DP Elliot Davis with director Catherine Hardwicke on the set of Thirteen.

Look up Elliot Davis' name and extensive credits on the Internet Movie Database and you might be tempted to call him a cinematographer. But that’s only because there’s no category for “artist.” As he'll be the first to tell you, he makes his living as an "artist who expresses himself through cinematography." Then again, you can't believe everything you read on the Internet--particularly those Web-empowered "critics" who have criticized Davis' latest effort, Thirteen, for its use of handheld camera and in-your-face close-ups.

The film tells the story of a teenager who will stop at nothing to be accepted by the most popular girl in school--and Davis' camera documents the downward emotional spiral. Here, Davis discusses the common vocabulary he shared with Thirteen's director Catherine Hardwick, how passion is a cinematographer's greatest asset and why Steven Soderbergh's career is like a weight loss product disclaimer.

Jennifer Wood (MM): So how did you get involved with Thirteen?

Elliot Davis (ED): I got involved in the film through Michael London, a producer whom I had worked with. He brought the film to me because he knew I liked socially-conscious movies. He called me and said "I have a project here that you might be interested in--but it's low-budget." So I said 'Okay, send it over.' And he sent the project over and I read it and I liked it!

Then I met Catherine and we kind of hit it off. We were both trained as architects--she was an architect, I was trained as an architect--so we immediately had a common visual vocabulary and I think that kind of got us going.

MM: What were the things that struck you about the script visually as you were reading it? In this case and in the case of scripts in general, what sort of cues do you take from the screenplay in how you will visually present the story?

ED: The thing about me is that I am a firm believer that a lot of times it's hard to get rid of your first thought. So I try to stay totally open when I'm reading a movie script. I try not to visualize anything if I can help it; I just try to feel the script because I find that when you find a vision, it's very hard to let go of it. And a lot of times your initial vision is really not right for the film, so you're screwed! [laughing]  I try to take my cue from my own feelings and from what the director is feeling.

MM: What were the main issues you wanted to address with the cinematography in Thirteen?

ED: Having an architecture background, I'm a big believer in 'form follows function.' And when Catherine and I were talking about the film she showed me the images that she had collected, which were really about texture; the film is about texture and the kind of feeling texture evoked. It wasn’t so much about visual image, it was about what you want the person to feel when they watch the film. So then all the cinematography became about how to evoke these feelings.

When I saw these images that she had collected, a lot of them were color xeroxed, a lot of them were Photoshopped, but they'd all been altered and were what I'd call "hyper-real." They were saturated and desaturated and then colorized and they all had a very distinct look which gave you this feeling, and that's what I tried to build in.

MM: Considering Catherine's background as a production designer, were the conversations you had with her about the cinematography different than the conversations you'd typically have with a director?

ED: Well they were in the sense that we had a common vocabulary through architecture. Most directors that you work with are not very visually acute, to tell the truth, because that's not their strong point--that's not their training. Most directors come to directing through writing or through getting attached through some sort of deal. So it's very rare that a director comes to cinema through the artform itself, and Catherine does. So the discussions we had were very 'evolutionary'--like when one person would say one thing, the other person would up it and then the other would up that. So it was kind of like this diagonal ladder going up.

For instance, when we talked about color or saturation, she and I both knew what we were talking about. Normally when you talk to a director about things like that they give you this look like 'Huh?'

MM: Or you're referencing other films.

ED:  Exactly. Or you're referencing certain kinds of artists or paintings or buildings, in our case. So the background was already there for referencing, and we whipped through that really quickly and got to the present. We got through all the references and we both understood what those references were and then we came to a reality. Which was good because prep was only four weeks long!

MM: Obviously one of the key choices you guys made was to shoot on Super 16. Was the entire film shot on Super 16?

ED: Yes, the entire film was shot on Super 16. In the beginning, we toyed with other mediums--high definition, digital video, 35--and they were all limiting for various reasons. The main reason digital video, including high definition, was eliminated was because Catherine really wanted the texture of film. She didn't want the digital texture. And then, also in digital, you're throwing away resolution; 35mm film has 3,500 lines of resolution and high definition only has 1080, so already you're throwing away two-thirds of your resolution.

So we opted for Super 16 because we kept film and we stayed lightweight--she wanted the camera to be unobtrusive and mobile.

MM: When had you last shot on Super 16?

ED: I shot Super 16 on [Spike Lee’s] Get on the Bus. So it was a very easy film form, and then we went to a digital intermediate. We had all the information that film had and then we were able to manipulate it digitally.

MM: A lot of low-budget, indie moviemakers really think that DV is the only option. What considerations do you think people should think about when they're weighing their options between shooting something digitally, or leaning toward a smaller gauge film format?

ED: First of all what you have to think about is whether your film is performance-based or action-based. Do you need to keep the camera running a long time? And, again, what kind of person are you--are you a visual person or a literary person? If you're a visual person, there are going to be certain demands you're going to make on the product you want based on how you see the world. And you have to know how you see the world. Catherine sees the world very organically versus digitally. Although we all work with computers, we use them as tools. When it comes to the actual product that we want to make feelings with… if you look at all the great art forms of the world, they're all analog: paintings and drawings... New forms are being invented in digital, which will invoke their own feelings. But the great feelings that we're used to getting are all from an analog world--even in music.

MM: The look of the film is representative of the main character's state of mind: her out-of-control character is seen through a handheld camera. What were some of the intentional choices you made in shooting the film? What were the feelings you wanted to evoke, and how did you go about achieving that?

ED: The look of the film is really interesting to me in terms of camerawork and things like that because when I go onto IMDB (Interned Movie Database) there are a lot of unsophisticated people who criticize the film. And one thing they always hone in on is the shaky camerawork, but these people are obviously not into the 'form follows function' theory, because if they were it wouldn't even bother them.

MM: Or they're not following the story.

ED: Or they're not following the story because that form of the camera comes directly out of the emotional state of the character. And I don't know if this film could have been shot any other way. It could have, but it wouldn't have been nearly as powerful.

MM: What it really does is put the audience into the role of 'observer,' where you really feel as if you're in the room with these characters.

ED: Really, I feel that way, too. This film to me is very Eisensteinian in the sense that when two pieces of the film are put together, you get a third reaction from the audience. And part of getting that reaction is the way the camera treats the subject matter. The camera is like a pitbull; it never lets go of the subject. When the subject tries to get away, the camera follows them and comes right back and even goes in there face like 'Oh no, you can't do that--don't ever try that again.'

Part of it is the zoom. The history of the zoom lens, for instance, back in the television of the '60s and some films of the '70s, it was just a very perfunctory tool. But in this film--it's something I kind of got into with Out of Sight that I shot with Steven Soderbergh and with Get on the Bus with Spike Lee--I realized that the zoom is an emotional tool in itself. Going from 25mm to 75mm--that travel represents power; it's potential energy unleashed. If there's an emotional statement to be made, the camera is a participant in that and it helps release that power. It's sort of like the long take theory that the Europeans use so well, where the take can keep running because you don't need to cut for a close-up. So instead of making the cut editorially, you're letting the camera make it emotionally, in more of the Dogme sense. Even though this is not a Dogme film, it's Dogme shooting. The camera is feeling what's happening and then really capturing that. It's really all about capturing emotion, and a zoom is just another way to do that.