#14: DP Reel 2012 & Artist Statement

Director of Photography Reel - Douglas Dillingham 2012 from Douglas Dillingham - ZombieSquid on Vimeo.

As a filmmaker, my primary goals are to entertain and engage both myself and the audience. Film is a challenging field that has held my interest for as long as I can remember, and I find it to be among the most satisfying of pursuits. I gravitated toward film because it combines many art forms and has the power to reach and impact a broad audience. I hope to entertain by taking viewers on an exciting and compelling journey and engage by touching on issues that are universal to the human experience. Through film, I hope to explore what it means to be human on the most fundamental levels by touching on those issues that are common to us all.

My influences are varied, ranging from the poignant, slow-moving opuses of Stanley Kubrik to the frenetic modern works of directors like Darren Aronofsky. I draw inspiration from things like music and painting, photography and architecture, and classic mythology. I tend to gravitate toward dark imagery and uncomfortable topics and themes. I find no beauty in artifice. I prefer to show things in either a realistic manner, or in a dramatically exaggerated fashion. I try to consider the totality of of the history of human art when I'm in the early stages of a project in an attempt to create works that inspire and engage on a visceral level, something that would have resonated with audiences of 500 years ago as well as it would a hundred years from now.

While I have a strong appreciation of the traditional Hollywood narrative style, I'm interested in finding ways to rethink film and bring new energy into the art form. I look for ways to abstract elements from various inspirations into film, for example the rhythmic structure of a song or  the value scale and compositional proportions of a painting. I'm not interested in any one particular genre, as I enjoy working in different styles and think the tone should suit the film. I am, however, interested in finding ways to blend the aesthetics of different traditional genres into something new and compelling.

One aspect of filmmaking that I find infinitely interesting is the ability to craft a living, breathing fictional world on the screen. In this medium, I can portray the world as I wish it was, the world as I see it, or the world as I would never wish to see it.

Film has the power to influence culture, and I intend to dispense with the reliance on tropes in the current Hollywood style and instead develop nuanced worlds with complex characters who are guided by their principles, rather than their stereotypes. I'd like to work to see women and minorities represented more equally in film, as main characters rather than set pieces, in hopes of inspiring others to keep dreaming of a future where equality for all can be a true reality.