It feels like Tami Reiker's year. Pieces of April, the low-budget indie film that she shot with a Sony PD150 garnered as much attention for her deft use of DV as for Patricia Clarkson's Oscar-nominated performance. Later in the year, the cinematographer was again turning heads for the Dust Bowl period look she'd given the 35mm pilot of HBO's Carnivale. Her fellow cinematographers honored her work on the show, which has been called "Twin Peaks meets Freaks," with an ASC Award for the best cable pilot, miniseries, or MOW. Reiker shows extraordinary range as she moves from video to 35mm and from commercials- hundreds of them – to features such as The Love Letter, Disappearing Acts and High Art which won her an Independent Spirit Award in 1998.

 

I did still photography since I was 10 or 12. I decided to go to NYU, initially for still photography. But once there, I decided I could do that on my own and went after film. I'd always loved movies and found it fascinating how they were made. In film school, I started shooting lots of student films. Working on feature films as an intern during the summer solidified my desire to be in the camera department. I loved the production of it and the scope was much bigger than still photography.

 

I'm always referring back to still photography. Besides the masters and the classics, I pore through the pages of Vogue and Index. Still photography leads to trends, especially in commercials. There are cinematographers whose work I love. Roger Deakins, for example- besides his lighting, every movie is completely different. I also worked as an assistant for Harris Savides for a while and what I learned from him was the power of experimenting. Another influence comes from living in NYC and going to museums and theater.

 

High Art in 1998, directed by Lisa Cholodenko. I had shot Lisa's student film, Ring of Fire, when she was a student at Columbia University. I shot a lot of Columbia student films. Also, the producer Dolly Hall had produced The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, which was the first movie I'd shot. For the look of the film, we were very influenced by photographers like Nan Golden and Jack Pierson, and we really focused on a color palette and the mood. After doing tests, we decided to flash the film. We shot most of it handheld or on a jib arm. The result was to make viewers feel they were a part of that world. It created quite a mood. At Sundance, people talked about the photography and asked if I was a still photographer.

 

When I met with director Rodrigo Garcia (Fathers & Sons), he said he wanted a look like nothing else on television, which is a great challenge! The production design and costumes were amazing. After doing a lot of tests, we decided to flash the film, like High Art, which gave it a desaturated look. To some extent, the dust bowl photographers were an influence, to get a feeling for the times. But they worked in black and white and we were color. Because it's television and you have to move quickly, I decided to use large soft sources from above and then use Chinese lanterns in the scenes. One of the constant challenges was all the dust they were constantly blowing around. Every day, we had to wear bandannas and masks to work. We used the Arri Moviecam [from Keslo Cameras] and we had scratching problems. We sent it in a lot to be cleaned.

 

For new cinematographers, the hardest thing is finding enough work to shoot on film. I was lucky when I started- MTV was big, every band had a video and they were shot on film. Documentaries were shot on film. I know from friends starting out that it's hard to find as many film projects as there were 10 years ago. So many projects, if they're lower budget, are digital, and it's a challenge to make video, whether it's miniDV or HD, look interesting. When you're shooting miniDV, instead of saying, "How am I going to make this beautiful?", you're saying, "How am I going to make this acceptable?" My first digital feature was Pieces of April, which I shot in miniDV [with the Sony PD150]. The camera was freeing and fun, and we were able to shoot with a small crew. But post-production was very difficult. I spent more post-production time on Pieces of April than all my other movies combined. It was amazing that the movie got made for under $200,000. It's just not amazing for the DP.