February / 2004

John Holosko csc
“Learning the tools and breaking the rules”

by Solange De Santis

“Passion.” That word keeps coming up when you talk to John Holosko csc about the art and craft of cinematography. It’s a feeling he said he absorbed from his father, an enthusiastic amateur photographer and moviemaker, “with my mother encouraging my chosen path.”

DOP AND FRIENDS: Catwalk, a U.S. show produced by MTV, was John Holosko’s first series as director of photography and stemmed from his success shooting rock videos. His lovely friends here were Catwalk performers.

It’s an emotion he also shared with early mentors Fritz Spiess csc and Gerd Kurz, both now gone. “I was blessed,” said Holosko, sitting down for an interview in his home office in Unionville, Ont., near Toronto. “I worked with the dean of Canadian cinematographers, Fritz Spiess. We were lucky to work on every major advertising campaign – shooting Coca-Cola in Florida, Orange Crush in Arizona, Ford across Canada. He had a passion and so did I.”

Kurz, founder of Precision Camera Inc., was widely known for his generous support of young filmmakers. Over the years, he and Holosko shared qualities of spontaneous candour, senses of humour, and, yes, professional passion.

Holosko, who is 48, lanky and restless, gives the impression of a man in a big hurry, even when seated. That was certainly the case at Humber College in Toronto, which he entered in the mid-1970s, a year or so after high school. He was two years into a three-year cinematography course when he found work as a production assistant and left school.

“The job paid $75 a week and everyone at school scoffed at it. The job was with Scollard Productions doing commercials. It was getting a foot in the door,” he said. “There were 15 first assistants in town then, now there are more than 100.” Holosko’s reminiscences were interrupted by his energetic 2 1/2-year-old son, Stefan, running in to show his dad a toy. He was closely chased by Holosko’s wife, Rose-Mary, who was shortly and obviously due to give birth to their second son, to be named Joseph, Holosko’s father’s name.

Holosko said he was taken under Spiess’ wing, despite having a very different personal style. “All his assistants wore shirts and ties. I showed up with my long hair, but if you knew what you were doing, it was all right. He was always calm, always a teacher. If you had a question, he went out of his way to get you the answer; he never brushed you off. You wanted to do things for him because you respected him.”

He and Spiess were both “technocrats,” he said, fascinated by equipment and inventing such new devices as a snorkel lens. Kurz, “one of Fritz’s best friends, trained me how to repair the gear.” But learning his way around a Hot-Head or a Louma Crane wasn’t enough. “Once you learn the tools, you learn to break the rules,” he said.

WHAT’S UP?: John Holosko csc on the set of the hit TV series Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal.

Back at Humber, he and his fellow students broke some rules when they decided rock concerts would make some exciting footage for their student films. They would buy tickets – imagine this happening today — and “just show up with our Bolexes and say we were with the press,” said Holosko. That was before MTV or MuchMusic, before televised rock videos, before Internet piracy, VCRs or DVDs, when Alice Cooper or Led Zeppelin merchandising meant t-shirts, caps, record albums and eight-track tapes.

Those audacious rock films gave Holosko the opportunity to cement the move to director of photography from first assistant. “I went in for an interview and all these other DOPs’ reels were on the table. I had a whack of rock videos on my reel,” he recalled. The job was a television show called Catwalk, produced by MTV, which liked what it saw on Holosko’s reel. He’s always appreciated the chance those American producers gave him and, like many, feels frustrated that Canadian productions, given the much smaller market here and more-cautious attitudes of producers, often don’t provide the same opportunities as American shoots.

He was one of the first DOPs in Canada, he said, to have an agent based in Los Angeles (Montana Artists). “Seven or eight years ago, I was doing a movie of the week with (actor) Joe Mantegna and colour timing it in L.A. I thought that since 90 per cent of the work I do comes from the U.S., why not get an agent (in the U.S.)?”

He thought about moving there, but his wife at the time had children in Canada and was against a move. “The opportunities are greater there,” he said matter-of-factly. However, Canada has now been so successful in attracting film shoots that “there is a lot of anti-Canadian sentiment in L.A..” He’s concerned about the recent rise in the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar, since the currency differential used to cut U.S.-based production costs by about one-third. Now, it’s down to about one-quarter. “I think we’re in for a rough time, but I remain somewhat optimistic.”

In one way, at least, Canada has stronger crews. “Our guys slug cables through snowstorms. You don’t have that in L.A.!” Holosko said. And it was a Canadian producer/director, Carlo Liconti, who gave him his first DOP job — “a great, great experience” — on a feature film, Vita Cane.

VILMOS AND ME: John Holosko csc (right) was second-unit DOP on this commercial shoot with Vilmos Zsigmond asc (at the monitor).

Those early days assisting on Coca-Cola ads and Rush concerts have led to a wide-ranging career on television commercials (like the Stratford Festival), TV series (PSI Factor, Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew, La Femme Nikita), MOWs (Jesse “The Body” Ventura, Giving Up the Ghost, Universal Soldier, Face Down) and feature films (The Scarlet Letter, National Lampoon’s Senior Trip and Exit Wounds).

His career has also produced an office shelf full of awards. In 1988, Holosko won the CSC Award for best music video and in 1994 won the CSC Award for best TV series with Catwalk. He was nominated in 1996 for the CSC Award for best TV series for Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew and nominated in 1998 for best TV series for PSI Factor. He was nominated in 2002 for a Genie Award for the feature film Treed Murray and has won awards at the Chicago Film Festival, Atlantic Film Festival and Worldfest Houston.

Holosko’s natural restless energy and “learning the tools and breaking the rules” philosophy was put to good use on a tricky shoot at the Air Canada Centre about four years ago, when “the cement was still drying.” As DOP on the MOW Jesse “The Body” Ventura about the wrestler-turned-Minnesota-governor, he was shooting wrestling scenes during commercial breaks at an actual Turner Network Television wrestling event.

“There were three distinct looks, one for the 1960s-’70s, one for the 1980s-’90s and one look for today. I added my lights on a Christie floating grid which I designed. In the ’60s and ’70s, the lighting angles were very toppy and monochromatic. For the ’80s, it was less straight down with a little colour, then for today there were disco balls, lasers, intelabeams and vari-lights and it was more side-y.” With four cameras, cast and crew ready to run in for the dozen or so two-minute commercial breaks (they had somewhat longer for the intermission breaks), the lighting board technician would set the cues and the filmmakers were off, he said.

MASTER AND STUDENT: The late Fritz Spiess csc (left), “the dean of Canadian cinematographers,” was an important mentor for John Holosko when he worked as 1st assistant with Fritz on commercials.

“I was the first guy to light the Air Canada Centre.”

He has been invited to guest-lecture at numerous colleges, including Humber, but – true to his iconoclastic nature – turned down an honorary degree. “I said, ‘No, it’s not fair, I didn’t do the time.’” Even today, he noted, “most of what we learn is on set.” There are many different ways to advance in the field, and “the medium is more forgiving today. For black-and-white, you need to know your grey scale. Now, in the digital post domain, you can change the colour of a person’s eyes. It’s scary. There is so much power to manipulate an image.”

Degree or no, Holosko certainly transmits to students – or anyone listening – the passion that he feels for his career. “I have asked students, ‘Why do you want to study cinematography?’ One kid flipped the question on me. It’s the ability to stop time, to stop a moment that will never, ever be repeated. It’s the only device known to man that you can use to shift time. It’s such enormous power; it lit a fire in me.”

(Solange De Santis is a Toronto-based freelance writer on arts and entertainment.)

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