The film industry over the past few decades has seen a huge rise in excellent film directors and filmmakers in general. Mainly starting in the 80’s films of high quality were massively produced and the amount of profit made from the film industry increased dramatically. Two of the most important and well know roles in the film industry are the jobs of the director and cinematographer. Even if there are a large amount of jobs in the film industry that a lot of have no idea that they even exist, these two professions are very essential to the film making process and both are needed in order to make a film. However there are some definable differences between these two job roles and are extremely different in a lot of aspects which make these roles very different from each other which is different from the large amount of people who see these jobs as the same.
A cinematographer also known as a director of photography is the chief over the camera and light crews working on a film, television production or other live action piece and is responsible for making artistic and technical decisions relating to the image. To study in this field is refereed as being a cinematographer. The cinematographer selects camera, lens, and filters in order to fit the desires of the director. The relationship between the cinematographer and director depends on how heavy handed the director is with the vision, for example if the director is loose with how he wants his film to look like the cinematographer is able to go one their own and go wild with what they personally want to put in. However if the director is more strict with the look of the film the cinematographer will not be able to have that much creative freedom. In this sense the director has the one the highest amounts of influence over the rest of the film crew. However the cinematographer has a lot of power over the technical team and is basically in charge and orders the camera operators (who are sometimes informally called cameramen are the operators of film and video cameras. The camera operator is also in charge of holding shots and maintaining angles in a shot) , camera assistants (also known as focus pullers whose primary job is to maintain sharpness in a shot or object which is being filmed), gaffers (A gaffer in the motion picture industry and on a television crew is the head electrician, responsible for the execution (and sometimes the design) of the lighting plan for a production. The term gaffer originally related to the moving of overhead equipment to control lighting levels using a gaff)., and the light and grip crew, but the cinematographer only works with a team like this mainly in large projects such at television shows and motion pictures.
The director is probably one of if not the most important role in the film making industry. Without a good director the whole film or project would likely fail meaning the choice of director is extremely crucial to the final product of the filming process. However this does not mean the director is the only important role in the film making industry, the cinematographer and most of the crew is almost equally of importance to the film. The job of the director is basically to take charge of the entire production of the project and is a part of mostly all aspects of the film and the final project these aspects include the artistic, technical and dramatic aspects of the film or project and also visualises the script, while also taking charge of the technical crew. The director also has the final say in most aspects of the film which include the cast members and mostly all creative aspects of filming a television show or motion picture. The main job of the director is to create the overall vision of the project or motion picture that would eventually become realised and by taking charge of all technical and creative aspects of the director would need a large amount of group leadership and communication skills which would help him control the film crew but also would have the ability to understand and change anything in the project that someone or a large amount of people disagree with and with this he or she would need to have an ability to go through extremely stressful and fast- paced environment that is the film industry. Also directors are extremely well known compared to other roles in the film industry to the point they are seen as equals to the actors in the public eye, some famous directors include Edgar Wright, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Sam Raimi and M night Shyamalan.
The film industry jobs of director and cinematographer are both extremely important to the film making process however there are some very important differences between the two that distinguish them from each other which means that they have some very different t aspects which some people can see them as completer different when view through the right eyes or mind. For example the director is in charge and has is partly in control of every piece of the creative and technical film crew which is a lot of response ability. Whereas the cinematographer is only in charge of the technical aspects of the film making process e.g. the lighting and camera crew with less there is less stress with being a cinematographer as there is less work to do. On the other hand being a director is one of the, if not the most stressful jobs in the film industry and is the hardest to keep in tune because of the large amount of pressure on the directors and the huge workload makes being a director one of the most difficult jobs in the media industry. Also when choosing crew and actors for the project the director, since he or she is in charge of all aspects of a film, is in charge of all aspects of choosing who is in the film or project. While the cinematographer sine is only in charge of the light and technical crew only has to choose people for those specific aspects of the film or project, this again shows how the cinematographer has less work to do than the director which leads to less stress compared to the director. Another major difference between the director and the cinematographer is the relationship they have with the producer of the movie or project, while the director has many convocation with the director about how the film should look and how the characters should be acted and etc. which gives the director a pretty close relationship with the producer. The cinematographer and in fact most people in the crew do not speak to the director and instead their ideas and information is relayed back through the director. This means that the director gets more credit than the rest of the crew, which in most cases is deserved since he or she does ten times more work than the rest of the crew. But this also means that cinematographer gets less credit and because of the low amount of credit the cinematographer gets the job of being a cinematographer is less known than the job of being a director so a lot of directors are as well-known as the actors and actresses inside the film for example Sam Rami or Steven Spielberg however there are very few cinematographer’s that are actually know meaning that they are seen as less important to the making of a film or project which is less than true. Along with the fact that the director gets more credit, this leads to the director getting paid more than the cinematographer, this again is due to the fact that the director does a lot more work than the cinematographer. However there is one type of project that the cinematographer tends to get paid more than the director, adverts and this is mainly due to the fact that the look of an advert is one of the most important thing about an advert and because of this the cinematographer gets paid more in this situation than the director, but in most other areas in the industry the director gets paid more than the cinematographer.
In conclusion the job rolls of film director and cinematographer do have many similarities, however the amount of work that separates the two jobs shows the key difference between the two jobs and that makes one job have a much higher pay than the other, that being the amount of the director having more than the cinematographer, but the amount of stress this extremely heavy workload has on the director could turn people off being a director. But to balance this the director is much more popular in the public eye. Finally in my opinion because of all of these factor myself if I were to choose which job to pick I would probably choose the job of being a director, Yes the amount of stress that is had by a director is huge compared to a cinematographer but the pros outweigh the cons in this situation plus by having a close connection to the producer and having better conection with the audience and because of this the director is able to take control of all aspects of a film and use it and mold it into there own vision which gives the director so much more creative freedom than the cinematographer ever does, apart from advert where cinematographers have a lot of creative freedom because they need to because the look in adverts it extermely important. But that does not mean that cinematographers are useless, in fact they are exteremly important towards the filmmaking process and without them a film or product wouldn’t work and they are some upside to being a cinematographer but the fact is there were more cons to bein a cinematographer compared to a director.
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