What's your name and what do you do? I'm Steven Fierburg and I'm a
Cinematographer or a Director of
Photography depending on what people
like to say! What introduced you to
filmmaking? What was it that inspired you?
What made you say, this is what I want to do? You're a kid from Detroit! 
I didn't know anybody
in any artistic field at all in Detroit.
I mean, everyone just wanted to be an
automotive engineer or an automotive
executive or something. The idea of going into
the film industry seemed crazy. I was
just throwing my life away. So I signed
up for an engineering major and I got an
advisor engineering advisor. The day
before school started I walk into
his office to meet him and he goes. what
are you doing here? And I go, well, you're
my advisor! And he goes, why? And I go, well,
I might be an engineering major. And he
goes, no...come here. And he takes
me out into the hallway and he shows me
like four guys down the hall with
pocket protectors and all the stuff
well you would expect. He says, those
are engineers. He goes, you're much too
interesting to be an engineer, you can't
be one. Then he kicked me out of his
office. And this guy like saw immediately,
this guy I'd never met, he saw who I was in a way that everybody I knew in Detroit for
some reason couldn't see.
A graduate student took me on set of
documentary they were making about the
Chinese New Year and we were waiting for
the parade to start.
I saw something going on on the street
and I went down and I looked at it and
there was a big Panavision camera there.
It turned out Francis Ford Coppola was
filming "The Conversation" and Gene
Hackman was there and I caught his eye
and he looked at me like I belonged on 
the same earth as him. I went back
and I thought, if I was 40 years old and
I was working as a lawyer or doctor what
would I think if I went in the
street and ran into people filming and I
had I never even tried to do it. I
couldn't live with myself.
And so in that moment I said, that's it, I'm
going for it. So you have this sort of
documentary look in the past but then
also you're big into Steadicams and
these very intricate moves - so it's a
little dichotomy inside you there! On
"Entourage", yes, absolutely. But now when we
go to "The Affair" there is no documentary
feel. You have handheld shots here and
there but there is to me a very beautiful
type of light. It's got a darkness to it;
it kind of almost has a little bit of a
brooding nature, but then at times you
have all this pool light which I love.
It's great
you weren't pigeon-holed for that. No, I
love that you're saying that, I love that
you're saying that. I have no intention of
"The Affair"
looking like "Entourage."
.
I like the idea, like what we were saying, is starting
from scratch. Like what could this movie
look like? What should it look like? What
does the script
tell me it should become? That's where
I'm starting. I really need to read
the script and then try to let it somehow
fill me. And then hopefully it gives me a
good idea about how it should then feel.
Marshall Herskovitz, who's a partner of
Ed Zwick, when I was doing "Love and
Other Drugs" he said, you do heightened
reality. And I think that that's
something that I actually aspire to.
And in general, what I try to do is
something that tends to be fairly
naturalistic. You know, it looks like
you're really in that place and it gives,
well it can give, weight to the performances.
Whereas if you light something that's in
a very beautiful but stylistic way. It makes
them more aware of the fact that you're
watching an artifice, which is the movie.
Because the lighting is, even though it's
beautiful, is not something you would
normally see.
On the TV show "Entourage" one of the things
I did very consciously
is I said, I'm not backlighting these
actors because they're already too damn
good-looking! We've got all these twenty
year olds who are beautiful and if you
glamorize them it's gonna make the
audience throw up and they're gonna hate
these characters. And I was very upfront
about that fact. I said no I'm not gonna
glamorize them I'm gonna make them look
like you just saw them on the street or
you went into a restaurant and that's
what they would look like. And I think
that gave the show in some way gravitas
that it wouldn't have had if I hadn't
done that.
I can't believe that I came from Detroit and actually made a life in the film industry.
When I'm working I go sometimes, how is this a job?! Cuz it's so much fun. I was just
doing this low-budget film in New
York and most people were working on it for
free or almost free because they love it.
What a wonderful thing that we we love
our job, that we love doing it.
