Feminists movement and even Black lives matter is because of a strong existing philosophical underpinning that lacked multiple archetypes of all genders and people of all kinds respected, valued. This is what many are unable to get it, trying hard to defend and wish it happens through their social activism approach but in reality, it fails the society because they are not addressing the core philosophical issue they have within. This never was the case in India before colonialism hit. But now our Genz is strongly influenced by western philosophical ideas which we already have our own issues with our own stories too. That's the reason I thought to explain in below. Sorry, it's going to be long paraphrasing.

The philosophical underpinning in West and European societies strongly lean towards "Existentialism, Absurdism under the disguise of Nihilism, supported by Capitalism+Consumerist economic support which anchors that mindset". This makes though society looks feels rich but extremely divided, segregated, and less value human diversity, unhappy within people, less social life, low morality in place.

That's why in modern award functions people tend to credit a specific gender or race to be feel validated without genuine contribution in the profession itself rather than just an award for participation equated to the credits so it makes them assume it builds an Archetype to look up to.

But this eventually makes the person start rejecting their own identity and fights within one's own ego, leading to distancing one's own anima, animus. Carl Jung talks about this in his research papers. So is how we see modern women trying hard to be like men, dressing up as men or acting like men, doing everything that men are doing just to feel validated, valued, and vice-versa, so are gender reversals, etc creating the "Absurdism" in society. Like, look I can do what you do... so you SHOULD give us credit or opportunity. And each human(gender, race) starts distancing from their own archetype, ego, and loses the collective unconscious state of anima, animus...

My point is, its' not like those two women DPs want to prove that, Look I can lift heavy or lighter cameras so give us the opportunity or look we don't have enough women in DPs so give us the opportunity kind. But it could have been like we know we are men and woman and we are different and we understand both have our own strengths, weakness, flaws biologically and psychologically, but we compete and credit one among us based on best skills, talents. This would genuinely help to see more women being respected healthily by men which men accept across all spectrums giving their best, understanding each other's limitations, rather than trying hard to be what they aren't.

This we Indians too are suffering now because of western influence but didn't exist in Indian society earlier, because culturally we had a different philosophical underpinning of many archetypes who also derived from Goddess and stories associated with them.

For example, you all might have seen the movie "Tootsie". In that Dustin Hoffman is a character, who doesn't have any respect, value for a woman. He literally hates women in a way, mistreats them throughout, but has to live like a woman to get a job but eventually realizes the struggle and later realizes his own flaw in his nature to change to be respected and feel genuinely value a woman and being loved. This is his own inner philosophical underpinning which he gradually changes. That should happen.

Similarly, there is this song from an Indian movie. In this, the protagonist has huge respect for women, and he sings a song to a group of young school girls praising "Obavva"

https://youtu.be/p15p4tXRDFA?t=285

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onake_Obavva

He equates her to "Goddess Durga, Goddess Kali and Rana Chandi who are like powerful goddess archetype". and praises Obavva as a warrior who single-handedly fought the enemy. This is a real-life story. And in the film, he falls in love with a woman who he initially doesn't like because she more tries hard to be like men because she got issues with her father and upbringing. But he helps her transform, while he too evolves and both fall in love with each other. A similar issue you can see in MCU movie, where everyone initially loved Wonderwoman first part but the recent one was so downplayed as it pricks people's subconscious minds.

Another example if you notice, most women in the Islamic world don't have a woman archetype who takes the form of goddess or such in their own philosophical nature equally powerful to Prophet similar to Christianity in a way. What this does is, they don't have anyone to support their own psyche. This is one reason you see even Muslim woman activists who will be fine wearing a burqa but talking about equality among gender roles in the western world but don't realize their own absurdism in their own logic, behavior in their own society not seeing themselves following their logic.

That's why I said it's a sociological issue that tangles itself with psychology, philosophy, and biology. We can't just hard cut fix it by saying, we should just give or pick a woman in so and so professional and give credits, awards, opportunity, while the society holds on to a larger philosophical issue that doesn't help any gender to change anything within or accept their own collective subconscious psychology or biological nature within. We got to address the philosophical underpinning and not hurt their biological, psychological nature to safeguard society. Or else it leans towards absurdism, backed by existentialism, and ruins whole society to be completely against one another. This eventually loses the purpose of awards or trying to create any genuine archetype in any gender to look after.

Recently in my state, we had a film festival and we saw awards being given mostly for woman filmmakers, and concepts surrounding women's stories. Ironically the awards were not given to the best film as it was supposed to be given and everyone can see that logical issue, but just for the participation of women and the issue they gave a tokenism sort of awards, that's it. What this does is, it never changes men to value woman or woman to value men, it just keeps the issues as it is and divides society even more. This is what I mean by Absurdism pushing the existentialism mindset in more people as I wrote about my friend's real-life incident.

So was my view that more than trying to say We women got awards or got the opportunity to feel validated or valued, make films which changes the philosophical nature we all tangle in a healthy way, which also makes the psychological influence in humans to value each other irrelevant to their gender or race, etc. Or else it wouldn't be too far when we will see women go through the knife to change themselves, their identity to look like Usain bolt just to prove that LOOK WE TOO CAN RUN LIKE HIM! This is what the Postmodern world is heading towards. Robert crumb cartoons depicted such nature.