cinematography / photography

PRESS

  • KODAK IN CAMERA MAGAZINE  ” Counter- Culture Clips “

In 2007, director Pavel Cuzuioc and director of photography Daniel Cojanu teamed up to put a more youthful face on Romanian National Television’s TVR CULTURAL. Each of the clips features classical and counter-culture characters singing, skateboarding, DJ-ing and dancing, and incorporates an unconventional twist that challenges viewers’ perceptions of what they see, hear and feel. Download the article in pdf format :  Kodak InCamera Magazine

  • CINEMATOGRAPHER’S JOURNEY LEADS TO WOODS HOLE by  CHRISTOPHER KAZARIAN   (Falmouth Enterprise, July 31, 2009)

    Nearly halfway into his young career Daniel Cojanu, 31, of Woods Hole came to a stunning realization about his role as a videographer—the camera was a central figure in every story he had ever told since he jumped into the profession at the age of 17.
    Born in Romania, he had been working in the industry since 1995, primarily as a cameraman for the news, producing segments for a variety of stations.
    At these jobs he primarily shot documentaries, talented enough to be selected in 1998 for a rigorous three-month educational course on producing the news that was overseen by the British Broadcasting Corporation.
    That workshop allowed him to study under BBC journalists, where he honed his skills, not only behind the camera, but in other nuances of production, whether it be as a news anchor, an editor, or as a producer. The culmination of that course, he said, was a short documentary each student had to shoot on a subject of their choosing.
    He elected to focus on Romanian gypsies living in squalor, holed up in old abandoned buildings in the center of Bucharest. He spent three days befriending them, documenting their lives and meager situations.
    His piece was awarded one of the top prizes by his teachers and helped him land a job at Pro TV, where he proceeded to do hard-hitting documentaries on a variety of topics.
    That included one that looked at a medical group working in the prisons of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, as well as another on Romanian transsexuals and transvestites who emigrated to Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands to find a more tolerant society.
    While the work was influential because it forced him to make quick decisions based upon his own intuition, he said it left him wanting more. “I was disappointed with documentary filmmaking because I always try to make the [subject] feel comfortable and not feel the presence of the camera,” he said. “But no matter what you do, you being there changes the situation no matter how not involved you are. That is when the switch happened.”
    It was a seminal moment, inspiring him to enroll in Bucharest’s National University of Theatre and Film in 2001.
    Prior to this his experience was strictly with news, which he went into immediately after high school at a time when the Romanian television market had opened up and opportunities in the field were growing.
    During that period, he recalled he had no real passion and “no background knowledge of anything” related to television. He knew a few people who had worked for a local station in his hometown of Ploiesti, an industrial city of roughly 500,000 people, and figured “it would be a cool thing to do.”
    He went to the station and expressed his interest. He was offered a job immediately, at first archiving VHS tapes, but quickly moving into editing and then camera work.
    Within a few years he had moved away from the urban life and was working as a news correspondent at a ski resort in Romania, where he often would be woken up in the middle of the night to capture images of search crews looking for those who were either lost or injured in the mountains.
    These experiences constituted the majority of his early work, but it was not until he expanded his knowledge to include narrative storytelling that Mr. Cojanu developed a love for filmmaking.
    While at the National University of Theatre and Film, he benefited from the intimate relationships with his professors as one of seven students offered the chance to study cinematography. Because of that small program, he said, “you would develop close personal relationships with your professors. They were your mentors.”
    He also was shooting a lot of film, he said, something he preferred over the format of video associated with the news industry.
    In the first year he shot primarily on 16-mm film before moving onto 35-mm the next year. Those first two years, he said, he was forced to shoot strictly in black and white, something that helped him learn about the importance of tonality and contrasts.
    It made the transition to color easier, he said, when he shot his first color piece, “A Fistful of Candies,” with director Gabriel Sandru, who was a student at the School of Art and Design at the University of Zurich. The project told the story of a little boy whose friends are using him for drug trafficking.
