The Canadian Society of Cinematographers Awards ceremony March 27 at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in Toronto was the scene of a surreal reunion for director of photography Derek Rogers. Twelve years after graduating film school from Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnic, he found himself nominated for best theatrical feature cinematography for his work on Cube against fellow alumnus Douglas Koch, who had shot the higher-profile Last Night.

Rogers remembers Koch as ‘a couple of years ahead of me at Ryerson. He actually shot a short film I directed, and I hadn’t run into him since.’

In addition to Rogers’ respect for Koch’s film work, he regards his colleague as ‘one of the best tv commercial dops in the country,’ which made Rogers’ call up to the podium extra special. ‘To be rewarded by your peers – to me it’s the most important award in Canada for a cinematographer, and it’s really respected outside the country. It’s amazing how it’s helped me, in just a few weeks.’

Job offers

How it has helped is in terms of job offers only top-drawer dops such as Koch get, including tv commercials and more features, both American and Canadian. Although he has thus far focused on independent feature work, shooting five films since Cube, Rogers welcomes the opportunity to work on commercials.

‘Some of the best young directors are now going through commercials,’ he explains. ‘The trend seems to be from music videos to commercials to drama, so it’s essential I hook up with them.’

Also, the money splashed around on commercials is a far cry from the low-budget Cube, an initiative of the Canadian Film Centre’s Feature Film Project on which Rogers had to employ a lot of ingenuity to lend the film’s one-room set some visual flair while adhering to a tight, 20-day shooting schedule.

‘I saw the commercial Doug Koch was also nominated for [‘Subway,’ for Pall Mall cigarettes],’ he adds, ‘and I asked him how long the shoot was, and he said `Four days.’ Just to do a 30-second commercial! I’ve done features where I’m doing six to eight pages per day!’

In case you missed it, Cube is a sci-fi flick about six strangers who wake inexplicably in a seemingly endless series of cubical, interconnected rooms comprising one massive cube. Our hapless protagonists try to escape, dodging the structure’s many traps as well as each other.

Aided by complementary visual effects by Toronto’s CORE Digital Pictures, Rogers and director Vincenzo Natali certainly overachieved in the film’s striking look; however, Rogers has made a point to display a wide range in the projects he has chosen since.

Branching out

‘It would have been easy to have been typecast as a suspense/horror dop shooting in a small space, and really stylized,’ he points out, ‘but I haven’t done a horror film since – I’ve done comedies and dramas.’

One of those is New Waterford Girls, which he recently shot for director Allan Moyle (Pump Up the Volume), a film about an adolescent girl itching to leave her Cape Breton hometown.

‘It’s got style, but it’s not over-the-top lighting, like Cube,’ he explains. ‘It’s a comedy, but very realistic looking – we were really inspired by The Commitments. People look at [New Waterford Girls and Cube] in my reel, and they can’t believe it’s the same dop, which is why I’m getting a lot of work.’

Broader canvas

In contrast to the oppressive claustrophobia of Cube, New Waterford Girls emphasizes the Maritimes’ expansive landscape, allowing Rogers to demonstrate his talent on a broader canvas. New Waterford Girls not only involved scenes with numerous extras but also the kind of camera gear Rogers usually eschewed in his minimalist early days shooting documentaries.

Mobility is of the essence shooting docs, and Rogers had earned a reputation for being able to set up and light very quickly, and to shoot hand-held while making it not appear so. This efficiency was one of the main reasons Natali asked him to shoot his cfc short Elevated, a kind of dry run for Cube in which three people are trapped in an elevator, and one comes to believe aliens have overrun the building.

The success of the Genie-nominated, 30-minute film quashed the cfc’s initial reservations about Cube, and confirmed to Natali who should shoot his feature. Rogers’ fluidity as an operator allowed them to shoot approximately 85% of the film hand-held (the camera lock-offs required for digital animation accounted for the rest), and they were able to complete 30 to 40 setups daily, keeping their young crew on its toes.

Rogers is excited to now have access to all the bigger budget toys, but he says this won’t make him complacent, insisting, ‘You get the most out of your resources. When I do a crane shot now, I feel so lucky to even have a crane that I know it has to look really good or what’s the point of using it?’

He has gone from shooting with his camera on his shoulder to using not only cranes, but also Steadicam, remote heads, and dollies, all of which has meant delegating more responsibility to larger crews. Then again he has had no problem letting go some degree of control.

Learning to let go

‘On some of the films I’ve now done, I’ve used a second unit and second camera operator,’ he elaborates, ‘so I’ve learned to work with operators, and when the time comes when I can’t [operate] because of union [stipulations], I’ll be ready. It’s a maturity thing – learning to trust your crew, operators, and lighting people, which is something I’ve learned from working with smaller crews, and expanding into larger crews.

‘You have to pick good people, but once you have them, you have to have faith in them, and then it’s really fun – you can do a lot.’

He cites the example of Jeremy Hudspith, his gaffer on Cube, who has made the transition to Rogers’ larger projects as well.

‘I dictate the lighting, but I allow [Jeremy] to give me input,’ the cameraman offers. ‘Sometimes he’ll suggest something and I’ll say no, but other times he’ll make suggestions [that I will incorporate]. You have to keep a spontaneity going, and I think the crew is very important to that. You want a crew that’s into the material.’

Rogers’ biggest lesson working on the five post-Cube features (which also include Amnon Buchbinder’s Genie-nominated The Fishing Trip, the wide-screen Dream Trips for Hong Kong director Kal Ng, and Yellow Wedding, which was actually shot in Hong Kong for director Yan Cui) is that a project’s success is all a matter of good leadership, from the producer on down – but it must start with the producer.

‘The bigger budget you get, the more essential the role of the producer becomes,’ he argues. ‘They’re fiscally responsible to get the film done, but the good producers, like Paul Barkin and Moira Holmes, whom I worked with on a film called Apartment Hunting, have also had a passion for the projects, and it’s their creative input that has been essential.’

Rogers is equally enthusiastic about Julia Sereny and Jennifer Kawaja, producers of New Waterford Girls. ‘They really drove the project,’ he says. ‘I watched them get really excited when I would talk shots, because they understood what I was trying to do, and then they would say, `Yes, we will spend the extra dollar to get that special camera.’ ‘

As to his future plans and the inevitable lure of Tinseltown, Rogers maintains ‘it would be best to keep the balance between the good independent Canadian stuff and the American stuff that comes in and brings all the dollars. If the script is good, I would go and shoot a film anywhere. The combination of a good script, director and producer are really essential, that’s what I’m looking for. The lure is more for being able to extend the creative bounds, and to do different projects in different landscapes.’

Whatever career path Rogers may choose, winning the CSC Award will no doubt help him call the shots.