January 21, 2025 • 13 mins
"Cameraperson" is a documentary directed by Kirsten Johnson that treats the film as a memoir of her life. In this day and age with ties to social media, almost no moment is lost. We share everything and not all of it is worth sharing. Let's just be for real. This film shows us who Kirsten Johnson is through not only her work but her personal life. She shares us crime, loss, and murder. We also see new life, love, and the freedom of where she lives which is the USA. She goes to places where she she purposefully puts herself and company in danger but all of this, to understand life. To Understand people, to make a sense as to what we can provide for life. I like this documentary a lot. We see it through lengthy shots of all kinds situations and they all tie in together, good editing. I liked learning how to interview people. Johnson is very particular about how she films. She definitely puts thought into how she wants the shot to look like and it definitely doesn't want it to be plain and simple. I like the consideration of the shots she chose because I'm sure she has hard drives upon hard drives of footage. She shares us her own vulnerability with footage of different points of her aging mom and you can see how impactful it to her. What's crazy overall about this film, is the fact that there's no voice-over talking points. Just footage. RAW footage. When pieced together the way she did it, she wins in life. Forever.
#cameraperson #kirstenjohnson
#cameraperson #kirstenjohnson
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning, and this is Morning Real, hosted by Ray Salazar.
If I see it, I review it. This is a
three to four two hundred minute or so podcast of
films that I review, from black and white to technicolor,
twenty twenty five to eighteen ninety nine, from whatever country exists,
(00:21):
I review it. And I also review documentaries, you know,
whether it be fiction or nonfiction. Now, Camera person, I
saw this film. It's a pretty nice documentary directed by
Kristin Johnson, writers Doris Baisley and Lisa Friedman, starring Kristin Johnson,
(00:43):
Issha Bukhar, Eric W. Davis, and much more. Now, I
don't know who Kirsten Johnson is. I didn't know what
to expect about this film. I know nothing about this film,
but I think I may have seen the trailer of it,
maybe prior to it coming out. This is a twenty
sixteen film. It's almost two hours long. And like I said,
(01:07):
I don't know who Kristen Johnson is. I seriously do
not know who she is. Like the name has never
rung a bell in me, you know. But this is
a documentary about her life life as a cinematographer, her
life as a filmmaker, her life as a mom, a daughter,
(01:28):
as a person, you know, and obviously as a documenteur
because listen, man, if you're a cinematographer shooting a documentary film,
guess what in my case, or rather like in that case,
you're a documentary filmmaker, you are. You're there, You're there
with the freaking director. You're shooting the shot, you're getting
(01:52):
the moment, what good or bad, you're capturing it. You're
responsible for that or partially responsible for that. And I
guess we don't really put too much thought or rather
a credit. I mean, there's credits for cinematographers right all day.
You got Academy Awards, you got Golden Globe Awards, you
(02:14):
have Film Festival Awards of it. You know, they do
get their credit. But like, I've never seen a documentary
about a cinematographer. I have not seen one. I have
not heard of one. You know, I've not seen one
of Janus Kaminski, who's a great cinematographer who's shot most
of Steven Spielberg's films. So if you've seen a Spielberg film,
(02:37):
most likely that guy shot it. So anyways, Kirsten Johnson,
good cinematographer. I guess you know, actually I guess she
is man. But it's funny because when you see this film,
you are seeing shots of different moments in her life,
you know, in her career, right, because a lot of
(02:58):
the stuff that we see, either it's exclusive footage that's
really near and dear and personal to her, or it's
stuff that was used in the work that she's done,
or both, and it's all relatable, you know. And not
only is it relatable, it goes back and forth from
(03:20):
one another. And just so you know, this podcast is
partially sponsored by Volcano. Either way, Kristin Johnson. She gives
us images of war, give images of turmoil due to war.
We see family who is just going through a lat
man because of this war. And this takes place in Bosnia.
(03:41):
I'm not sure what time or space it's. In the documentary.
