Born: ?, White Plains, NY, USA.

Education: Washington University's School of Fine Arts, St. Louis, Missouri [1969-73].

Career: 'My great uncle was an amazing still photographer. He immigrated to the United States from Germany on the last successful flight of the Hindenburg. I thought his photo albums were amazing. I think that must have indirectly influenced me, but mostly I had a desire to take pictures that captured how I saw things. In high school I wanted to be an automobile designer. My father had a nine-to-five-job, and I knew that I didn't want to become a businessman. I decided to enroll at Washington University in St. Louis. I majored in multimedia and minored in photography. During the summer of my junior year in 1972, I took my first trip to Europe and Africa. I took pictures everywhere I went in France, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark and parts of Africa, including Ethiopia. […] I fell into a job at Durona Productions in New Rochelle, New York. The first year, I was on staff full time helping out with everything. I lugged equipment, helped them build and tear down sets, swept the floor, and did things to help the editor and the camera department. [...] I was going to go to the University of Texas graduate film school in January, but realized once I got there that I really didn't want to be back in school. I spent the next four years in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod taking photographs for money and fun. When I was in Provincetown, some friends who knew that I had worked at a New York studio for a year called and said they were going to make a low-budget feature film. The producer had told the cameraman that he was going to get him an assistant, but he never did. They asked if I was interested. I said, sure, I'd love to work on a movie. They arranged an interview with the cinematographer whose name was James Kevin 'Flip' McCarthy. He hired me to be his camera assistant. Flip told me, you're really good at this. If you want to be in the film business, don't stay here, because nothing will ever happen on the Cape. I packed everything I owned and drove to New York. That was in November 1977. A year later, Flip was writing a script with his father, so he passed his calls for jobs on to me, and I rented his camera. He was doing a lot of work for television stations in France, Germany, Italy and other European countries. It was mostly feature stories and short documentaries. With Flip, I covered a Musicians United for Safe Energy march in South Dakota for a documentary called 'No Nukes'. I wasn't getting enough work as a freelancer in 1978 to make a living, so I went back to Durona Productions and asked if they needed help. They hired me to help the production manager on commercials and product films. They paid me a full time weekly salary on a freelance basis for about six weeks. About a month later, they called and offered me a full time job as production manager. It wasn't what I wanted to do, but the money was good and the job was kind of exciting, so I said yes. I spent the next five years working as a production manager and producer learning the other side of the business, but I missed the artistic creativity. I asked the company if I could transfer to the camera department. They said there was no room for me there, so I quit. I had a friend from Italy who was an architect. His girlfriend was an editor. We started a little company in New York City called Toolbox shooting for Swiss TV. […] I got a call from a woman who had studied in New York for a while. Her name was Elisabetta Valgiusti. She wanted to be an actress, director, producer and writer and had gotten a government grant for $50,000 to make a movie. I had shot some films for her when she was a student. I thought it would be a five- or six-month project. I put everything I owned in storage and moved to Rome in April 1982. I ended up staying for ten years. I moved to Milan for a few years and worked as a camera and Steadicam operator with Martin Scorsese, commercial director Joe Pytka, and with the doph Néstor Almendros, Tony Imi and Oliver Stapleton. I had taken a workshop taught by Garrett Brown and bought a Steadicam at a really low price. I was one of the first four or five Steadicam operators in Italy. […] There was a recession in Italy in 1991. Around that time, a friend from Milan whom I had worked with called and told me that he was moving from New York to Los Angeles. We had spoken a lot about our dream of making movies in Hollywood. He asked, why don't you give it a try? I said that I would. I flew to Los Angeles, made some contacts and showed an agent my reel. She encouraged me to move to Los Angeles. I did that in July 1992.' [From interview by Bob Fisher on the KODAK OnFilm website.]

Ph music videos dir by Meiert Avis ['All I Want Is You', 1989; a: U2], Cyndi Lauper ['Girls Just Want to Have Fun', 1994; a: Cyndi Lauper], Billy Bob Thornton [a: B.B. Thornton], a.o. Ph commercials dir by Andrew Becker [for UUNet], Ray Dillman [for US Army], Christopher Guest [for FOX SportsNet], Nick Spooner & Andrew French [for Microsoft], Spencer Chinoy, a.o., and for Domino's Pizza, Texas Instruments, a.o. Member of the ASC since 2006.

Awards: CableACE Award nom [1995] for 'Roadracers'; BAFTA Film Award nom [2004] for 'Finding Neverland'.

Website: Roberto Schaefer [photos].