By Antony Teofilo
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but if you play your cards right, it can also be worth a thousand dollars...more like ten thousand if you catch a celebrity at the right (or wrong) moment. On a film set, it's Peter Sorel's job to watch for those special seconds in-between when the cameras are rolling, and when they're not, to help tell the story of how a movie is made.
A veteran of the movie industry who goes way back with some of the business's senior visual talents, Sorel makes his living where most movie fans, on a bad day in the office or ensconced in our forth algebra exam of the semester, wish we could be: hanging around a movie set, snapping pictures. Sorel takes photos of everything he thinks might be notable, but unlike your average movie hound, he doesn't get to secret them away in a scrap book as a treasured memory. He hands them over to a movie studio, for use in many different types of publicity. Of the thousands of snapshots he captures, maybe a few dozen will ever see the light of day. To snatch those most important and tiny moments of time, he must be an...
Eagle Eye
An Interview with Peter Sorel, JERSEY GIRL Production Stills Photographer
Antony Teofilo: Which camera do you use most often?
They all get used sooner or later, but most of the time I use Leica Rangefinder camera, or a Canon Reflex camera.
AT:What's special about those cameras?
Peter Sorel: Leica has probably the best optics in the world, so the resolution is so good that you get the best blow-ups. It's really the highest quality. A Canon for this type of work is very practical because you can put it into a sound-proof housing and shoot through your day, and the actors don't hear the clicks.
AT: How long have you been in the business?
Peter Sorel: On and off for about thirty years. I don't work every day. I get hired for a film, and I might not get hired for another film for many months. I pursue other interests during those times. I'm very interested in the art end of photography, but unfortunately one cannot make a living doing that...perhaps I shouldn't say that. But it's difficult to make a living doing that.
AT: So doing photography on movie sets you would consider your day job?
Peter Sorel: This is absolutely the bread and butter that keeps me going, and pays my bills. I happen to like films and theater, so it's a very pleasant way to make a living.
AT: You told me that you prefer to work on movies that don't have a lot of green screen work in them. Why is that?
Peter Sorel: You're limited to shooting pictures which are very close, very tight, so you can get away from the green screen, or from elements that aren't actually visible because they're going to be inserted later by electronic means. True film, a film like JERSEY GIRL is certainly much more interesting because the movie isn't made in post-production. Movies with practical effects are much more enjoyable to shoot. For decades, movies were made without green screen and blue screen, without any CG graphics. I'm not saying we shouldn't do that, but I feel more at home, I'm more familiar with the other methods. I can certainly work around the new elements, because I theoretically have an idea about what they're doing.
AT: How did you get your start doing what you do now?
Peter Sorel: It was purely by chance. At the time, I was working in a photo lab, and a friend of mine, who was a cinematographer, came to me and said, "Hey Peter, after you finish [working], could you come down and shoot a few pictures for an hour or two?" Our photographer never takes the crew's picture." Incidentally, [JERSEY GIRL Cinematographer] Vilmos Zsigmond was the gaffer on that movie, and we have a very close mutual friend named Laszlo Kovacs who eventually shot EASY RIDER, and Laszlo was the cameraman on that movie. These two guys and I are very, very close friends for forty years now. I knew what they were doing, but I never thought I would have any interest in it, and I did. It was a tiny little low-budget science fiction movie, so I went down and did it, and I had no idea that people get paid for doing things like this. It's so easy it's like stealing money. [Smiles]
AT: Do you still feel that way?
Peter Sorel: No. [Laughs] Things have gotten much more difficult since then.
