aesthetic. A director’s appreciation can be a blessing or a curse.
Many people watch that movie [Kaboom] and think Gregg’s style is
my style—they think highly stylized visual composition and dramatic
lighting is the only thing I do...you can get pigeonholed.”
The thing about Sandra Valde-Hansen, though, is that she views
the product of her work as dependent on a director. In other words,
you can see her influences and aesthetic tendencies in her filming—aspects of French New Wave and German Expressionism she
encountered in school; the minimal lighting and handheld camerawork from her initial documentary filmmaking background; the lush
emotional and visual palette of Gregg Arraki—but these personal
stylistic traits will always be subordinate to her director’s vision.
That’s her ethos. That’s one reason she prefers the title cinematographer to director of photography. “There’s only one director on a
film,” she says. “We should mold ourselves to the visual style of the
director. If you’re on a good set, run by a good director, there is a
sense of hierarchy, and that hierarchy has been absolutely respected on most of the films I’ve worked on… Being a cinematographer,
there’s a diplomacy to it—whenever I run into collaborative issues, I
do my damndest to be a mediator...we [cinematographers] are kind
of the glue that brings a whole movie together.”
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