As part of our series, Women’s Cinema, we interviewed the director of photography Shana Hagan, ASC. In this chapter, Hagan shares with us her knowledge, tips, and advice regarding the best pathway to start and climb our intriguing industry. Explore Hagan’s insights below.

Women’s Cinema by Y.M.Cinema Magazine

Women’s Cinema is a series of articles by Y.M.Cinema Magazine that focus on the women in our industry, with the goal of encouraging women to pursue after filmmaking career and to provide a stage for female content creators in the filmmaking industry, regardless of their roles on set.

In this episode, we interview Shana Hagan, ASC. Hagan has photographed many documentaries, including 17 Sundance Film Festival selections, among them, Shakespeare Behind Bars, Generation Wealth, This Film is Not Yet Rated and Betye Saar: Taking Care of Business. She provided additional photography on Taylor Swift: Miss Americana; Inventing Tomorrow; Won’t You Be My Neighbor?; 20 Feet from Stardom; Queen of Versailles; and Food, Inc. In 2020, Hagan was accepted to the ASC.

I remember one time getting in trouble for sneaking into the original Blade Runner. In the theater, I remember sitting in the audience completely immersed in the beauty and mystery of this futuristic world and thinking to myself, “wow, THIS is what good cinematography is.

Exploring the world via the viewfinder

Y.M.Cinema Magazine: Please let’s know about yourself (short bio focusing on your filmmaking career), as well as why (and how) you chose filmmaking as a profession.

Hagan: When I was a young girl, I loved to look thru my mother’s Kodak Brownie camera.  She said I always loved to look at the world thru the viewfinder of a camera.  To encourage this, she bought me a Fisher Price toy camera which was my absolute favorite.  I still have it today!  As a kid, I loved going to movies and watching documentaries and nature shows on TV.  I remember one time getting in trouble for sneaking into the original Blade Runner. In the theater, I remember sitting in the audience completely immersed in the beauty and mystery of this futuristic world and thinking to myself, “wow, THIS is what good cinematography is.”  I was hooked. 

STICK WITH IT.  Perseverance and working through the rejection and the setbacks and all the rest will pay off in the end. Keep your chin up and your eyes forward.  No one’s path is the same in this business. Believe in yourself, focus on your goals and chart your own course to get there.

As I got older I continued learning about still photography, teaching myself the basics along the way with an old 35mm still camera my Uncle Bill gave to me.  I experimented with our family’s VHS camera documenting the Arizona clouds and our family beagle Snoopy.  I made a couple stop-frame animation films in grade school using a borrowed Super 8 film camera.  And then in high school, I discovered theatrical lighting and lit many stage plays. Discovering how lighting can affect the emotional impact of a staged scene was eye-opening. In college, I wanted to combine my love of still photography, movies, and lighting and chose to study cinematography.  I went to Film School at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and loved every minute of it. I love what I do.  I’m grateful my cinematography career has taken me all over the world.  I’ve met amazing people shooting documentaries and I love creating fun new worlds in the scripted work I’ve done.

I love what I do.  I’m grateful my cinematography career has taken me all over the world

Visualizing the story

Y.M.Cinema Magazine: Please elaborate on your roles on the set. Do you have any preferred roles?

Hagan: I’m the Director of Photography.  Whether it be for a documentary or a scripted piece, I love collaborating with the director to visualize the story we are telling. When I’m shooting a documentary, I love shooting handheld in the cinema verite style. I’m often on my own with little assistance from any other crew. The challenge of composing and making decisions in real time about coverage, angles, lighting, camera movement, and all the rest is thrilling. It takes every ounce of my energy and attention when I’m filming real people in real moments. Taking it to the next level, I also pay attention to my emotions when I’m shooting a scene – how do I feel in the moment, the characters, the situation?  I use that emotional response to inform my work and guide me in making those on-the-fly decisions about how I cover the scene.  I focus on being present in the moment.  It’s consuming and I love it. 

In a scripted environment like the DP, I often operate A camera as well. I love connecting with the story and helping the director visualize the emotion and content of a scene. When shooting a feature or a TV series, I have to be prepared.  It’s important to effectively communicate my needs to a much larger crew, focus on creating a professional, safe, and fun environment for the actors and director to create, and also pay attention to the story.  All of this work is for one purpose only – to tell a good story. 

The challenge of composing and making decisions in real time about coverage, angles, lighting, camera movement and all the rest is thrilling

Career and interesting projects

Y.M.Cinema Magazine: Name a few interesting projects you took part in.

Hagan: I have been fortunate to be a part of many memorable and incredible projects. Early on, “Shakespeare Behind Bars” was a wonderful documentary following a group of inmates at a prison in Kentucky who perform Shakespeare. We filmed a week a month for about a year as the men cast, rehearsed, and performed “The Tempest”. It was an incredibly personal experience for me being able to spend time with men who are striving to be better versions of themselves.  The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005 and went on to screen in several festivals and had a successful national television broadcast. 

A documentary I shot with a longtime collaborator director Lauren Greenfield called “The Kingmaker” is an intimate portrait of Imelda Marcos, the wife of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The film profiles a woman attempting to rewrite history to forget the sins of the past.  For this project, I needed a camera rig that would work both as a traditional shoulder-mounted documentary rig and also as a smaller profile build that I could take on a small plane or when in the back seat of her Rolls Royce. We chose the Canon C300 system that allowed us the flexibility to build the rig we needed for whatever we were shooting that day. With the C300, the Canon EF L series lenses, and the Canon Cine-Servo EF 17-120 zoom, we were literally prepared for anything. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 and screened at numerous film festivals around the world.  It can currently be seen on Showtime. 

