The Thoughts Mostly About Film Interview Series: Sophia Cacciola
The first interview in the series explores the working life of a micro-budget cinematographer in Los Angeles.
Welcome to the Thoughts Mostly About Film Interview Series, which will appear periodically in this space and feature voices from the world of indy filmmaking in Los Angeles and other areas of the arts. What follows is a transcript of some highlights from the interview, which have been lightly edited. It's also available as a full length podcast here, as well as on other platforms.
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Tyler Sage: My guest today is Sophia Cacciola, who is a D.P. [Director of Photography / Cinematographer] here in the L.A. area. Would you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got to L.A. and into the industry?
Sophia Cacciola: Sure. I started in music in my 20s. I moved from a very small town in New York State to Boston when I was 17 and played in bands and toured around for a while. And then once we started getting into music videos I was like, "Okay, this is something fun that I can do." And then we jumped right from making music videos to making features. [Cacciola's partner and collaborator in these is Michael J. Epstein] By the time we had made three features in Boston we thought, "Alright, what's the next step?" We had a great community in Boston, people that would let us use their venues to shoot and people who would act in our stuff, so it was hard to leave that behind. But for career-wise, we thought we had to try Los Angeles. And we love it out here.
TS: So how much technical knowledge did you have when you started making videos?
SC: Not much. It was during that early DSLR revolution, and we had a Panasonic point and shoot. Eventually, I was able to work with bigger cameras like REDs and ALEXAs, and so I saw that side of it, too. But for our initial stuff, it was all DSLR or camcorder.
TS: Tell us about The Prisoner video.
SC: Yeah, was basically my introduction to any sort of planning or pre-production on a movie. We made a music video that recreated the opening sequence to the 1967 British show The Prisoner. When I presented it to our director, he was like, "Cool, we'll do that in a couple months." And then it took us like two years, because it took so long to find locations in Boston that looked like England, and to find the right car and the rest. So it took a tremendous amount of work and cost a ton of money. But it did really well for us, and it was my introduction to figuring out how to find all the stuff you need to make something.
TS: What was it like when you first got out here to L.A.?
SC: It's funny, somebody just asked me about this recently. I think we got out here at the end of August, and by October I was on a feature film set. All it took was responding to one Facebook ad for a camera operator who had a Black Magic [camera], and could go to the woods for two weeks. So I responded and they were like, "Cool, will you do it for $50 a day?" Sure, whatever. I don't know anybody. So I think I got $500 total. The whole cast and crew stayed in two cabins in Idyllwild, and it was really fun. It kind of a mess of a movie, and it never came out. But that's where I met one of my best friends out here, Paul Zurcher, who brought me on to a lot of other jobs and introduced me to a lot of people. And it has just snowballed from there.
TS: So at first you were just running cameras?
SC: Yeah camera operator and first assistant camera. I do that as well.
TS: Tell people what that is, just in case.
SC: The camera op is below the director of photography. They literally just move the camera, either handheld or on the tripod – however it's moving, that's the camera operator. And the first A.C. is the focus puller. So they set up the camera for the day, make sure it's all good to go, and then during the actual shooting, they're responsible for the focus.
TS: But pretty quickly, you started working as a D.P.?
SC: Yeah, because I was shooting all of our own stuff as well. So we went to festivals with our films, and I met a lot of people. Not really through like a lot of ads or things like that – it's just networking.
TS: Can you describe your days on set?
SC: I always complain because it starts the day before. And even months before, doing pre-production and discussing how it's gonna go. But as far as the day before, it's charging batteries and getting all my gear organized and ready to be loaded into the car. And shoots generally start early, like 7AM. So you gotta get up early, load the car, and go. And then it's just a matter of getting to the location and seeing what kind of nightmare I'm presented with for the day. Often on low budget stuff, we're shooting way too many pages in a day. So we're doing it fast.
TS: Can you tell us what people mean when they talk about shooting "pages"?
SC: It's a bit of a misnomer. Basically, it means pages of a script. A page is a minute of movie, generally. And if you're going by dialogue, it does kind of work. But if it's an action scene, somebody might write "They fight" and that could be like the fight from They Live which is like ten minutes long. That's why I say it's a misnomer. On a big-budget movie, they might do one or two pages a day, and on a medium budget, maybe four or five. And on our budgets, we're doing twelve to twenty. But it can be funny – on this movie I just did, we were doing ten pages a day, and on the last day, they're like, "Oh, it'll be an easy day. It's only four pages!" And then I look at it. It's two stunt fights, and four special effect deaths. Which isn't shorter. In fact, it's probably longer. Because when you're doing stunts, you need a lot of time to discuss safety – Where is the camera going to be? How are the actors going to be safe? And same thing for special effects. It's me working with a special effects artist to figure out the angle they want. And it has to be right, because you only get one or two shots at a special effect, if you're lucky, because the blood only gets dispersed one time. So you often don't get a second chance.
TS: But everyone's trying to make it as cheap as possible. So they're trying to shoot as much as possible every day to save money.
SC: Exactly.
TS: And can you describe how much stuff is involved in all this?
SC: I often say I wish I just got into construction because I would carry less. On bigger crews, you have grips to carry all the lights, and the C stands, and the sandbags and cables. On smaller sets, it's me and whoever's around bringing it all in.