We see videos of her twin children. She has children,
she's a mom, you know, and we see these babies
grow up, babies crawling around to little toddlers who are
standing on their own feet, you know, And that itself
(04:05):
is the miracle of life, right, the miracle of not
just like life of a baby, but like life in general.
We are seeing life seeing Kristin Johnson's life. It's pretty good,
and we see trafficking, we see people talk about abortion,
about trying to make very important decisions and where they're
(04:28):
as raw as it can get, you know, as far
as like how this person's interviewed. One of the things
that I liked about this film is you're not just
seeing a shot uninterrupted or with whatever's happening, you know,
in front of us, right, but we're also looking at
our director telling Kristen Johnson, or we're telling or Kristen
Johnson's telling the director like, hey, should we move the
(04:51):
camera here, Hey, move the camera over there. Hey, you
make sure that it's focused right. We got to get
the shot real quick, you know, it's just a quick
three second shot, you know, stuff like that. Man, and
it's pretty crazy, you know, like there's just one shot
in particular where I think it takes place, like in
the Middle East or whatnot. For them, it was like
(05:13):
their goal at their day, Kristen Johnson involved was getting
a shot of this prison, right, so famous prison I
think they have like just important people that are you know,
locked up right, And I think the whole context of
it was as you're looking at the couple of shots
(05:36):
of it, because it's not just one shot, it's like
a sequence of shots. So I just kind of wonder
if not only was it important to get that shot
of the prison, right, but it was a very dangerous
move to do. Dangerous because that place is around about
(06:00):
all kinds of people who were connected to that, were
connected with certain clicks, gangs or whatnot. And I mean, dude,
you're in a place where you don't you don't really
know your surroundings. You don't you don't know what kind
of people there are here, You don't know what kind
of a community is around here. Is it safe? Semi safe?
I mean, oh yeah, you know they're gang activity, but
(06:21):
they don't like mess around, you know, with just anybody.
You know, things like that. You know, so it's kind
of crazy to kind of like put yourself in their
shoes and you're like, holy snap, like throwing his resk
in life here. And we don't know if she's a
mom at that point of her life or not, or
maybe we don't know if she's freaking pregnant at that time, right.
(06:44):
It's kind of it kind of at least to me,
you know, it just opens my mind up to those questions,
you know, like what's going on over here? Like how's
this person living throughout these types of situations in life,
to me, one of the craziest, Like it's not the
craziest shots whatnot, but like because we are given different
(07:08):
moments of times in her career, right, and there's text
that tells us what's going on, Like they gave us
the location, the year or whatnot, and it's all there is.
There's not really much else, but sometimes will give us
a little bit of information, right, but it's just a
little bit. But either way, you know, what they tell
(07:29):
us and what we see in this particular case was
I guess Kristen Johnson was at this courthouse and there
were interviewing the I guess maybe the defense team or
the prosecution team of this case of this African American
(07:49):
male who got murdered by these two wide racist guys.
You know, a hate crime was committed and it's pretty brutal.
And see, this film is actually one of the few
films where I'll say, you know what, I had to
do research about the film, and I did research after
(08:12):
the film because I actually wanted to know, like what
happened to this guy? That they mentioned that, you know,
that I got murdered, and it turns out it was
a hate crime type of murder. You know, like they
literally tried this tie this guy up by the neck,
tied it behind the car and dragged him for miles.
Man and this guy like as from what it was
(08:35):
told on autopsy or whatnot, like he was still alive
when he was being dragged. A freaking sucks. And my
condolences to the to the family and whatnot. This was
not like said in the documentary. What was shown was
the chain, this big, old, thick chain, and I think
it was the murder weapon itself. And it's kind of
(08:57):
crazy to, I guess, to be in the shoes of
a cinematographer or director literally filming the chains of that
that killed a person and you don't know this person, right,
but like it's just kind of shocking to in a
weird way, it's shocking to see that to see like
filming the chains, you know, in this documentary purposes. You know,
(09:20):
it's not to moorify anything, right, but it's you're documenting
like really serious crimes and tragedies, you know, the best
bestowed on people that clearly didn't deserve it. You know.
