Mr. Lipes’ Opus

SXSW superstar Jody Lee Lipes on "NY Export: Opus Jazz," "Tiny Furniture" and directing versus shooting.

What’s the project you were working on today, a new documentary?

It’s a series of web videos for this site that Spike Jonze is involved with, and Matt Wolf, who directed “Wild Combination,” is directing it. I was shooting a vérité scene tonight that was basically an impromptu screening of a film, and the light bouncing off the wall was enough to light the scene in a pitch-black room. It gives both documentary and narrative films a new life because you have even more of an ability to shoot anywhere.

Did you get your start in film or photography?

I went to film school at NYU. I had only taken a photography course when I was young. My dad had a darkroom in our house, which he built with his bare hands, that he used when I was a little kid. There was an enlarger in my house growing up, but I never really did it with my dad. I never expected to get into NYU, but when I got there, people liked the stuff I was shooting and I got pigeonholed into that world, which ended up being good for my career and allowing me to support myself.

When you’re working for hire instead of directing, how much do filmmakers rely on you to set up a shot or re-envision what they’ve written in a script?

It totally depends. Sometimes, particularly with documentary, either right away or at a certain point, people just walk away and let me do my thing. It’s nice because it makes me feel like there’s a trust there and I’m actually creative instead of being a technician. Tonight, working with Matt, he’ll walk up to me every ten minutes and be like, “How are things going?” I’ll say, “Fine,” and that’s it. That’s the relationship I have with Matt.

With ["Afterschool" director] Antonio Campos, he’s pretty specific about how he wants things to be. It’s funny that I’ve gotten more recognition as a D.P. for “Afterschool” than anything else because so much of that is Tony. With him, it’s more a situation where everything is perfectly mapped out in his brain, and then I fight him about it until we decide who’s right. We could argue about a shot for a whole day.

What’s great about working as a cinematographer is that when I shoot for myself, there is no hesitation. I don’t even think about where the camera is going to go. It just kind of goes there. I have a pretty good idea of what I like and what I don’t. For “Brock Enright,” it was the same thing. The few people who saw it commented on the way it looked and how strong or stylized the visual decisions were, but to me it was never a choice. This is where the camera goes. It was never intended to be stylized. It’s just where, in my mind, the camera needed to go to tell the story.

In the history of cinema, who do you think has had the best eye?

My go-to answer is not very exciting, but Stanley Kubrick was the best. I really respect his uniqueness, perfection and technical understanding. To this day, even though he’s every film school kid’s favorite director, no one has made a film like him or changed filmmaking as much as he has, in my opinion. There’s a lot in “Barry Lyndon” that really gets to me: the scene where he first meets his future wife out on the balcony, the scene when his son falls off the horse, which I still haven’t quite figured out, and the candle-lit stuff is obviously amazing. There’s a lot in that movie that particularly wows me every time.

“NY Export: Opus Jazz” will have a final SXSW screening on March 20th and premiere on PBS on March 24th.

[Photos: "NY Export: Opus Jazz," Credit: Yaniv Schulman, 2010; "Afterschool," IFC Films, 2008]

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