ADAM BRICKER - Cinematographer

Team Deakins

Cinematographer Adam Bricker joins the Team Deakins podcast to trace his unconventional path from a Chicago kid with an acting bug to a seasoned director of photography for HBO's Hacks and

Key takeaways

• Adam Bricker transitioned from community theater in New Jersey to DePaul University and USC, where structured camera training solidified his passion for cinematography.
• He broke into the industry by aggressively hustling on Craigslist after film school, shooting music videos and infomercials to build a reel before landing representation at UTA through Ryan Tracy and Tashi Ahmed.

Main topics

• Career trajectory and early hustle
• The role of representation and agents in Hollywood

Notable quotes

"if you want to be a DP, you got to be a DP. You got to just go out there and shoot."

Conclusion

The episode provides a highly practical roadmap for aspiring cinematographers, emphasizing relentless

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:03) Hi, and welcome to Season 2 of the Team Deacons podcast, a collection of informal conversations between Roger and James Deacons and a guest. We never know where the conversation will take us, so listen in and Speaker 1 (0:17) see where it goes. Speaker 2 (0:21) Cinema is all about the quiet, deliberate decisions that tell a story, frame by frame, whether that's the harsh digital greens of The Matrix or the sun-bleached amber vastness of Dune. BenQ home cinema projectors respect those choices, delivering calibrated color accuracy that lets you see the image as the director and cinematographer created it. Experience the true spirit of the craft in your own home by visiting BenQ.com. Speaker 2 (0:59) This episode is sponsored by Aputure and its new Storm CS32. The industry's most powerful, gold-color, tunable LED point source light. Brighter than a 4K HMI with adjustable colors for golden sunsets, cool blue moonlight, or rich, accurate skin tones. With the flexibility of powering off a household outlet, The CS32 is the light that grows with you. Storm CS32, your light for every shoot, only from Aputure. Speaker 2 (1:39) Today we're speaking with the cinematographer. His credits include American Vandal, Chef's Table, and the series Hacks. We're pleased to welcome Adam Bricker. Adam, thank you for doing it. Thank Speaker 1 (1:54) you for having me. Speaker 2 (1:56) We're actually pleased since... You've always been asking us the questions to turn it around and put you on the spot now. Oh, no. Roger's going to Speaker 1 (2:06) interrogate me about not using a light meter. Speaker 3 (2:08) What are you doing? How Speaker 1 (2:09) did you become a cinematographer? Speaker 2 (2:11) Why? Okay, let's pretend this is a real episode. Oh, okay, yeah. Let's start with a question. How did you get to where you are today? Did you always think visually? Did you always want to do something with a camera? Or did you... want to be a novelist first? What's your path? Speaker 1 (2:31) Well, I think, you know, we can, let's start way back when I was just a little kid. And these are stories that I don't even remember. These are stories that my mom tells me. So they come secondhand. I was in elementary school and my mom got a call from my drama teacher, Nancy Ball. We grew up in Chicago and there was a movie coming into town. So this Bruce Willis movie, Mercury Rising. Oh, I worked on Speaker 2 (2:58) that. Oh, my God. There Speaker 1 (2:59) you Speaker 2 (2:59) go. Speaker 1 (3:00) Oh, my goodness. Oh, my God. Speaker 2 (3:01) I don't like to talk about it. Anyway, go ahead. Speaker 1 (3:05) All right. So, well, I've actually never seen it, but Nancy thought that there was a role in it for a young boy. And Nancy told my mom she thought I should audition. My mom didn't even know that I was in a drama class. She had no, this was all news to her. But we auditioned. I didn't get the role, but I sort of caught a little acting bug. Would do stuff in Chicago, commercials, some modeling stuff. It was just like a really fun thing that I was doing as a kid. The story actually that my mom always tells is that we needed to get headshots made. So we went to a photography studio and a photographer took headshots of me. And the photographer was just like clearly really playing my mom, being like, oh, this kid. This kid is fabulous. He's really, he's really got it. You've got to get a huge batch of headshots and just totally upselling her on like the mega headshot package. We still have so many of them in my basement at home. So I'll send you, I'll send you guys some. But then shortly after that, we moved from Chicago where we had deep family roots to New Jersey because of my dad's work. And there are two really formative experiences that happened when we moved to New Jersey. The first is. My parents needed some time to fix up our new house. I have three younger sisters. They were painting bedrooms, getting furniture set up. And we had one uncle that lived in Montclair, New Jersey. His wife, Kim Zimmer, is a soap opera star. And they were living in New Jersey while she was filming her soap in the city. I have three cousins, AC's kids, and we were going to spend a week with AC and our cousins, my sisters and I. while my parents fixed up the house. My uncle, AC, is a director himself and an actor and sort of like a jack of all trades. And he put us right to work making a short film. We shot on AC's like mini DV camcorder. It was Scream 3. So this was 