8 minute read
SMOOTH OPERATOR•GEOFFREY HALEY SOC
STORY, EMOTION, PERFORMANCE
By Natasha Block Hicks
In a parallel universe, Geoffrey Haley SOC spends his days immersed in his other dream job. He is a senior figure in a collaborative team, aiding a central director to orchestrate a written script for the benefit of an enraptured audience. It’s a creative, skilled role, requiring physical and mental stamina. The tool of his trade? A cellist’s bow!
“As a child, I had two things I loved: film and music,” relates Haley from his home in LA. “I was of that generation that was given an 8mm camera as a kid. I was also a cellist from the age of five.”
Growing up, Haley ran these two passions in parallel, until he came to leave high-school.
“I had to make a decision as to whether or not I was going to pursue music professionally,” he recalls, “but that would have meant relying on something that I truly loved to make money. So, I decided to go to the film route.”
Haley studied psychophysiology at university on the west coast specifically so that he could spend his summers in LA pursuing movie work. His musical background scored him some early boom operating credits, which transitioned to video playback, but his goal was fixed on the camera.
“Camera is one of the closest departments to the story,” he rationalises.
Impatient to get stuck-in, Haley invested in a Steadicam rig which helped put him in front of some of the key employers of the day, however, it was behind the lens of a handheld video camera that he was to make his first tangible mark on Hollywood.
“I had this weird job of shooting all the video elements on a movie called American Beauty (1999, dir. Sam Mendes, DP Conrad L. Hall ASC),” says Haley intriguingly.
“The scriptwriter, Alan Ball, described this sublime image of a bag floating and dancing like a ballerina and I was sent off to create the visual. I was only shooting something for the actors to react to, the final product was intended to be CGI.”
There is a podcast episode by Steadicam operator Brad Grimmet, Walking Backwards, where Haley describes at length how this iconic piece of filmmaking came about, but the upshot is that ‘the bag’ got Haley noticed.
“Suddenly my name was on some lists,” reveals Haley, “commercial directors would be saying, “I want the person that shot ‘that bag’.”
Ball’s attention had also been triggered and he invited the young camera operator on to his new HBO series Six Feet Under (2001-2005) where Haley remained for the full five-season run.
“Six Feet Under was my film school,” states Haley, “I learned everything I know about breaking down a scene, blocking and working with the director and actors from that show. It was a masterclass every day.”
Whilst on Six Feet Under, Haley put his burgeoning knowledge into practise by writing and directing The Parlor (2001), which picked-up a Short Filmmaking Award Honourable Mention at Sundance 2002 and gained him a Hollywood writer/director agent. He followed-up with a feature screenplay, which was bought by one of the major studios, but a hard lesson in the by-laws of Hollywood quickly followed.
“I was attached to direct, but it was too big a budget for me to direct,” commiserates Haley, “and it languishes, unmade, to this day.
“I learned a very valuable lesson,” he continues, “I said, okay, the next thing I’m going to write will have a small-enough budget that they’ll let me direct it.”
Haley successfully penned and directed eccentric romantic comedy, The Last Word (2008, DP Kees Van Oostrum ASC), which premiered at Sundance 2008, where it was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize, before a successful theatrical release.
Many might have turned their back on operating at this juncture, not so Haley.
“I’ve really found a home with camera operating,” Haley confides. “When I started to direct, I was expecting that my background in operating would make me a better director. But the thing I am certain of now is that, having directed, I am a far better operator.”
Haley’s journey has become a quest to take what he loves about directing, and combine that with operating.
“I have this notion that there are three basic pillars of compelling cinema: story, emotion and performance,” Haley elaborates.
“Directors are on an island of one, because their sole job is to be the herald of those three things. I try to put myself on that island with the director and I never let any myopic ideas about my job, as a technical camera operator, obstruct the prime directive of story, emotion, performance.”