You get moments like that and you see how important
that is to a person, you know, who's been doing
(09:43):
serious film work for over twenty five years. That's the
legacy type of stuff, you know, and people like that
actually getting their you know, getting their hands dirty, you know,
because this is nonfiction stuff. Man, This is not a
movie where like it takes multiple takes to get one
clean shot or whatnot, you know, and it's all make
(10:04):
believe read it's fiction, you know, but not this stuff.
This is nonfiction. You're dealing with life here, and like
the jobs that she chose to endure herself in them,
you know, to immerse herself into the situations, whether it's
like a flying the wall type of situation where or
she's heavily involved in this production, you know, and it's raw.
(10:25):
The change part. The women talking about how they got
kicked out of their village and they had to like
literally just goes somewhere, you know, and these women are
free in armed too. They got chet this ready to
get down, you know, like not just your average la woman,
you know, these are women from a village who it's
(10:48):
bad over there where you know, women are getting raped
murdered and it sucks and we're seeing that, and it
took a woman like that to go there to capture
stuff like that. Very commendous. I would give this film
a four out of four toes. Please watch it. It's
on HBO, Max or Max. I don't know how long
it's going to be there for. It's also on the
(11:09):
Criterion Collection, so you want to see it in four
K see it in the Criterion Collection. It's worth the buy.
To me, it was worth the watch. Like I said,
if I see it, I review it. Christ and Johnson,
whatever you're doing, keep doing it. You're an inspiration. One
thing I also got from this film, and I have
(11:30):
mentioned earlier in this episode, was that you got to
learn how you talk to people, how to interview people
you know, and people know that you're being interviewed right
camera person. Four out of four toes. My name is
Ray Salazar. Check out my website Marriningshow Films no CEO.
(11:53):
I was watching a couple of movies recently, and I'm
wondering which one should go after this film. I will
say though I recently saw and this was on HBO,
right Max, I recently saw Who Killed Garytt? Phillips Crazy
Crazy Documentary. I honestly, I actually want to ask XG
(12:16):
if we can review that one together, because you know,
it's it's it's not a film that has to do
anything with like conspiracies or whatnot, but the theories of
what happens in like like as to what happens you know,
in the in the documentary, right because it's about a
case of this this black dude who lives in upstate
(12:39):
New York or some place in New York who gets
accuted to accuse the murder and he's like one of
the few like black people who live in that town.
And it's a small town and it's known to be
a very racist town. So yeah, man, it does not
go well for him for a while. So anyways, I
(12:59):
want to review that one when next G onto the
next one. Thank you. M m m m hmm.
Good morning, and this is Morning Real, hosted by Ray Salazar.
If I see it, I review it. This is a
three to four two hundred minute or so podcast of
films that I review, from black and white to technicolor,
twenty twenty five to eighteen ninety nine, from whatever country exists,
(00:21):
I review it. And I also review documentaries, you know,
whether it be fiction or nonfiction. Now, Camera person, I
saw this film. It's a pretty nice documentary directed by
Kristin Johnson, writers Doris Baisley and Lisa Friedman, starring Kristin Johnson,
(00:43):
Issha Bukhar, Eric W. Davis, and much more. Now, I
don't know who Kirsten Johnson is. I didn't know what
to expect about this film. I know nothing about this film,
but I think I may have seen the trailer of it,
maybe prior to it coming out. This is a twenty
sixteen film. It's almost two hours long. And like I said,
(01:07):
I don't know who Kristen Johnson is. I seriously do
not know who she is. Like the name has never
rung a bell in me, you know. But this is
a documentary about her life life as a cinematographer, her
life as a filmmaker, her life as a mom, a daughter,
(01:28):
as a person, you know, and obviously as a documenteur
because listen, man, if you're a cinematographer shooting a documentary film,
guess what in my case, or rather like in that case,
you're a documentary filmmaker, you are. You're there, You're there
with the freaking director. You're shooting the shot, you're getting
(01:52):
the moment, what good or bad, you're capturing it. You're
responsible for that or partially responsible for that. And I
guess we don't really put too much thought or rather
a credit. I mean, there's credits for cinematographers right all day.