1998. The Scream series had just been released, I guess, with the second installment. And I was 11. I have three younger sisters, the youngest being two. But it was many late nights. There was a lot of, like, catch-up blood involved. And we shot this movie. I think we shot it in, like, in sequence. We didn't edit it. It was like, you know, we'd cut the camcorder, and if we needed to do another take, we'd rewind it. There was a boombox playing the score. But it was really just like a magical experience. I got to spend time with my sisters and meet my cousins, really, for the first time. And I just loved it. And we played that little short film, Scream 3, at like every Thanksgiving family gathering. And my mom called and was like, you know. All right, the house is ready after a few days. I'm out in place. He was like, there's no way that we're ready to send them back. We've got two more scenes. We've got a night shoot tomorrow. Like, we were totally in it. So that was really formative, Scream 3. And then the other formative experience was once we finally moved into the house and we're sort of getting acclimated to our new community, wanting to continue acting. But my mom realizing it was, you know, two and a half hours to get into New York City and it was just not going to be the same as it was in Chicago. She enrolled myself and my three younger sisters in a community theater. We auditioned and, you know, it was four kids, one family. So the owner of the community theater was like, fabulous. All of our kids roles are cast for now and into the future. And we did that for many years, me, my sisters and I. And it was really great because it wasn't like. I grew up in Rumson in New Jersey, and it wasn't in our neighborhood. It was a few towns over. So it was really like isolated from our school friends. We weren't like embarrassed or anything. You know, we were like free to be in this community theater. And like, you know, we were amongst attorneys and, you know, mailmen acting in these plays. It was so fun. The theater was also perfect. It was in a New Jersey strip mall next to a Chinese restaurant and a nail salon. It was just so charming and really bizarre and fun. We learned so much. Those were really like formative years for me and my sisters. We absolutely loved being in those plays. And someone at some point from that community theater, someone wrote an original play and they performed it at the theater. And as a high school project, I thought it would be great to make it as a film. So I got a camcorder like my Uncle AC and all of the actors, that attorney, that mailman would come over to my family house. And after school, we would shoot scenes. It was called Potluck. I never edited it. I shot the whole thing, but I never finished it. But it revolved around a marital dispute and was set over a dinner amongst friends. It was insane that I was making this. But my mom had to do, she cooked the dinner for the big dinner scene. And then we were sticklers for continuity. So she had Speaker 3 (7:52) to Speaker 1 (7:52) cook the same dinner every night for several weeks. It was really, really fun. So from there on, I totally caught the bug. I was a good student in high school, but not a great one and loved movies, didn't love doing papers. So any school project that I could turn into a documentary or a short film, I would. And it was just also then became very logical that when I went to college, that it would be film school. Movies were just such a big part of my life. Was either making them or going to the movies and seeing a double feature with my mom, you know, on the weekend. That was the whole thing for me. I went back to Chicago to go to film school at DePaul and had a fabulous experience there. And one summer, a friend of mine was going out to California to go to USC where they offer a summer program where they sort of offer any, you know, I think it's anyone who's really honestly like willing to pay will keep maybe to keep professors employed. They can come out to the summer at USC and he was a photographer and he was taking an advanced cinematography course that summer. And I. was along for the ride. I'd never been to California. It was really, you know, seemed like a great productive way to spend a summer in between my freshman and sophomore year of college. And it was really eye-opening for me. At DePaul, it was really run and gun. It was super fun. It was a new film school. We were given a camera. It was sort of like an extension of my high school experience. But at USC, things were really structured. And I was introduced to the fact that there were jobs in the film industry and that there were roles. And that's sort of where I've learned, you know, what a cinematographer does and really sort of fell in love with it. Speaker 2 (9:32) And did you ever have the opportunity to shoot film or were you always shooting digitally? Speaker 1 (9:38) That first summer at USC, we shot 16. And then our final project that summer was a 35 millimeter short film or maybe like a scene exercise. But yeah, we were shooting film. It was really fun. We talked about this, Roger, when we were just at J.L. Fisher, walking onto the soundstage at USC and first. Setting eyes on like a camera dolly was really special to me. Like I was like, oh, wow, this is this is incredible. These lights are enormous. I must do this. You know, I was always into the gear, I think, too. Like even when I was acting in in the community theater, there