Tribeca 2023: Bucky F*cking Dent | Interview of Cinematographer Jeff Powers

Capturing the heartbeat of Bucky F*cking Dent (Tribeca 2023): cinematographer Jeff Powers on nailing the 70s vibe and overcoming on-set challenges.

Jeff Powers is a cinematographer who has an eye for unique shots. Powers has worked on music videos like Slipknot, documentaries, short films, and various other projects. Powers had the chance to showcase his skills in David Duchovny’s film Bucky F*cking Dent, which is based on the book written by Duchovny and the film that had its premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. Powers uses his talent to capture the emotional journey of a father and son story. Ted (Logan Marshall Green), moves in with his father, Marty (David Duchovny), after Marty develops a fatal illness. Ted is determined to connect with his Red-Sox fanatic dad before his death and he enlists the help of Mariana (Stephanie Beatriz) Marty’s grief counselor and friends to fake a Red Sox winning streak in the 1978 baseball season. We had the chance to connect with Powers to discuss his time working on Duchovny’s film.

Kristin Ciliberto: I would love to get to know you more as an artist and just from working in the entertainment industry. What made you want to work in film and become a cinematographer?

Jeff Powers: When I was younger, I had a couple of friends that were really into filmmaking and when you’re younger, a lot of people have an interest in being a director which I never really had so I kind of ended up on like these small projects. There’s only so many jobs really to do and I gravitated towards camera work for some of my friends. It really kind of appealed to that sort of balance between technical interests and creative collaboration. I just kind of like fell into it and it was a good match, so I kept it going.

Kristin Ciliberto: Amazing! What made David Duchovny’s latest project so important to be a part of?

Jeff Powers: I love David, obviously, he’s done plenty of work that many of us have seen and I just loved it! I thought it was really touching and hilarious.  Once I read the script, I really wanted to meet with him. We just kind of hit it off right from the start. It was like a quick and exciting process to get on board with.

Kristin Ciliberto: I love the father-son dynamic story for that. It really fit in for that perfectly and this film has like a 70s vibe to it. Where did you draw inspiration for the looks for the film?

Jeff Powers: We had talked about a couple different films. David had a couple of references that he was interested in and other films from the period or loosely about there. We didn’t necessarily want it to look like a movie from the 70s, but there’s a style to that filmmaking, like that American new wave filmmaking that is all about character-driven, small, personal stories. I thought it was exciting, and it’s not that people don’t do it now, but it’s certainly not quite as common as it used to be. For me, some of those films were like Five Easy Pieces, which is also another father-son dynamic. These films kind of tied together well, as well as like King of Marvin Gardens, and then also Paris, Texas was another. Even though that’s slightly older, that’s not a 70s film, but there were all those for both how they treat character’s storytelling, and then as well as an embracing of the simplicity of filmmaking sometimes and how you can do beautiful work that’s like solely in service to the drama of these small stories. The film Terms of Endearment which is like a similar sort of like, again, it’s like a personal family drama. So, the ones I previously mentioned, were important to me in terms of visual style and keeping the camera and cinematography in service of the storytelling. Plus, the ability of the films I mentioned to be funny and dramatic within the same context and have it all work together in the same language was something director David Duchovny wanted his film to be able to do.

Kristin Ciliberto: Can you describe some of the equipment that you used for this project? In terms of how you captured some of the shots in the film?

Jeff Powers: Another choice that we made was to use a lot of handheld cameras because David was in the film and he was going to be in a lot of the scenes. It was important to him to have me operate one of the cameras as well. We were shooting two cameras almost all the time and typically that’s not really, that’s not normally a situation that I would want to operate in, because you lose the ability to manage the bigger picture. But because of the directors in the scene, I agreed with them, like it’s all happening right there. It was important to both of us that I operate a camera. Part of that choice was to shoot on ALEXA Mini, because it’s a great camera, I love it! It’s also a small enough camera that I can have it on the shoulder all day long and not be too tired or distracted by it to do the rest of my job, such as all the staging and lighting and managing of everyone that I’m working with. That was a big choice. I shot the film on ZEISS standard speed lenses, which I’ve always loved. I think they’re a great choice for many reasons. Again, not that we’re being too literal about it, but the fact that they’re older lenses, they’re from the 70s. It had an expressive quality to that set of lenses that I thought fit, but they’re not wildly out of control. I was able to throw them in all different situations and they were able to handle it reasonably well.

Kristin Ciliberto: Were there any challenges during this process while you were using any of the cameras or anything in general that you face as a cinematographer working on this project?

Jeff Powers: There’s a lot of driving scenes in the third act of the movie which can be a real challenge to do on a tight schedule and an indie film budget. We had initially planned on doing that all on a process trailer which gives a lot of freedom for camera placement and lighting and you can run multiple cameras all the time and it really streamlines the process. But as those days came closer, it was towards the end of the schedule that we were presented with the choice of continuing with the process trailer or if we switched it to a tow rig we could do twice as many days. We had twice as much time. It was a tough choice, but we ended up going with the tow rig and the more time. But then I had to figure out how to rig all this stuff onto the camera or onto the car. So, the result was that I had to scrap the camera plan for the driving scenes and start from scratch, which was difficult. My key grip, Rolan Schlain, had to build a pretty elaborate pipe rig to put everything where I’d asked for it to be. As a result of not being able to just put anything wherever we wanted, I think we were able to come up with somemore less conventional camera angles. I think it kind of works great. It takes place in the scene where they’re driving right before they pull over and Marty’s having this revelation of the initial difficulty in his relationship to being a father and right when Ted was born. Because of the rigging that we did, I fell into this angle where the cameras outside the window as you see David leaning outside the window, but there’s the whole frame from the windshield that’s in between David and Logan. It’s just this great frame that visually represents the separation between them. I don’t know if that’s something that I would have found if I had the ability to put the camera anywhere. In some regards, the limitations of the rigging forced us to make more interesting choices than I would have thought.

Kristin Ciliberto: My last question for you is what is your advice to anyone who wants to become a cinematographer? 

Jeff Powers: Great question! I have maybe a couple thoughts. Number one, it’s important to just shoot almost anything you can. Obviously, there’s some projects that are more valuable than others, but it took me quite a bit of time to find my style and the way I prefer working. That’s the only experience you can gain by doing it. I think it’s important to kind of shoot as much as you can. Then, also just take big chances on those early projects. I think one of the potential pitfalls is playing things a little safe and hedging your bets based on what you think people want to see or how you think things should be done. In reality, the beginning of your career is the perfect time to take some big swings and just commit to choices that maybe don’t work out. You have the freedom to do that later, a little further down, you’re going to owe a lot more responsibility to the people you’re working with. Just taking a wild risk which is maybe not such a great idea anymore. Then also, I think I learned a lot coming up. I also worked as I started shooting my early projects and I also worked as an electrician and a gaffer. I think, first of all, I learned a lot about lighting and how light works in the context of workflow on set as well as what it really contributes to the storytelling. So that was useful for me to build up those baseline skills. Also, a lot of being a cinematographer is management. I think spending time running cable and loading trucks and all that stuff when I was younger gave me a better sense of how much work that is and what you can ask people to do and how long it will take and how much support they need and those sorts of things. I think it’s much easier to be managing a whole team full of people if you have some background in the work that you’re asking them to do.

Learn more about Jeff Power’s past and upcoming projects here.