UPDATE: The Wolf has now gone on to garner two Best Cinematography nominations and a Best Cinematography WIN from the 2020 Spring Grove International Film Festival in Minnesota. Pretty exciting!

I want to talk about validation. What does it mean to feel validated? Is it a selfish pursuit, or is it a genuine reward for putting in the extra effort? Who decides your validation, other people or your own ego? Hell, what about feelings of self worth?

Whoa whoa, let’s back up a bit. We’ll get to validation, but this is also a story about working on one of the most personally rewarding films of my life so far with some incredible people, a little film called The Wolf by M.r. Fitzgerald. I’ll start at the origin of my involvement in the project, which begins at Ohio University.

Kristin Conrad as Collette

I made a lot of close friends at OU; these friends would become the bedrock of what I call a true community of filmmaking comrades. You know, the people you gladly go into battle with every day. One such person is my longtime partner Dylan—the one who’s been through it all with me, my ride-or-die, and also the gaffer on the film (she has a million skills). Another is the terrific writer-director of the film on display here, M.r. Fitzgerald, whose courage and verve cannot be understated.

As an introvert, this time at OU was murky new territory for me. To say my time there was tumultuous is an understatement, but it was also a surprisingly relaxed, freeing, and illuminating period for me. The adventures, the heartbreaks, the patter of my feet running along lush Appalachian trails—I lived an awful lot of life in my time there, and I was privileged to share it was some tremendously talented and beautiful people.

I formed some everlasting working relationships with gifted artists who elevate my own work every time we come together. As a cinematographer, my job requires finding the optimal path toward accomplishing the filmmaker’s intentions for a film visually, aesthetically, and narratively, keeping a watchful eye on the edit and the integration of the lighting and camera into the production design. Much like a Russian tea doll, there are a dozen other jobs within the job like managing team expectations, maintaining set morale, being a chummy fellow, and occasionally helping the filmmaker out of their tunnel vision and anxiety—we all have to be a cheerleader at some point. But where does the cinematographer’s own point of view come into play?

As we all progress in our careers and lives, there’s a first time for just about everything, including award nominations. This is something from which I have been mostly exempt aside from some pinewood derby trophies in cub scouts. Somewhere along the line, I decided that personal satisfaction in my own progress and accomplishments meant more than external praise. Eventually, discovering rollerblading helped me find my way out of trophy-seeking team sports with bad attitudes and into a more personal, introspective form of competition and athleticism—a competition with myself and my own fears. I was also a moody, sensitive, and highly empathetic teen, so I definitely needed that personal time.

The falls, the bruises, the broken bones, and the relentless search for personal growth that I found in rollerblading invariably found its way into my filmmaking sensibilities, and it ultimately shaped the way I approach personal relationships and working relationships alike. I want to be aligned with people who possess similar goals and aspirations—people who want to build things that stand the test of time. I would be happy roughing it on shoot after shoot for the rest of my life if it meant always having the opportunity to learn something new about myself and to grow emotionally with the people I love; that moment after a difficult shoot, when everyone’s exhausted, and we all look around the group collectively thinking “yep, I’d do it all over again.”

Money works too. We all would like to be paid fairly for our efforts, skill, and years of training. But truthfully, the entire process is an emotional journey for me, both as a filmmaker and as a cinematographer.

I connect to images on a deeply emotional level, and if I feel that the image doesn’t contain the appropriate “emotional quotient” for the moment, it’s discarded for one that works. Not sure if that phrase exists elsewhere, but I use it all the time, so we’ll roll with it. Pretty shots are for the birds. Give me the stuff that makes me feel what the character feels and I’m happy as a clam. It’s a ruthless effort at times, but I don’t believe in short-changing an image, a film, or an actor’s performance. They’re doing the heavy lifting and I have to keep up my end of the bargain.

It’s this emotional bond with the image that grounds my point of view. I want to experience what the characters experience, and I want to accurately reflect their ups and downs. For The Wolf, my goal was to ingest all of the long talks Fitzgerald and I had about who these people are, what they want, and the separate wells of trauma they have all experienced and distill all of it into a look, or a feeling—an ever-shifting and almost hallucinatory tone.

The look became a "warm vs cold” battle in which all feels bleak and icy and hopeless, until a young, impressionable, and still quite innocent character arrives on the scene. Our protagonist, Collette, finds a rejuvenated hope and optimism, seeing herself in this young woman. The film is most definitely about the loss of control in one’s own life at the hands of others, but it’s also a story about redemption and the possibility of second chances. The road we all travel is a winding and often slippery one, but the people we choose to travel with opens all kinds of new doors and chances at redemption. The road can be dark and damning, but it can also be bright and hopeful—you choose.

Interestingly, the recognition of one’s work as a cinematographer relies heavily on the film’s ability to find its way into the world, into theaters (or drive-ins), and into the minds of viewers willing to give it a shot. Your work, and the work of the teams who support you, remains to be seen until that movie sees the light of day. This means the filmmaker must pursue a relentless effort for festival acceptances (and ultimately festival rejections), potential sales of IP, and hopefully a final platform to help the film exist among the tsunami of content flowing from creators these days. This can be an almost insurmountable task sometimes, but out of sheer tenacity, this film and its respective filmmaker have found an audience, and I for one am excited.

The film was a serious trial-by-fire for Fitzgerald, and after a number of massive upsets leading up to principle photography, we weathered the storms and made it happen.

Fast forward to 2020, the year that beat the snot out of most of us, and about a year after the completion of a little short film out of Ohio University, I find myself with an odd sense of validation and trepidation, much like these characters—my first Best Cinematography nomination arrived from the Oregon International Short Film Festival in Portland. I asked what this would mean for my future in filmmaking, or as a cinematographer, or just as a thinking, feeling, breathing person. Well, I suppose it means whatever I want it to mean. Nobody gets to define it for me, just like nobody gets to define Collette on her journey to rescue others.

Speaking of which, I want to briefly point out the tremendous work of actors Kristin Conrad, Tim Ashby, Marriane Murray, and Cecilia Rinaldi. You all brought a ferocious energy and a depth of humanity to the film, and it was a genuine pleasure to photograph all of it. Actors like you are one of the reasons I do what I do.

This is a long, rambling blog post, but I’m convinced that those who set out on their filmmaking journey for recognition and accolades may find themselves chasing something they can never really taste or even understand—the journey'‘s about personal growth, discovery, and surviving the storm of filmmaking with your shipmates. But to be clear, the moment an organization recognizes your contribution to a film’s success, the feeling is undeniable and kind of overwhelming, especially after a year of feeling stagnant and a bit lost creatively. It’s like a jolt of new-found energy suddenly pumped into your veins that makes you feel like you really did contribute something worthwhile to the group’s endeavor.

I must say, I like it.