would be a guy for every play that would come with a little tripod and a mini camera and record the performance to sell a copy to the cast. And I was obsessed with that. I was like, oh, that's a really cool job. You know, so there was always like a little something there that I was like, okay, I'm interested in the behind the scenes aspect of how this all happens. Speaker 2 (10:29) What happened when you graduated college? Did you know at that point you wanted to be a cinematographer? Speaker 1 (10:35) How did you get work? How did you look for work after? Did you stay Speaker 2 (10:40) in Chicago? Speaker 1 (10:41) What happened was that after that summer program, I was like, man, this is really, if I'm serious about this. I've got to be in LA. If I'm going to be, you know, if my parents are supporting me through college, I like want to give it the best shot. Let me apply to transfer to USC. And I was very, very lucky to get in and I moved to LA and I finished school at USC. Speaker 3 (11:02) And Speaker 1 (11:03) USC was just fabulous. I met so many great filmmakers. It's a wonderful program. I just had the most fun there. It was just absolutely great. And I think, you know, what's wonderful about going to Any film school is the people you meet, the relationships that you form. But that's especially valuable at a place like USC because when you graduate, it isn't like your peers don't dissipate all over the country. A lot of people stayed here in LA. So when I graduated, I was working with friends right off the bat. It's also like wonderful to be at film school as a cinematographer because everyone wants to direct. You know, you're surrounded by directors. So the odds are in your favor a little bit. But coming out, you know, I was really like trying to think of how I could make this a career. And I had sort of a plan that was like I would be shooting, but maybe I would start crewing and I would sort of work my way up the ladder. So I started working as a second AC. on some independent films and music videos. The highlight, I was a second AC on a Britney Spears music video, which was really cool. And these were like a year out of film school. It was very exciting. And my plan was to maybe gather days as a second or eventually as a focus puller and join the union. And then I would become a camera operator. And then eventually I would, you know, kind of work my way up to being a cinematographer. And I was about a year into this plan. I was working on... an independent film as a second with a great DP. His name is Tim Naylor. And he had flown out from New York to shoot this in LA. And I remember that he interviewed me for the job, which I think was just looking back was like pretty special. A DP interviewing a second was just cool. And he really took me under his wing. And we were having lunch one day and I was explaining this plan to him about working my way up. And he was like, you know, I sort of think if you want to be a DP, you got to be a DP. You got to just go out there and shoot. And, you know, I. I thought about that and had fortunately like saved up a little bit of money. I was living in a great apartment in Koreatown where I still am today. But at the time, there were six guys from film school living here with me. And so my overhead cost was low. And I was like, OK, I think I'll go for it. So I stopped crewing and really just focused on shooting. And so those early jobs, they were insane. It was like waking up every morning and sitting at this very table with coffee and pulling on my laptop. hopping on Craigslist and cold emailing people. And, you know, so it was like music videos and infomercials. And maybe you'd get lucky with like a rich kid's short film that you could turn into something interesting. It was a fun time. And, you know, I would just put my all into everything and try to make each project sort of my own and build a reel. And it's very much a story of like one thing leading to another or leading to another. Speaker 2 (13:56) And when did you get an agent and when do you feel it's necessary to get an agent? And you also have a few agents. So what are you feeling about having an agent? Speaker 1 (14:06) Yeah, good question. Well, from that point of like, you know, sitting at the dining room table and sending my resume out on Craigslist to getting an agent, I think a lot happened in between those moments. I think I got an agent after Chef's Table came out. The way that I booked Chef's Table was very much in that Craigslist zone of hustling. But I had gone to New York with a friend from USC, a producer friend, to shoot a short film, working for free, sleeping on a friend's couch. The short was fabulous. It played at South by Southwest. It was directed by this wonderful director, Brian Crano, who I would go on to make features with. So this short film was really special and was like a wonderful thing to have on my reel. And I'm very, very proud of it. Brian Cranos friend, Brian McGinn, was an assistant editor on the project. And we crossed paths in the parking lot where they were editing. And he admired how the how the short looked. And Brian McGinn was going off to direct a travel kind of commercial branded project and wondered if I'd be available. And I was at this time, you know, you're very much in that mentality. When you're hustling, it's like, you know. whatever the project is, you're going to shoot it and you're going to go all the way in. So I went on this commercial project