Jay Hunter is a Director of Photography and cinematographer who has worked on television shows such as “Survivor,” “On the Lot,” and “The Apprentice” and feature films such as “Word Wars” and “Paper Heart,” an official selection of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival starring Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi. Jay spoke about his work on “Paper Heart” at the Windrider Forum at Sundance 2009.
Jay recently shared his insights with me on reality TV, cinematography, and the nature of job-hunting in the film industry.

Cinematographer Jay Hunter has worked in reality TV and on feature productions such as "Paper Heart."

Q&A with cinematographer Jay Hunter

How did you get started in your career?
I have kind of a strange story. I don’t have any family connections (in the film industry) or anything like that. I went to University of Colorado in Boulder. They have a very small avant-garde filmmaking program. I knew that I was in this very small pond.
When I was in my freshman year, I managed to find a few people who were dot-com millionaires  before they lost their money. They wanted to make a movie.
Somehow I convinced them – even though I was only 18 or 19 years old – that I was the guy who should be their DP. I was working with people who hadn’t made anything before.
I shot three features when I was in college. It sort of established me as someone in the industry; I was renting cameras, trucks and lighting equipment.
That’s how I got my start in a very unconventional way. Most people’s first job isn’t as a DP.
Also, I shot every student film I could shoot at the school.
I learned a great deal from working in the trenches as a camera assistant, and the very next day getting a chance to shoot.

What has been your experience with reality shows?
I kinda fell into the genre accidentally through a friend of mine who was producing a reality show. It was (initially) something I wasn’t particularly proud of. “Reality” is kind of a dirty word; it’s everyone’s dark secret that they actually work on (reality TV).
Most of these companies don’t actually care what the shows look like; which I why I think a lot of reality shows look really bad. It’s easy to make a reality show look bad. It’s extremely difficult to make it look mediocre, and it’s almost impossible to make it look good.
I’ve actually done a quite bit of work for Mark Burnett Productions, a television company that does mostly reality TV shows. Burnett produces the higher-end reality shows.
A lot of these companies are frustrating to work with, but Burnett has a level of quality.
I really enjoy working for Burnett; we do things the “right” way, as opposed to the typical reality show way of doing things. We have a budget, but we prepare properly and plan shots ahead.
It’s just a lot more like feature filmmaking, which is refreshing.

When did you become challenged to make reality shows look better in your role as a cinematographer?
One time I was at a party at the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) clubhouse in Hollywood. (The party) was prepping a pretty big reality show for Fox: “The Complex,” which had $15 million budget. My friends introduced me to all these other cinematographers they knew. I was so ashamed (to be working on a reality show), I was apologizing, saying “it’s not what I normally do.”
I said the producers didn’t care how the show looked; it was just a paycheck to them. One woman I was talking to too gave me a look that said, “I’m disgusted with you right now.” What I read into that interaction was that she was saying, “You know, Jay, you’re the Director of Photography (DP), and it’s not an excuse to say the producers don’t care how it looks.”
I realized it was up to me to make it look good … and to up the ante on the visual aesthetic.
I stopped being ashamed of working on these shows and started trying to make them look better, bringing to them what I knew from feature and commercial production.

How does the process of finding jobs work for a cinematographer?
It’s really contract labor.
I’m in the cinematographers guild. None of the big unions (DGA, SAG, WGA) are hiring halls. If you’re in the union, none of them are gonna find you work. You’ve got to find jobs on your own.
That’s one of the scariest things about being in the film industry; even if you’re James Cameron or Martin Scorsese – it doesn’t matter how much of a legend you are or how much of an invisible person you are – you still have to find the job.
I have to go on probably 50 job interviews a year. Who else can say that? I think it keeps you on your toes. It keeps you at the top of your game. You can’t be lazy because you’re only as good as the last job you’ve done.
Working in the film industry is not an easy gig. No matter who you are, you’re hustling (to find jobs).
We’re like circus folk in the film business. Most of us have very weird, specialized skills that aren’t much uses outside the film industry – and that’s what’s happening in town today. Right now, L.A. is very, very slow. Luckily, I still have clients that have me shooting and I still have jobs when a lot of people don’t. When the economy goes bad, it affects the film industry too.

What advice do you have for aspiring cinematographers and student filmmakers?
The most important thing is that you have to really need (to be working in films), not just want it. It can be miserable.
With that being said, if you can be any part of a film crew, it’s the best job on earth. I really do feel that way.
But it’s full of sacrifices. You aren’t gonna have much of a social life. Your relationships are gonna suffer. You have no job security. You don’t start out getting paid very much. If you don’t have a union job, you’re at the mercy of your producer and they can be good or terrible people.
But if you know that you love (cinematography) and that’s what you have to do, then you’re in it for life and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Granted that you have this unquenchable thirst for the filmmaking process, the only way to do things is to do them. Even if that means going on Craigslist and finding anything you can to shoot. If you want to be a DP you have to shoot things.
Learning the craft is important through working in various departments and working various jobs.
You learn more from doing the bad jobs than the good jobs. When you work on the good jobs, everything is going well. When you work on the bad jobs, things are constantly going wrong, and you learn what not do. You learn a lot more.
You’re working with a team (on a film). As a department head or a DP or director, you have to be aware of the welfare of your crew. If you take care of your crew they’ll take care of you.
If people didn’t warn me. Treat people right, they watch your back.
You need to develop a body of work and a reputation. There’s a million aspiring DPs and filmmakers out there, and you need to separate yourself from the pack with your experience and personality.