The BiteSize Dailies were a series of short-form video interviews with working Directors of Photography, recorded on the floor of the Plus Camerimage festival in Bydgoszcz, Poland — the only annual gathering on the calendar where this many of the world’s leading cinematographers are in the same building at the same time. Each clip was kept deliberately short and built around a single practical or philosophical question: how to start out, how to break in, how to think about light, how to talk to a director.
The roster across the run included Roger Deakins, Vittorio Storaro, Sean Bobbitt BSC, Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC, Phedon Papamichael ASC, Vilmos Zsigmond ASC, Dante Spinotti ASC AIC, Eduard Grau and Paul Cameron ASC, plus editors and post-production supervisors including Joel Cox (longtime collaborator with Clint Eastwood). What follows is a small handful of the lines that have stayed with us.
Roger Deakins — on having a point of view
“You have to have your own way of seeing — if that’s not too pretentious a way to put it, you have to have something to offer.”
The shortest, hardest piece of advice in the series. Technical fluency is the floor; an actual eye is the bar.
Vittorio Storaro — on what film school does not teach
“Nobody is explaining to us at film school the meaning, the philosophy of light, the philosophy of colour.”
Storaro spent the rest of the conversation, and a great deal of his career, on that gap.
Vilmos Zsigmond — on whether to do this at all
“It’s the most difficult thing to break in to be a cinematographer. The only ones who will survive are those who really cannot live without it.”
A diagnostic question, not a discouragement.
Dante Spinotti — on staying in the work
“What I try to keep in mind always is that one of the most important things to be a cinematographer making movies is to keep the energy and passion for what we’re doing.”
Spinotti’s career — from Mann’s Heat and The Insider to thirty more features — is the proof case for that note.
Eduard Grau — on patience
“Cinematographers aren’t born — they develop over time.”
The youngest DP we interviewed, talking to the youngest viewers we expected.
Sean Bobbitt — on volume
The advice from Bobbitt across two clips reduces to a single idea: shoot frequently and shoot consistently. The eye is built up over years of accumulated frames; there is no shortcut.
The BiteSize Dailies are part of a revival of cinefii.com — a reconstruction of the series from public references on the open web.