way Steven Soderbergh operates. He's a class act. Everything is orga-
nized and so prepared."
Caldwell's latest projects include Simone and Just Married. He cites the
people he has worked with over the years as the key to his success: "I
can't stress this enough: most of the work comes from relationships."
Professional Profile: Dwight Campbell, Gaffer
Dwight Campbell grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and became inter-
ested in filmmaking while in high school. "When I made my first film, I
realized that writing a paper had very little impact, as opposed to making
a film that lived on for years past the paper. It lived on in its own virtual
reality forever. Once I realized that making a film was a statement, a
process, and a collaborative medium that had life beyond the day, I real-
ized that I wanted to make movies."
Majoring in film at the University of Michigan, Campbell had an
opportunity to work on student films. He worked on documentaries and
other projects for the National Endowment for the Arts while in college.
After graduating in 1978, he spent 18 months working for the oldest daily
newspaper in the country, The Alexandria Gazette, designing and selling
advertising space. "I realized that if I wanted to make movies, I needed to
understand the advertising of films and the publications that help
promote them."
Leaving the newspaper, he relocated to Los Angeles to enter the pro-
ducing and camera program at the American Film Institute. Like most
film students, he worked on a variety of student films, filling whatever
crew post was needed. Upon graduating in June 1981, he was one of the
few students to walk out of the program and two or three days later be
working on a feature: "William the Conqueror: a female-directed, low
budget film. I was a general grip or electrician."
Campbell was drawn to lighting early on in his career. "What led me to
lighting was wanting to tell a story dramatically; knowing from working
with different directors that lighting was the most dramatic way to have
an impact on telling the story. You can create a way of elongating the day.
You can punctuate a story with lighting. You can change a rainy day into a
sunny day; you can make a gloomy day bright. You can make a picture
colorful or monochromatic. You can make it a period movie, a contempo-
rary film, or futuristic. You can make it soft, you can make it gentle, or you
can make it harsh or crisp. You can make it look so natural that you don't
see the moviemaking. It's just a beautiful picture that draws you in."
During his first year out of film school, Campbell struggled to make
ends meet. He picked up whatever work he could find, from student
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