    He shot it on an anamorphic lens, which results in a Cinemascope effect that produces a picture that is 2 times as wide as it is as high. “It is as an amazing image quality right there,” he said.
    The short made it into the Cannes Film Festival in 2005, submitted by Kodak as one of several films from around Europe. He said the experience of attending the festival was thrilling and thrust him into the limelight. “We had to get up on stage and talk to the audience,” he said. “It was crazy. Here we are in the spotlight when I’m not used to being in front of the camera.”
    Following the success of that short, the duo collaborated again on Mr. Sandru’s final school project titled “Concluzie” or “The Conclusion,” which was made in 2006. Mr. Cojanu was the director of photography on the short film, which made it into the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland.
    It made its American premiere at the Woods Hole Film Festival on Monday afternoon and will be playing again tonight this Friday at Redfield Auditorium at 5, paired with the Chinese feature “Li Tong.”
    “Concluzie” follows a brother and sister as they deal with difficulty of a mother suffering from cancer and the choices they are forced to make. The drama features actor Dominique Jann who recently won a Swiss film award.
    It was following the initial premiere of the movie in Zurich that Mr. Cojanu met his future wife, Falmouth native Elise Hugus, who is a reporter for the Enterprise, while on a train to Bucharest. Ms. Hugus had been studying in Denmark at the time as a student at Concordia University in Montreal.
    The two stayed in touch, often visiting each other for months at a time, before eventually marrying this past December. That is how he ended up in Falmouth, with the two sharing their common interest in movies by organizing Cinema Politica, a nonprofit documentary network that screens independent films at the Old Woods Hole Firehouse on a weekly basis.
    Since his graduation from the film school, Mr. Cojanu has worked on 15 feature films and dozens of commercials and music videos as a cameraman, second unit DP and a director of photography. In 2007, he worked on five feature films, he said, an exhausting number considering the long hours that can be spent on a set and the months it takes to shoot films.
    Yet for Mr. Cojanu, this is where he is most comfortable. “When shooting a film, in a way, it is an escape from reality for me for two months,” he said. “I’m in a different world. I live in the script. You don’t have any time to do anything else. It keeps me focused on what I’m doing.”
    His resume includes working as a camera operator on “BloodRayne,” starring Ben Kingsley; a camera operator on “Adam Resurrected” that was directed by Paul Schrader, the writer of “Taxi Driver,” and featuring Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe; and a camera operator on “Bunraku,” starring Josh Hartnett, Woody Harrelson, and Demi Moore.
    “Bunraku” was his latest film, shot last summer in Romania, and unlike anything he ever worked on with entirely built sets and in front of green screens, mixing animation with live action. The title comes from the traditional Japanese theater that uses large puppets with detailed faces as part of the storytelling process.
    Of the stars he has worked with, he was impressed with Mr. Kingsley, calling him a “very solid actor,” while referring to Mr. Goldblum as a rare talent. “He’s like one of those people when you look through the lens, they have this magic,” he said.
    Although Woods Hole may be far removed from the movie-making industry, Mr. Cojanu has no plans of halting his career. He is looking to obtain funding for an independent film, presently titled “Maria and Dolly” that focuses on the poor children who live in the subway and sewer systems of Bucharest. It will be directed by Theodor Halacu-Nicon, with Mr. Cojanu acting as the director of photography.
    Beyond that he hopes to continue perfecting his craft, whether it is being on the set or learning from industry icons.
    At the top of his wish list is one day meeting and tapping into the wisdom of Falmouth resident Gordon Willis, director of photography for “The Godfather,” “All The President’s Men,” and “Annie Hall,” among others. “I haven’t met him yet,” Mr. Cojanu said. “I’ve been dreaming of doing that since I got here. He is one of the masters…Just the way he conveys moods through lighting is amazing. The films he shot are classic masterpieces.”
    It is that ability to elicit an emotion and strike a chord through the medium of the lens that provides him with satisfaction and something he strives to do every time he is behind the camera. “You may think a lot of people can do that kind of work, but it is hard,” he said. “Everyone can’t just say ‘I’m a filmmaker or a director. ”
    For those looking to pursue such a career he admitted it is difficult, but rewarding. “If you feel the itch, go for it,” he said. “You never will have peace if you don’t do what you want to do.”