Most of my career I started as a camera assistant. I would take a scene and make a rough schedule for myself. It was really useful because it was a lot of fun, and also it gave me confidence. We’d spend a week on it, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t what I expected, and then it came out okay. The hardest thing for me when I started going from camera assistant to cinematographer, I felt like I had to change my name to make the job easier to get. They wanted to know the kind of job I was doing, and it wasn’t working. So I changed my name to Gary, and we started out with a little bit of a problem. They asked me my name, and then they asked me my occupation, and I told them I did some camera work and I do some sound. So I told them I do one thing, and I’m not allowed to do the other thing. That was a really big thing for me. Now I see that as being an asset, but it also makes it harder to get the job.
What’s the most challenging part for you when you shoot a movie?
I’ve always just focused on being a good producer because that’s where my heart was. So I was always looking to make sure we were running the show. I knew the crew were going to like the movie and we were going to make the movie right. I just focused on producing things, and that was always my job. A lot of the crew are filmmakers, because I was an independent film producer before I worked in the entertainment industry, so there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. But my whole life is about making things come to life and make people’s lives better.
I remember once, we were sitting in the hallway, and they were taking these great, high-resolution pictures of a guy with his hands on a gun and he was talking in Morse Code. The person didn’t talk to the camera, he wasn’t there. It became one of my favorite scenes of the movie. I said, “This is really cool. This is going really well.”
Tell me about your role on TV.
My role on HBO’s Silicon Valley is a lot more different. It’s one of the very few things I didn’t go through a production process from the start. It’s more of a one-on-one, one-on-one-ish relationship. But it is a really cool
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