TS: The cameras get heavy too. How much do your Black Magics weigh?
SC: The camera itself is only like two pounds. But the lens might be another two pounds, the batteries another two pounds, and if I'm doing handheld it's probably ten to twelve pounds by the time all this stuff is rigged out.
TS: Which doesn't sound like a lot to people, probably. But if you have that on your shoulder all day and you're getting in weird positions to try to get angles it's hard work.
SC: When you're doing handheld, for sure. It definitely weighs on your body. And if you get up to an ALEXA Mini, like that's more like twenty pounds.
TS: Lighting, too. When I've seen you guys work, you often run your own lights, which is also hard.
SC: Yeah. Everybody wants to keep the budget low, so there's no money for extra crew. So often I'm the D.P., my own focus puller, I'm the gaffer, I'm the grip, and half the time I'm trying to help the art department. Because if it's in the shot, I care about it.
TS: And they're long days. I mean, twelve- or fourteen-hour days are not uncommon.
SC: Exactly. And by the time you've gotten to the location, and gotten back home and eaten dinner, you've got like five hours in between the days.
TS: Can you tell us what on-set working relationships between the D.P. and the director can be like?
SC: I think hiring your director of photography, when you're a director, is the most important hire you're gonna make, because they're responsible for the visual element of your film. Sound is important, don't get me wrong, but if it's a movie, it's got to look like something. And it varies. I work with one director who's a really good editor, so he'll come with a shot list of and an idea of every edit he wants to make, which is great as a great starting point. But then when we get into the location, sometimes I'm like, "Okay, well, I can't give you that shot because it's physically impossible." Because it's an indie film, so I'm shooting in somebody's actual kitchen or bathroom, and the camera can only do what the camera can do. It can't do other eyes can do and it can't do what your iPhone can do because your iPhone has a super-wide lens.
TS: So if you want a certain angle, you have to move the camera forward or back.
SC: Yeah. You need distance. That's my biggest hurdle with indie films – getting any kind of distance away from the subject. On a bigger budget thing, on a set, it's all movable walls, so you can put your camera in impossible places that don't exist in a normal house. And other directors will just say stuff like "I like that shot from Requiem for a Dream – give me that." Which is fine – it's a visual language so I know exactly what they're talking about. Or sometimes people will show me stills, or ask for something like the spinning Evil Dead shot that's been popular recently. The barrel roll.
TS: How'd they do that?
SC: They probably just with a Steadicam. But I'm not totally positive.
TS: And there's still a lot of low-tech stuff, right? Didn't we use a wheelchair on that one?
SC: Yeah - I combined the wheelchair with a gimbal, and I was like "Just wheel me, Tyler!" People still use dana dollies, which are like tracks with skateboard wheels, a lot. And actual dollies, which you can sit on. Tarantino puts everything on crane, which is beautiful, but impractical for anybody without $100 million. So there's infinite ways to do camera movement. But as far as what I want from the director for a shot, mostly all I want to know is how much of their body do you want to see? And how much space do you want to see? That's it. I don't want you to tell me what lens you think is going to work for it. You're not going to know. Because sometimes they're like, "I want this on like the 32 [millimeter lens]" And I'm like, "It's not going to give you what you want. Because I don't have the distance."
TS: So let's talk for a second about budgets. You tend to work on micro-budget features. How much is that?
SC: Really, anything up to about $100,000. But between $20,000 and $50,000.
TS: And then above $100,000 is more like an indy film.
SC: But usually the film is not that different. It's just you had permits or insurance or a slightly bigger crew to pull it off. I think around a million dollars is when you start seeing actual improvements in actor choices, and cameras, having time to shoot camera movements, all that stuff.
TS: How about gender on set? What's your experience better with that?
SC: Mostly okay. But I think that if somebody's hiring me as a D.P. they've already overcome it in their mind. And generally, they're gonna treat me okay. But there is a tendency to think that loud women are being bitchy or abrasive, and I'm just loud and direct sometimes. My mouth is faster than my brain half the time so, you know, I'm direct when I'm really concentrating, and I think that kind of burns me a little. But sometimes…there are situations. I was subbing for a friend of mine as an A.C. for two weeks on a TV show. And I overheard the D.P. telling the camera operator I was working for, "Don't worry, we got you a guy for the next job." And there was a set that Ron Jeremy just showed up on. We were shooting at a pool in North Hollywood, and somehow, he heard there were going to be girls in bikinis at this pool. So he just came and ate all the crafty [food]. And he look looks like death. But all of the grips and whoever that went up to talk to him, I was like, I'll never work with that grip on my own set. So you know, you just keep your mental Rolodex of like, well, who's kind of shitty.
TS: Can you tell us a bit about what you're working on now?
SC: Right now, we're on the festival circuit with a mockumentary called The Once and Future Smash, which follows two older gentlemen who were both in a cult movie in the '70s called End Zone II. There's a convention where they're going to announce a remake, and so these guys go to it, and they have a huge rivalry and crazy stuff happens. And it's also got a lot of interviews with horror greats.
TS: And it's been doing really well right?
SC: Yeah, it premiered at FrightFest in London, which is a really big genre festival. It's showing at ScreamFest in L.A., which is another great fest, and it's playing at Morbido in Mexico at Halloween, which will be really fun, then Nightmares, and New York City Horror. So it's been great.
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