I chose to pair the ARRI MiniLF with the Canon Cine-Servo 17-120 and the new Canon Cine-Servo 25-250 – both with their servos attached. With this configuration, I can pull my own focus and iris and use the zoom servo on the built in handgrip.

My latest project is “This Country” – a new 14 episode scripted half-hour comedy for Fox. The show follows two cousins in a small town in Ohio. I loved DP’ing and operating on this show because even though it was entirely scripted, we shot in a very traditional documentary style.  We use cinema verite techniques when shooting our scenes and also include “interviews” to help tell the story of our characters. Everything is handheld and the camera engages with the story and essentially becomes another character. We needed documentary-style zoom lenses for this project. I chose to pair the ARRI MiniLF with the Canon Cine-Servo 17-120 and the new Canon Cine-Servo 25-250 – both with their servos attached. With this configuration, I can pull my own focus and iris and use the zoom servo on the built-in handgrip. It’s seamless and works so well for this genre. I really love these lenses. I use them for my documentaries as well as for my scripted work. “This Country” will premiere on the Fox Network in the fall of 2021.

The Glass ceiling

Y.M.Cinema Magazine: What’s it like to work in a professional environment dominated by men? As the majority of the filmmaking industry are men, do you feel that you have a glass ceiling above you?

Hagan: I don’t think of it that way – I just do my thing. I like to think of myself as a cinematographer who happens to be a woman, not a female cinematographer. I personally don’t think it’s necessary to label what I do with my gender. I’m not one to really focus on gender because I think everyone sees the world differently. I use my own experiences and my own perspective to help me on each project. I think my only competition is with myself. I’m constantly focusing on learning new things, expanding my network, enriching my skills, and being a good human. 

At the 2005 Sundance Film Festival screening of “Shakespeare Behind Bars”, there was an interesting discussion about what it was like for me to be a woman shooting in a men’s prison for an entire year. I thought about it and I realized that the prisoners opened up to me emotionally not only because I was a woman but because I’m an empathetic person and a great listener too. I do really care about people and I especially care about the subjects of the documentaries I’m shooting. That connection I had with each of our characters in the Shakespeare film is evident in the footage. I’m not sure the guys in the film would have opened up to me in the way they did if I were a man. It’s an interesting thing to think about but in these cases, I love that I’m a woman. I connect with people instantly and make them feel at ease quite quickly. Being in front of the camera is not easy and I want people to feel respected and heard.  When subjects trust you and trust what you’re doing, it shows on screen. 

I like to think of myself as a cinematographer who happens to be a woman, not a female cinematographer

Making the climb

Y.M.Cinema Magazine: Do you feel that you have to try harder as a female filmmaker in order to make a climb in the industry?

Hagan: I believe that making it in the film industry is 10% skill and 90% perseverance.  JUST STICK WITH IT.  Of course, your experience and technical knowledge will take you where you want to go but it’s hard. It’s hard for everyone. And especially hard for those in underrepresented groups – people of color, LGBTQ, minorities, women. I think the important part is to realize when our work and our conversations involve all of our diverse voices, we are all better for it. Do your best work and most importantly, be a good human.  Be true to yourself and true to the story and let your voice be heard. 

I believe that making it in the film industry is 10% skill and 90% perseverance.  JUST STICK WITH IT. 

Tips for others

Y.M.Cinema Magazine: Do you recommend other women to pursue a filmmaking career? If so, what’re your tips and tricks to do so?

Hagan: YES YES YES.  If you want to pursue a career in filmmaking DO IT!  I think the thing for me early on was taking any job I could get my hands on. A mentor once told me, “If you want to shoot, go shoot.  If you want to direct, go direct. If you want to AC, go AC.”  I did just that. I’d say to everyone starting out or mid-career, just get out there and do it. You’ll figure out what you love and what you don’t love and you’ll get closer and closer to what you really want to do. There is something for everyone in this business and you’ll love it when you have your heart in it.  One tip I like to communicate is that some of the jobs you take are not necessarily the greatest and best jobs at the moment. That said, try to take something away from every job. Learn a new skill, gain a new contact, get another credit for your resume.  There’s always something you learn from every job, even if it’s not “the perfect job”. 

A mentor once told me, “If you want to shoot, go shoot.  If you want to direct, go direct. If you want to AC, go AC.”  I did just that

Final thoughts

Y.M.Cinema Magazine: Anything to add?

Hagan: We all see the world differently. Our backgrounds, our identities, our perspectives on the world are unique and the world needs to hear our voices.  t’s so very important that we all feel valued, listened to and respected. Finding a network of supportive colleagues – women and men – will help you get where you want to go. Find your village. There are so many stories to tell. Unique, powerful, emotionally impactful, fun, sad, silly, inspiring stories.  I think we learn about ourselves and each other through the stories we tell.  What’s the story you want to tell? 

Products List

• Camera: Canon C300 Mark II. Price: $7,000 [maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://adorama.rfvk.net/15rm1B” ]
• Lens: Canon Cine-Servo EF 17-120. Price: $23,850 [maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://adorama.rfvk.net/6bem5Q” ]
• Lens: Canon Cine-Servo EF 25-250. Price: $30,000 [maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://adorama.rfvk.net/oeq7zY” ]