You got Academy Awards, you got Golden Globe Awards, you
(02:14):
have Film Festival Awards of it. You know, they do
get their credit. But like, I've never seen a documentary
about a cinematographer. I have not seen one. I have
not heard of one. You know, I've not seen one
of Janus Kaminski, who's a great cinematographer who's shot most
of Steven Spielberg's films. So if you've seen a Spielberg film,
(02:37):
most likely that guy shot it. So anyways, Kirsten Johnson,
good cinematographer. I guess you know, actually I guess she
is man. But it's funny because when you see this film,
you are seeing shots of different moments in her life,
you know, in her career, right, because a lot of
(02:58):
the stuff that we see, either it's exclusive footage that's
really near and dear and personal to her, or it's
stuff that was used in the work that she's done,
or both, and it's all relatable, you know. And not
only is it relatable, it goes back and forth from
(03:20):
one another. And just so you know, this podcast is
partially sponsored by Volcano. Either way, Kristin Johnson. She gives
us images of war, give images of turmoil due to war.
We see family who is just going through a lat
man because of this war. And this takes place in Bosnia.
(03:41):
I'm not sure what time or space it's. In the documentary.
We see videos of her twin children. She has children,
she's a mom, you know, and we see these babies
grow up, babies crawling around to little toddlers who are
standing on their own feet, you know, And that itself
(04:05):
is the miracle of life, right, the miracle of not
just like life of a baby, but like life in general.
We are seeing life seeing Kristin Johnson's life. It's pretty good,
and we see trafficking, we see people talk about abortion,
about trying to make very important decisions and where they're
(04:28):
as raw as it can get, you know, as far
as like how this person's interviewed. One of the things
that I liked about this film is you're not just
seeing a shot uninterrupted or with whatever's happening, you know,
in front of us, right, but we're also looking at
our director telling Kristen Johnson, or we're telling or Kristen
Johnson's telling the director like, hey, should we move the
(04:51):
camera here, Hey, move the camera over there. Hey, you
make sure that it's focused right. We got to get
the shot real quick, you know, it's just a quick
three second shot, you know, stuff like that. Man, and
it's pretty crazy, you know, like there's just one shot
in particular where I think it takes place, like in
the Middle East or whatnot. For them, it was like
(05:13):
their goal at their day, Kristen Johnson involved was getting
a shot of this prison, right, so famous prison I
think they have like just important people that are you know,
locked up right, And I think the whole context of
it was as you're looking at the couple of shots
(05:36):
of it, because it's not just one shot, it's like
a sequence of shots. So I just kind of wonder
if not only was it important to get that shot
of the prison, right, but it was a very dangerous
move to do. Dangerous because that place is around about
(06:00):
all kinds of people who were connected to that, were
connected with certain clicks, gangs or whatnot. And I mean, dude,
you're in a place where you don't you don't really
know your surroundings. You don't you don't know what kind
of people there are here, You don't know what kind
of a community is around here. Is it safe? Semi safe?
I mean, oh yeah, you know they're gang activity, but
(06:21):
they don't like mess around, you know, with just anybody.
You know, things like that. You know, so it's kind
of crazy to kind of like put yourself in their
shoes and you're like, holy snap, like throwing his resk
in life here. And we don't know if she's a
mom at that point of her life or not, or
maybe we don't know if she's freaking pregnant at that time, right.
(06:44):
It's kind of it kind of at least to me,
you know, it just opens my mind up to those questions,
you know, like what's going on over here? Like how's
this person living throughout these types of situations in life,
to me, one of the craziest, Like it's not the
craziest shots whatnot, but like because we are given different
(07:08):
moments of times in her career, right, and there's text
that tells us what's going on, Like they gave us
the location, the year or whatnot, and it's all there is.