Haley has formed fruitful collaborations with DPs, such as Lawrence Sher ASC, for whom he has operated on numerous pictures from The Hangover (2009, dir. Todd Phillips) to Joker (2019, dir. Todd Phillips) – for which he won both the 2020 SOC Camera Operator Of The Year Award and the
2019 ACO Operators Award – and Stephen F Windon ASC ACS, with whom he has shot four Fast And Furious movies. However, his approach has meant his name is often put forward by directors, producers and even actors such as Dwayne Johnson, as their camera operator.
An early director collaboration was with David O. Russell, for whom Haley operated A-camera and Steadicam on The Fighter (2010, DP Hoyte Van Hoytema NSC FSF ASC) and American Hustle (2013, DP Linus Sandgren FSF ASC).
“On American Hustle, I was doing very improvisational work,” reveals Haley, “there wasn’t really much blocking discussed beforehand. It was the first time I was able to feel a moment and act on it as far as the operating was concerned.
“There were these amazing performances unfolding in front of the lens,” he continues, “and I could decide where I wanted to watch them from. Despite the exhaustion from back-to-back Steadicam, it gave me this super injection of energy and adrenaline.”
This laid the foundation for a subsequent role on Steve Jobs (2015, dir. Danny Boyle, DP Alwin H. Küchler BSC), a film that Haley reports took his operating to the “next level”.
“It was almost 100% Steadicam,” Haley describes, “and the script was 150-pages long, written by Aaron Sorkin, which meant fantastic dialogue although there was lots of it.”
Boyle’s vision was to capture each scene in its entirety as Steadicam ‘oners’, which could be cut together in the edit if required. With some editing experience himself, Haley was particularly conscious of, not only the actor’s depleting energy as they repeatedly re-ran the dialogue-intensive scenes, but the eremitic editor saddled with splicing it all together.
“It was vital for me to be able to be in the right place at the right time,” recalls Haley, “I was asking myself, as an editor, would I be cursing my name because of the way that I structured this piece of coverage?
Having directed… I am a far better operator
“It was physically and mentally taxing, but at the end of the day, I thought it was incredibly rewarding.”
More recently, Haley has been collaborating with director/producer brothers Anthony and Joe Russo on high-end productions such as Cherry (2021, DP Newton Thomas Sigel ASC) – for which he won the 2021 SOC Camera Operator of the Year Award – Avengers Endgame (2019, DP Trent Opaloch) and The Gray Man (2022, DP Stephen F Windon ASC ACS) on which Haley also served as an executive producer.
“The Russo’s know what they want, but they also understand that there are things they can allow to happen by giving people the autonomy to contribute to the creative process,” comments Haley. “That has been really fantastic for me considering the arena that
Opposite: shooting Cherry using an AirScouter, photo by Paul Abell. This page: (l-r down) – runninng after Jason Statham’s stunt double on F8, photo by Matt Kennedy; working on Star Trek – Beyond on a lowrider, and using Steadicam; with director Danny Boyle on Steve Jobs; taking direction from Justin Lin on Star Trek – Beyond; and lensing Joker with huge telephoto zoom, photo by Niko Tavernise. the Russo’s are playing in.” With his experience, particularly on action movies, Haley is well-positioned to offer guidance to the next generation of camera operators. He is on the education committee of the Society Of Camera
Operators (SOC), for which he also serves on the board of governors, and has hosted both online and in-person masterclasses on topics as diverse as ‘Operating Action’ and ‘Collaboration With The
Director’. “There’s a specific skillset needed to work on technical and high-adrenaline-infused projects,” Haley emphasises, “and it’s not easy to learn on the job where the lives of stuntmen, for instance, may hang in the balance. I try my best to impart the knowledge I have.” In the years since he chose to take the fork in the road signposted ‘film’, Haley’s enthusiasm for his job hasn’t waned. “The entire notion of surrounding myself with cocollaborators and spending the day concentrating on story, emotion and performance, makes me excited about going to work,” he says brightly. In this universe, there is only one small adjustment he would make. “The cello is too big to bring with me from set to set,” Haley laments, “if I had my time again, I would have learned the Piccolo flute!”
