Sundance Film Festival | Shooting for Canon
Last year, V & I were offered the opportunity of a lifetime: Canon asked if we’d shoot for them during the Sundance Film Festival.
I remember with such clarity getting ‘the email.’ For me, it was one of those stop-your-heart moments akin to your husband proposing (yeah, it was *that* huge to me). I was sitting on my sofa watching Lifetime (that’s how I roll) at like 10pm on a Saturday night (cuz I have no life, apparently), and I thought it had to be… a joke? I grabbed V’s arm and I was like, ‘you won’t believe this.’
After fleshing out their offer a bit (aka making sure it was real & I wasn’t hallucinating), I learned that they’d seen my work from previous Sundances and particularly liked my event photography style. We were overjoyed to accept the job and couldn’t wait to work with CANON. Freaking CANON.
As if it couldn’t get any better, they asked to enlarge one of my images of Park City into two ginormous (like 10x4ft) lightboxes that would be a focal point of their lounge, hung behind all the speakers during panels & interviews. You’ve GOT to be kidding me. My work. Hung in a Canon studio. Surreal.
Late January finally came around, and V & I found ourselves walking into the lounge with our gear, donning special Canon badges, and, for the next three days, capturing Canon’s Sundance Film Festival activities: the atmosphere of the Canon Creative Studio (Canon’s exclusive Main Street lounge), filmmaking/cinematic panels where Canon pros interviewed Sundance cinematographers, Canon gear demos, private parties, film screenings, Q&As, and celebrity filmmaker drop-ins. It was exciting in many ways, for sure. Like, ‘pinch me I’m working for my dream client.’ Or, I’m so swank & awesome in my fancy-pants Sundance Lounge. Or, how awesome is all this free food/drink (I particularly loved the Justin’s white chocolate peanut butter cups & Luna bars). Or, oh, is that Eli Roth hanging out with the Wolfpack, from the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-award-winning documentary of the same name? Stephen Goldblatt is speaking to me right now — as in, the ICONIC Director of Photography (two Oscar nominations; films like The Help, Angels in America, Charlie Wilson’s War, Prince of Tides)?!? So many ‘holy shizz’ moments.
But, none of that stuff is what gave me chills when I went through the photos again to create this post (seeing the vast majority of these images for the first time in a year). Instead, I was struck by one memory in particular. I was photographing one of the first panels, about Women in Cinematography (my image from the panel was featured in Variety). I was clicking away furiously, trying to get a shot of one of the panel speakers with Canon signage behind them while also capturing engaged audience members, swapping my 20-700mm for closeups for my 14mm for wides for my 50mm 1.2 to tackle the low-lighting conditions, when I looked over at my partner (and husband), Victor. He had a stellar perspective (better than mine, but I couldn’t cross the room without walking directly through the panel), and yet he was just sitting there. Listening to the speakers. So engaged that he was forgetting to shoot. While not entirely ideal (I was trying not to distract Canon execs, Canon guests, panel speakers, or the audience as I tried desperately to get V’s attention with a gesture to the camera, as in, ‘YO! TAKE SOME PHOTOS!’), the way he was completely & utterly engrossed in what was being said about filmmaking, writing, producing, and capturing imagery in a variety of situations made me realize that sometimes I’ve *got* to drink in the opportunities we’re afforded. Newsflash: we have fantasy-level access to some of the coolest/most interesting stuff in the world (to us, anyway) right at this very moment and, while of course I’ll deliver high quality coverage, I’ve got to open my eyes & ears outside the shutter to relish every possible moment. In sum: the people that surrounded me were among the best in a highly competitive, highly talented, highly innovative industry, and their stories/advice/experience were at my finger tips for three days.
That’s what my Canon experience ultimately became about: the creative genius all around me. Not the celebrity, not the parties, not the swag. It’s about the people. And I really mean all around me — not solely the people speaking in the panels. One morning, I was setting up a shot of the Touch & Try demo (where guests could inquire about Canon products not ordinarily available to them) and I bumped into someone holding a large boom (he was prepping for the video team’s shots, making sure he was getting the sound properly). We got to chatting, and I asked him what he does ‘normally’ (so many people working Sundance aren’t from Park City, or they live in the area & have been hired by remote stakeholders to cover Sundance), and he said he worked for the school system. Didn’t sound terribly sexy to me, but we were standing around together for at least a few more minutes, so I made a comment about a celebrity I’d seen outside on Main Street very early that day. I also quoted a tabloid about something she’d recently done, maybe dropping the word ‘crazy’ in reference to her behavior. “Oh, she’s actually a wonderful person, really,” my new friend replied. I turned to him in surprise, “yeah?” “Yeah,” he replied — and explained that, before he worked for the Salt Lake schools, he’d worked in Los Angeles for decades doing film & television work, and that the actress I’d mentioned had become a good friend of his while he’d worked on the set of her television show for five years. He told a few stories about this actress-friend that seemed so… rational (not tabloid fodder/over-dramatizations but ‘real person and real people have real problems sometimes’ explanations), and I continued to ask him about his work & life. He was such a low-key guy with a great vibe — I had no reason to doubt him, and the few anecdotes he told about his time in Hollywood seemed quite understated — and my questions just kept pouring out. When I finally asked him what he was doing working in the schools nowadays, he said that, unlike in LA, and unlike his work with ‘famous people,’ he felt real fulfillment working with children, and he’s never been happier.
Anyway, it was an enormous compilation of similar conversations and moments that made my work with Canon over Sundance last year faaaaaaar more than taking pictures for a client. Yes it WAS cool to see my Canon photos end up in prominent industry publications. And it’s obviously enormous to be selected by such a juggernaut brand to do work for them. But, what meant the most to me? In those few days, I found the most elusive, unpredictable, and gracious of all acquaintances: Inspiration.
