Cinema and the Arts as Sermons - UNEMPLOYED To WORLD-CLASS Cinematographer: Hoyte van Hoytema
Video from Heavy Spoilers
"In today’s cinematographer's insight, learn from Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC, FSF, NSC as he discusses some key principles to becoming a successful cinematographer. Some of his high-profile work include Tenet, Interstellar, Let the Right One In, The Fighter, Her, Spectre, and Ad Astra. Hoyte shares his unbelievable story of being unemployed for years to becoming a complete world-class cinematographer." from video introduction.
"Hoyte Van Hoytema was born in Horgen, Switzerland. Van Hoytema is a Dutch-Swedish director of photography known for his work on The Fighter (2010), Her (2013), Interstellar (2014), and Dunkirk (2017). Van Hoytema always wanted to be a filmmaker, therefore he wished to attend a film school in The Netherlands, but was rejected twice. After the rejection, Van Hoytema worked in a soap factory, carpentry factory and even played in a band. Hoyte and his brother decided to go to Poland to visit their roots, considering their grandpa was Polish. He eventually went on to attend the Polish film school in Lodz, which has been attended by other notable film makers, with the most notable being Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polanski, and Krzysztof Kieslowski. At the later stages of Hoyte's education at the Lodz film school, Kieslowski was a professor there, who even supervised one of Hoyte's last projects. Hoyte left the Lodz film school early without having received a degree, but with many credentials. He started out with making documentaries. He later met someone who asked him to shoot a very low-budget film in Norway, which he accepted to do. This let Hoyte to film another film in Norway which was led by a a producer who was very active in Sweden. The producer offered Hoyte to work on a television show and another feature film. This started of Hoyte's career. He started to become a notable film maker in Sweden. His film 'Let the right one in' made him more known internationally."- IMDb Mini Biography By: Roos Smit
How we as humans see our world is miraculous in and of itself. Being in this world in our human body, with our soul and human spirit allows us many expressions of our God given abilities. How many of those talents and abilities we actually use in life only God knows. You have talents and abilities as I do. Life is short, we must use them as able. Discover what we are good at and do it.
Now Hoyte van Hoytema in the video interview above talks about getting lucky in life. But as Christians we should never rely on luck as luck is a worldly belief devoid of God and his will for us. Research into our visual capabilities has shown that each of us sees the world in a unique way. For example your experience of seeing red may be different than mine jus as how each of us see and experience the world and life is different.
If God gives us an artistic gift our perceptions, our brain works in a unique way, people hear music, they see in such a way as they can paint or they see the world in such a way as to become a cinematographer.
Hoyte Van Hoytema found what he did best. All of us glorify God, (being made in his image) when we pursue our creative gifts. Imagination is contagious and it is also like a muscle. It grows stronger when you use it. I encourage you to exert this muscle in your mind. Make conscious efforts to express precious truth in striking and helpful ways that no one else has. Imagination may be the hardest work of our human mind and perhaps the most God-like. It is the closest we get to creating something out of nothing.