Oren Soffer - Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and Jurassic Park Were My Bibles During Those Seminal Years and Shaped So Much of Where I Ended up Today (Photographer)

I grew up between Israel and the United States, fostering an early love of movies and a tendency towards artistic expression from an early age. As a kid, I would draw a lot, and come up with all sorts of made-up stories set in all sorts of fictional universes I had created with my friends and my younger brother

Tell us about your background and journey.

I grew up between Israel and the United States, fostering an early love of movies and a tendency towards artistic expression from an early age. As a kid, I would draw a lot, and come up with all sorts of made-up stories set in all sorts of fictional universes I had created with my friends and my younger brother. 

Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and Jurassic Park were my bibles during those seminal years and shaped so much of where I ended up today.



How and when did you realize your passion for creating films?

Once the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out, and especially the special edition DVD boxed sets with their 30+ hours of behind the scenes material, I had fully realized that I wanted to pursue filmmaking as an art form and, eventually, as a career. I was in middle school at the time and at first, this manifested in just making silly videos with my friends on home video cameras. 

In high school, I took an intro filmmaking course and that is when I particularly started gravitating towards the art of cinematography and visual filmmaking and image composition. And I haven't looked back since - I subsequently attended film school at NYU where I shot dozens of student projects, and I've been working as a cinematographer ever since.



What are the important skills one should have to be a successful cinematographer?

Cinematography is an interesting job because it has both a creative and technical as well as a managerial aspect to it. 

The creative and technical side can easily be learned with years of study and practice just as with any craft, but I think probably the most underrated and overlooked aspect that requires a developed skillset is the managerial side: learning how to deal with set politics, egos, how to manage a team, how to delegate and to communicate your vision to your crew, how to navigate tensions that inevitably arise in the high-pressure environment of filmmaking... 

And how to maintain a cool, collected approach while navigating all of these things and still being able to also focus on the craft and creative side.



Which film(s) do you appreciate the most for their cinematography?

Too many to mention! A few that have always been massive influences on me and my work: Blade Runner, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Tree of Life, The Conformist, Fargo, Magnolia, Se7en, The Matrix, The Piano, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Black Narcissus, In the Mood for Love, Killing Them Softly, The New World, No Country for Old Men, Road to Perdition, Barry Lyndon... I could go on and on!



What has been the biggest learning from your job?

Learning how to stay humble, and how to focus on my own career and not worry about what other peers are doing!



Which is your favourite book and why?

I'm a big fan of photography books and often use them as sources for reference materials when researching for various projects. 

Some of my favourites include Gregory Crewdson's 'Beneath the Roses;' '99 Cent Dreams' by Doug Aitken, 'Souls Against the Concrete' by Khalik Allah, Martina Hoogland Ivanow's 'Far Too Close', and the works of Saul Leiter.

Interviewed by - Sathwik Macharla