We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Curtis Yap. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Curtis below.

Alright, Curtis thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I never went to film school, so other than a few introductory film classes I took in community college, everything I know was either self-taught or from on-set experience.

I think the most essential lesson I had to learn was to just listen and learn from others. I initially had a big ego because the first projects I had gaffed or served as cinematographer on were well received, but there’s more than one way to light a scene, and there’s always room for improvement.

When I saw how much better other cinematographers or gaffers were at lighting and composing frames, I looked at my past work and thought of how I would light a scene differently, how I would block the actors, how I would manage our time on set more efficiently, etc.

And this lesson extended to other departments too: how does the production designer collaborate with the DP and gaffer? How does the DP create a space for the actors to move in? How do they treat other departments and make sure those departments have creative input too?

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Curtis Yap and I am a cinematographer based in Los Angeles. I had always loved movies, but never thought that a career in the industry was possible. I was pretty good at math and loved physics, so I studied electrical engineering in community college and transferred to Cal Poly, SLO. After one quarter, it turned out that I hated it and any time I wanted to get away from my studies, I would find comfort in novels or movies. That’s where I met an English professor and she inspired me to pursue what I really wanted to do: make movies.

I went back to community college in Santa Maria, took film and English classes there, and transferred to UC Berkeley for Comparative Literature. I joined the film club, got involved with the film community, and got into lighting. Everyone has a specialty in film and that was mine. But I wanted to take it one step further and DP a short film. I had the opportunity to DP not one, but two senior thesis undergrad films.

After graduating, I moved back home and tried freelancing. Running out of money, one of my peers from film class, Alyssa Toledo, reached out to me to shoot some music videos. We vibed really well and then she wrote an amazing script called Lift-Off. Alyssa asked me to come to South Carolina to shoot it and I spent what little money I had left to fly there and DP this short film.

From the second I landed, everything started falling apart: crew and locations were dropped, equipment wasn’t available, and I contemplated my life choices. But in the eleventh hour, which is typical in this industry, it all came together and became one of my proudest projects.

What I love to do on set now is collaborate. It has become less of a focus on getting great compositions and lighting for my reel, and more of a focus on working around the actors’ blocking, or highlighting the production design, or doing a dance with the sound department so that audio can be captured in a natural way. I think without any of these elements, cinematography is useless. A top of the line camera and high powered lights wont save your film if the story is bland, if the walls are all white and empty, and if the sound is just noise and static.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding part of being an artist is the process. I care less and less about the end result and more about the planning of a sequence: what are we trying to tell the audience in this scene? How do we show them? And what are we hiding from them? Then you get to hear how others interpret the scene and your voice becomes part of many. Suddenly you’re like a village raising a baby and when you know your specific role and when to speak up and when to listen, the process becomes the most rewarding part of filmmaking.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think that non-creatives might have trouble understanding why we do what we do because they’re coming from the perspective of entertainment. To a general audience (and I’m guilty of this too), we watch films or listen to music or consume any sort of media/art as escapism first. If we can’t escape into another world, then we’re disappointed and believe that those artists wasted their time.

I don’t think it’s my job or in my interest to convince people to enjoy art. It only gives back what you put into it. I can only paraphrase, but Dennis Miller, a comedian from the 90’s, said it best: “art reacquaints us with the beauty of human potential.” If you get it, I think that’s beautiful. And if you don’t, I know that you will find beauty in other ways. Humans don’t have a choice: it’s in our nature to seek and find beauty.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yapography
• Other: https://vimeo.com/yapography