My thoughts on being a female cameraperson and a director
The lighting is perfect, set up by me and balanced with the natural light in the background. The cameras are rolling, and I look up to meet the eyes of my subject. Behind her is the beautiful architecture of one of the most famous buildings in our city.
The woman I’m interviewing is one of Edmonton’s best-known artists, and she is ready to talk about why she creates.
On set with us is a female makeup artist, who is also doubling as my grip, ready to jump in if needed. On a low-budget production, everyone except the sound guy wears more than one hat. My host and interviewer is also my co-producer, helping wherever he’s needed, which can be a lot on some days because of my disabilities. Still, he almost never operates a camera or directs a scene.
I ask if everyone is ready. My grip snaps the clapboard so I can line up the audio and video later in editing.
My host begins with a simple question: “Where are you from?”
And then we hear it.
A wall of noise. Yelling, footsteps, chatter, beeping, mechanical sounds.
My co-producer and I look at each other, confused. We had booked the space for several hours. I assume maybe a school group has been accidentally double-booked for a last-minute tour.
But when the group appears, it is not a group of children.
It is a woman leading around 12 to 14 adults.
She looks at me, then at the respected artist I’m interviewing, then at my makeup artist. She lifts her nose in the air, walks straight through my set, and motions for everyone behind her to do the same. People glance nervously at the seated host, at the sound guy, then at me behind the camera, and keep going. They stomp right through.
I am so shocked I freeze.
The artist being interviewed is the one who asks them to watch the cords and cameras.
I rush to the cables plugged into my newer camera, trying to keep them from being snagged or ripped out as the group pushes past. I had saved and scraped for four years to buy that camera.
No big deal.
My second camera is sitting off to the side. I glance at it, hoping it won’t be knocked to the floor. I had spent that morning carefully polishing the lens and screen, thinking about all the places that camera had already been with me. But in that moment, I can only protect one of them.
Would this have happened if three of the five people on set had not been women?
No. I don’t believe it would have.
Afterward, I looked up how often women work in this field. It turns out we are still rare.
In a 2018 article, Emily Geraphty wrote about this exact thing: not being taken seriously on set as a female camera operator.
I am always one of those hopeful people who wants to think, maybe they just didn’t notice the cameras, the lights, the sound guy holding a boom mic over the person being interviewed. Maybe it had nothing to do with me being a woman in charge on a film set.
But I’ve seen the difference too many times.
When my co-producer is the one holding my camera, whether it is on or off, people are careful. Over the hundred or more times we have filmed for YouTube, documentaries, short films, personal projects, and photo shoots, people tend to stay out of his way. Some even ask him politely if it’s okay to cross in front of the camera, promising they’ll be quick.
The moment I am the one holding it, or even touching it, people make eye contact with me and walk right through the shot.
Maybe some of that is unconscious bias. Maybe they assume I’m just holding the camera for someone else, like my co-producer.
But bias doesn’t have to be deliberate to be real.
As of September 2022, Vanity Fair reported that only 20 percent of cinematographers in narrative and documentary film were women in 2021 and 2022.
I have rarely seen sets where women were the ones filming and directing, or where women outnumbered the men behind the scenes. That is part of the problem. There are still too few examples, too few opportunities to even compare experiences.
I hope that changes.
I hope more women enter these careers, because the industry is missing out on talent, perspective, and voices that deserve to be heard. And those voices matter not only behind the camera, but to the women watching too.
That is why I am grateful for organizations that are trying to make space for emerging and established creators from all kinds of backgrounds.
One of those is STORYHIVE, creatively powered by TELUS.
I am grateful to STORYHIVE for actively engaging with creators of different backgrounds and skill levels, and I am grateful to be included as one of their funded creators. Support like that gives women room to step into work they may once have believed was out of reach. It gives people permission to try, even in a world where bias can still make that path harder than it should be.
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article https: //www.glamour.com/story/this-is-why-you-dont-see-more-women-behind-the-camera
Want to know more about female filmmakers and the importance and history of women in film? you can check out this great article here.
https: //www.rockandart.org/female-filmmakers-importance-history-women-film/