Cinematography in Canada Since 1957

#JarrettCraig #AssociateMemberCSC @jarrettcraig_dp Thanks again to the CSC @canadiancinematographer and Carolyn @416cw not only for the invitation to guest host but her management of the instagram accounts. This took me well out of my comfort zone and she helped with encouragement and all my questions. Thanks as well to my CSC mentorship mentee Laina Brown @lainabrown for her tips. Be sure to scroll back and checkout her guest hosting posts if you missed them. I want to also acknowledge all of the directors over the years who have pushed me to find solutions and storytelling imagery. As my two weeks comes to an end I wanted to shout out to the many crew members I’ve had the privilege to work alongside all of these years. Some going back to the first music videos. The crew is the back bone of any set and no cinematographer can go it alone. There’s nothing like a group of people pulling in the same direction towards a common goal. I know I can’t tag everyone or highlight all the crew in this one post but be assured I have a deep respect for everyone who gets on the ship and helps navigate through the seas of production. This has been a great way to look back on many years of projects and I appreciate being welcomed to share some of my trip down memory lane. I always look forward to the member guest posts and I hope to have more to share sometime in the future! Thank you for the feedback, support and to everyone who has reached out.

With gratitude,
Jarrett

#JarrettCraig #AssociateMemberCSC @jarrettcraig_dp
I want to mention an experience as a camera trainee that was a big direction change for my career. Daryn Okada, ASC @darynokada must have seen my enthusiasm and would give me extra tasks during the filming of LAKE PLACID. I would meter scenes as he instructed and take note of fill, key and backlight values, then he’d quiz me on what T stop we should shoot at. Sometimes he’d ask me to come up with the T stop and why. He showed me how to use a polarizer and let me set it. One of my regular tasks on set was to manage his polaroid he was checking contrast ratios with by shooting black and while film. I would write all the metered values on the back of the polaroid stills. Many times he would remind me that it was all learnable. I hadn’t mentally bridged the gap between solo photography and large scale production. In addition to that I would see day to day his calm and collected demeanour on set. Before that a lot of it had seemed so far out of reach. I’ll always be grateful he saw my burning interest and fuelled it.

I try to do what I can on set when I see genuine interest and have a “no dumb questions” policy. There’s only bad timing, so if the timing is right, there’s always a moment to show interest. Especially since I still rely on those beyond my own experience for camaraderie and advice.

I’ve been lucky to have mentors whether they were in an official capacity or not. They come in many forms: colleagues, relatives, crew members, and friends. Some you don’t realize are mentoring in many ways, it can come in the form of a conversation over lunch that changes your direction or a phone call, text or email. Everyone has a different road they travelled in this business and a different background. There is also a lot of “work between the work” that is the less glamorous part of the industry and often left out of books and online education. I have a lot people to thank throughout the years who have always have time to share, even if it’s my "dumb questions". #DerickUnderschultz #DeanBennett @grantcombustion @craigwrobleski @instatrent @dana_gonzales_asc @jonjoffin @qgar

#JarrettCraig #AssociateMemberCSC @jarrettcraig_dp Joe Pickett was a series for Paramount Plus I worked on for season 1 and 2. Joe is the newly hired local game warden in the small town of Saddlestring, Wyoming. A sleepy town with a dark and seedy underbelly of corruption, greed and crime. Joe gets caught up trying to do the right thing and ends up needing to protect himself and his family from wrong doing. I came in season 1 to alternate on even blocks with DP Todd McMullen @endmarks and season 2 I shifted to odd blocks bookending the season and DP Brad Creasser @creasser took over even block duties. Both seasons were great collaborations and open dialog among the cinematographers. This helps immensely with shared sets or episodes where a new set is introduced and looking forward in the season one DP might only see it in daytime but the other for nights. Open communication and sharing images from scouts and the occasional phone call really makes for smooth sailing. The entire production from top down really became a family like atmosphere thanks to the showrunners, John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle carefully building great people into the mix throughout the cast and crew. This was continued forward by the local producers. Because Saddlestring is a town with some hidden edge and strangeness just under the surface, the occasional stroke of color would make its way into the somewhat gritty, sometimes dark interiors. This was done with help from Season 1 production designer Trevor Smith @smithbilt and Season 2 designer Justin Ludwig @harvestking.

It was a great show made possible by a hard working crew. I`m forever grateful to everyone involved for the experience on the job. It was truly a collaboration from the top down.