There's not really much else, but sometimes will give us
a little bit of information, right, but it's just a
little bit. But either way, you know, what they tell
(07:29):
us and what we see in this particular case was
I guess Kristen Johnson was at this courthouse and there
were interviewing the I guess maybe the defense team or
the prosecution team of this case of this African American
(07:49):
male who got murdered by these two wide racist guys.
You know, a hate crime was committed and it's pretty brutal.
And see, this film is actually one of the few
films where I'll say, you know what, I had to
do research about the film, and I did research after
(08:12):
the film because I actually wanted to know, like what
happened to this guy? That they mentioned that, you know,
that I got murdered, and it turns out it was
a hate crime type of murder. You know, like they
literally tried this tie this guy up by the neck,
tied it behind the car and dragged him for miles.
Man and this guy like as from what it was
(08:35):
told on autopsy or whatnot, like he was still alive
when he was being dragged. A freaking sucks. And my
condolences to the to the family and whatnot. This was
not like said in the documentary. What was shown was
the chain, this big, old, thick chain, and I think
it was the murder weapon itself. And it's kind of
(08:57):
crazy to, I guess, to be in the shoes of
a cinematographer or director literally filming the chains of that
that killed a person and you don't know this person, right,
but like it's just kind of shocking to in a
weird way, it's shocking to see that to see like
filming the chains, you know, in this documentary purposes. You know,
(09:20):
it's not to moorify anything, right, but it's you're documenting
like really serious crimes and tragedies, you know, the best
bestowed on people that clearly didn't deserve it. You know.
You get moments like that and you see how important
that is to a person, you know, who's been doing
(09:43):
serious film work for over twenty five years. That's the
legacy type of stuff, you know, and people like that
actually getting their you know, getting their hands dirty, you know,
because this is nonfiction stuff. Man, This is not a
movie where like it takes multiple takes to get one
clean shot or whatnot, you know, and it's all make
(10:04):
believe read it's fiction, you know, but not this stuff.
This is nonfiction. You're dealing with life here, and like
the jobs that she chose to endure herself in them,
you know, to immerse herself into the situations, whether it's
like a flying the wall type of situation where or
she's heavily involved in this production, you know, and it's raw.
(10:25):
The change part. The women talking about how they got
kicked out of their village and they had to like
literally just goes somewhere, you know, and these women are
free in armed too. They got chet this ready to
get down, you know, like not just your average la woman,
you know, these are women from a village who it's
(10:48):
bad over there where you know, women are getting raped
murdered and it sucks and we're seeing that, and it
took a woman like that to go there to capture
stuff like that. Very commendous. I would give this film
a four out of four toes. Please watch it. It's
on HBO, Max or Max. I don't know how long
it's going to be there for. It's also on the
(11:09):
Criterion Collection, so you want to see it in four
K see it in the Criterion Collection. It's worth the buy.
To me, it was worth the watch. Like I said,
if I see it, I review it. Christ and Johnson,
whatever you're doing, keep doing it. You're an inspiration. One
thing I also got from this film, and I have
(11:30):
mentioned earlier in this episode, was that you got to
learn how you talk to people, how to interview people
you know, and people know that you're being interviewed right
camera person. Four out of four toes. My name is
Ray Salazar. Check out my website Marriningshow Films no CEO.
(11:53):
I was watching a couple of movies recently, and I'm
wondering which one should go after this film. I will
say though I recently saw and this was on HBO,
right Max, I recently saw Who Killed Garytt? Phillips Crazy
Crazy Documentary. I honestly, I actually want to ask XG
(12:16):
if we can review that one together, because you know,
it's it's it's not a film that has to do
anything with like conspiracies or whatnot, but the theories of
what happens in like like as to what happens you know,
in the in the documentary, right because it's about a
case of this this black dude who lives in upstate
(12:39):
New York or some place in New York who gets
accuted to accuse the murder and he's like one of
the few like black people who live in that town.
And it's a small town and it's known to be
a very racist town. So yeah, man, it does not
go well for him for a while. So anyways, I
(12:59):
want to review that one when next G onto the
next one. Thank you. M m m m hmm.
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