Coffee and Language Productions turned twenty-five this year, and I have had the camera in my hands for twenty of those years.
Last week the studio posted an anniversary spotlight on Leslie and me. Reading it back, I realized how rarely I stop to count what a run like this actually adds up to: four features as director of photography — Love and Demons, reVisions, The Filmmaker, and Girl in Golden Gate Park — plus earlier work in other departments, and countless days on set with people who became close friends long before they became lifelong collaborators.
Girl in Golden Gate Park took Best Feature at the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema this year, and I was honored to receive the festival's Indie Spirit Award for Feature Film Cinematography. Awards are a nice moment, but the truth is the work that earns them is done a shot at a time, over years, with the same small group of people who keep showing up.
There's a line in the anniversary spotlight that I want to keep as a working promise:
"Dan is the ideal cinematographer because he is absolutely committed to every project from beginning to end — no matter what."
That's the standard. It's easy to be committed on the good days. The measure of a DP is what happens when the schedule breaks, the light is wrong, the actor is tired, and the scene still has to work. Twenty years in, that's the part of the craft I care about most.
I owe an enormous amount to Jp Allen and the rest of the Coffee & Language family for making this collaboration possible — and to Leslie, who has designed some of the most beautiful spaces I've ever pointed a camera at. The Filmmaker and reVisions would not exist without her.
Here's to the next feature. Congratulations, Coffee & Language — twenty-five years is only the beginning.