with Brian. It was, I think we were selling LG phones. There was sort of like a improv comedy aspect to it. And we traveled the country shooting these branded little sketches. It was really fun. And I think, you know, you learn a lot about someone when you travel with them, you know, if you're compatible, if you sort of hit it off. And Brian and I really hit it off. And shortly thereafter. Brian McGinn and David Gelb sold Chef's Table, which at the time was called Chef's Story. And it was based on David Gelb's independent feature film, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, which had had a great run playing film festivals and then was very, very successful on Netflix. And Netflix was talking to David about doing sort of a spinoff of that. And that's how Chef's Story was born. At the time, I had never really... shot a real documentary and I had never shot food before. So it made no sense that they were after me for the project. But it was that relationship that I'd formed with Brian McGinn, Speaker 2 (16:26) traveling Speaker 1 (16:28) and making that commercial project, that he was really interested in continuing that journey and now traveling the world with this. And McGinn and I shot the first pilot episode in Australia for Chef's Table. So that was 2014. And it was around that time. that I got an agent. But, you know, to answer your question about getting an agent, it's not like, you know, anything changed after that. It was still me hustling for projects and having an agent to negotiate the deal. But it was several years after that that the agent was able to sort of help me find projects and to be able to sell many people. It's still very much a needing to know people and needing to work really hard and hustle out there. Speaker 2 (17:06) I think the other thing about having an agent that's helpful is if there's an issue. with production. They're not living up to something they promised or something. You don't have to do the arguing because you have to work with them. You have to see them every day and to have someone outside of yourself doing that argument. And you can go, oh, I don't know. I mean, just talk to him, you know, and not take on that. Exactly, Speaker 1 (17:30) right. Like there's like a buffer. There's a buffer in between you and the creative, which I think is really valuable. And that's not to say that, you know, I'm very grateful that Agent The first agent that I had was Ryan Tracy at UTA. And I remember talking with Ryan around the time that Chef's Table came out. And Ryan just being very clear with me, like, at this point, there's nothing that I can really, you don't have the credits for me to do much work for you. So there's no need for you to necessarily sign here. He's sort of, I guess what they call it is hip pocketing. But he was like, you know, just keep in touch. And if you have any Speaker 2 (18:05) advice Speaker 1 (18:06) or if you have a deal you want to negotiate. please do. And I was in my Craigslist era of like diligently emailing everyone. So of course, I kept in touch with Ryan and would, you know, have a reminder to email him every three months or something like that. And then eventually, you know, I either bugged Speaker 3 (18:22) him Speaker 1 (18:22) enough or I had enough credits that he did feel like he could do work for me. And I signed on UTA and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made, I think. There was a great team there and there still is. But that initial group of Ryan and Tashi Ahmed, like, were really, they really took me under their wing and were always on the lookout. And that's how, that is how the subsequent projects happen. Like, that is, American Vandal did come to me through my agents and Hacks did come to me through my agents. So it was really valuable. But it's, what I say to, like, you know, cinematographers that are just starting out or... at that phase of their careers that you sort of have to let it happen naturally. Just by having an agent doesn't really change anything. It's a natural evolution. The same with joining the union or any of these sort of career milestones. Like they're going to happen when they're meant to happen. You just kind of ride the wave a little bit. Speaker 2 (19:13) Well, joining the union sometimes is necessary if you're trying to get on a production that's union. Yeah, definitely. Speaker 1 (19:22) For Speaker 2 (19:22) the production to be able to hire you, you've got to do that. Speaker 1 (19:26) Yeah. And I think I joined the union probably, you know, I think it was maybe a couple of years before Chef's Table. But it was I remember that being a major stressor and like gathering days and wanting to make sure that I was qualified if a project did come up. And there were a couple of things where it was like I couldn't do them because I wasn't yet in the union. But and those at the time, of course, were devastating to me. But in retrospect, it was all sort of happened the way it was meant to be. And you just got to kind of ride it a bit. Speaker 3 (19:55) How much do you think you took from film school? I mean, just in terms of what you learned in film school, but also the confidence maybe it gave you. I don't know. What do you think of your experience as film school related to how your career evolved? That's a good question, Roger. I think you sort of nailed it. I think it's that confidence. And I think it's, Speaker 1 (20:17) you know, telling that story about the community theater. I