PAUL CAMERON   ASC

Born: 30 May 1958, Montréal, Canada, as Paul A. Cameron; raised in and around New York City.

Education: State University of New York, Purchase, N.Y.

Career: 'I lived with my brother, an actor out of the Yale Drama School, in New York City for about five years. I did stage lighting for school plays and rock-and-roll lighting for bands when I was in high school. During my last year of high school, my guidance counselor asked me what I was going to do with my life. I said I was going to go to film school. That was in 1977. I enrolled at the State University of New York, and by default I shot a lot of other students projects, because I didn't have enough money to shoot my own films. After the first year, I was living in Manhattan and bartending at a rock-and-roll club to help pay for school. There was a band called the 'B-52s' coming to play at the club. My dear friend Charlie Libin and I got a bunch of equipment from the school and filmed them performing. We were very excited, and looking forward to showing our film to everyone at school. [However,] Charlie and I were asked to leave the university, because we didn't ask anyone for permission to use the equipment. Six months later, I was driving around Los Angeles with a 16mm pre-MTV film of the 'B-52s'. I got to show it to people at the Warner Bros. music department. They basically said this is great, but we have no use for it. I decided to go back to school in New York City, where I was also working at camera rental houses. Around two years after I finished school, I tried to get into the camera guild as an assistant cameraman. By then, I was shooting a lot and had constructed a reel [music videos and 16mm doc's]. I took the test and didn't pass. The following week I applied to NABET [National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians] as director of photography and was accepted. […] It was a pretty brief period, but I did get to go to some interesting places. I worked on a film about a group of students from Yale who visited China. About a year later [in 1985], I went to China as a cameraman with Lindsay Anderson. It was a documentary concert film with 'Wham!'. Charlie [Libin] and I were also directing and shooting a lot of music videos. […] After I got into NABET, I started thinking that I never had a chance to be mentored by other directors of photography. I decided that I should pull focus or operate a camera for somebody who was a cinematographer. By chance, I got a call the next day from Ron Fortunato. Ron was a classmate. He went directly to Europe after graduation, and had success photographing German films. He said, I'm coming back to New York and need an assistant cameraman. Will you work with me for a year? I worked with Ron for about a year, and then hooked up with a number of European cameramen who were shooting music videos and other films for television. That lasted about two years.' [From the KODAK OnFilm website.]

Ph commercials for Bacardi, AT&T, BMW, Seiko, Coca-Cola, Revlon (d: Sam Mendes), a.o. Ph music videos with a: Janet Jackson ['I Get Lonely'; d: Paul Hunter], Lil' Kim ['No Matter What They Say'], Alicia Keys, David Bowie, a.o.

Directed commercials for Cadillac, Marlboro, Prada, a.o.

Also active as still ph.

Member of the ASC since 2006.

Awards: Clio Award 'Best Cinematography' [2003] for 'Beat the Devil'; LAFCA Award [2004; shared], BAFTA Film Award [2004; shared] & ASC Film Award nom [2004; shared] for 'Collateral'.

Website: Paul Cameron