#BrianNordheim @rfinkits @corybudney @tgiforrester #BrianShier @tjcharrison @seansymondson @tomkolafa #RickSchmidt @queasy_d @ljfan1923 @arsenalfxcolor @panavisionofficial

#JarrettCraig #AssociateMemberCSC @jarrettcraig_dp I took over main unit cinematography duties in season 10 on Heartland from Craig Wrobleski with his endorsement and encouragement. Fast forward to 5 seasons and 69 episodes later I could probably do many posts about my time on Heartland. Instead I`m going to focus on my last season. Season 14 was a return to the ranch and the untimely death of a main character. The season focuses on the lead character, Amy, as she grapples with the death and her new life after the loss. We discussed in prep one of the main themes that season was Amy`s loneliness and grief. I pitched this season as a more somber tone. Slightly desaturated, deeper shadows in the house and interior sets and secondary colors wherever possible. Amy wears red in the later months as it gets colder and we looked at ways to isolate her in her primary red amongst secondary tones. Since we started in late 2020 as one of the first shows back after covid, our season stretched later into the year. We took advantage of fall/winter low sun and long shadows on our exteriors and where possible pushed that soft late year light into our studio interiors to match. This contrasted with any cheerful scenes as we brought back a bit of the known Heartland look for anything upbeat. That really created a defined feel for any of Amy`s introspective and somber scenes. Brett Trider at Technicolor embraced our new direction and helped define and develop our season 14 LUT that previewed some desaturation and mellowed any primary colors that snuck into the fold with great success. He also followed through to the end for the final grade with Rob Leblanc handling dailies. Of course a show like Heartland could not be possible without the crew. It`s a tough show at times dealing with some difficult locations and ever changing weather. We couldn`t have done it without the best technicians who are also filmmakers and storytellers

#JarrettCraig #AssociateMemberCSC @jarrettcraig_dp Director Corey Lee approached me with a documentary pilot project focusing on towns that had been abandoned. The pilot was to pitch a series that would find and document these places all over the world. Our one week shoot took us to an isolated part of Northern BC close to the Alaska border. There were numerous towns based around mining or fishing that had once been thriving places to live but are now ghost towns with only the evidence of what once was. Most had been desolated close to 100 years so have all but disappeared back into nature except the odd fire hydrant or tombstone sticking out in the middle of dense forest. The highlight of our trip was the town of Kitsault. As one of the most recently abandoned towns it was a time capsule of the 1980’s. Everyone left the town in 1983 and it was Very much intact as if the population had just packed up and left. Most of the homes were still furnished and the shopping mall, Royal bank and grocery store were still “as-is”. It was a spooky trip back to my childhood in the 80’s. Some of my old toys I recognized were still in the school. I’ve spent the majority of my time in the industry in dramatic productions so I always jump at the chance to work on documentary whenever possible. It’s not only rewarding to capture a story using pure visuals such as this project but one of the perks of the job is the access we get as film crews sometimes. Kitsault is a privately owned piece of land and it is maintained but totally off limits to the public and private property, not to mention out of the way by means of 100kms of potholed gravel roads. It was fortunate we were allowed access to step into this time warp. We also spent the night there each in our own 80’s abandoned apartment and it was super creepy to say the least!

#JarrettCraig #AssociateMemberCSC @jarrettcraig_dp
I was connected with the world famous “Old Trout Puppet Workshop” to work on a Christmas project they were developing called “From Naughty to Nice”. Produced in partnership with National Film Board of Canada and directed by one of the trout’s own, Judd Palmer. I was brought in very early by the producers as sets were being constructed to give input on how we would integrate camera, grip and lighting into sets that were primarily constructed for puppeteering. What that meant for the production crew is that the visible working part of each set was elevated to provide working space for the puppeteers from below. The Old Trout’s puppets are manipulated from underneath so there is no wires or strings from above. That gives us a realistic scenario for lighting as we could work from the floor and hang anything from a makeshift grid as needed. It was very confined and cramped and any extra room below frame completely disappeared as we had sometimes 5 or 6 puppeteers piled up just below the bottom frame line. It was a great experience with a fantastic cast and crew that really pushed us all outside our comfort zone. I had no idea this exposure to puppets would help out later on when I was sent to do a 2nd unit on “Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock” for Apple Plus. We had to take the mobile character Uncle Travelling Matt out to a ski hill and all the tricks and working knowledge learned really applied to “Fraggle Rock”. Thanks to Gavin Smith csc for trusting me with the 2nd unit.