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Canon Interview - Explorer of Light Rodney Charters , ASC, CSC

1,407 views · Published 15 August 2010 · 5:32 · Indexed 29 September 2026

Channel: ChristopherKblog · 2010 · Howto & Style

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Rodney was born to shoot. The son of a smalltown photographer in New Zealand, he literally grew up in the darkroom of his father’s studio. As the star of several of his father’s 16mm dramas, Rodney learned to appreciate the magic of making movies and soon graduated to his now-familiar role behind the camera. He made his first film ‘Film Exercise’ after graduating with a B.A. in Art History from the University of Auckland, and it received such acclaim at the Sydney Film Festival that Rodney progressed to the prestigious Royal College of Art in London.

From 1968 to 1971 Rodney called Britain home, spending one summer at the BBC and working on commercials in London under directors Tony Scott and Ridley Scott. Following a brief stint in the U.S., Charters was lured north to work on Network documentaries in Toronto, eventually making his way from sound and editing to cinematography on ‘W5’. The next decade-and-a-half found him traveling the globe, honing his skills in locations from the heat of the South American jungles to the cold war in the Soviet Union. Back in Toronto in 1986 to work 2nd unit on his first Feature, ‘Youngblood’, Rodney embraced the movie genre and subsequently shot ‘Psycho 4’ and ‘Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers’ for director Mick Garris, ‘Kull the Conqueror’ in 1997, and ‘The Intern’ in 2000.

After spending a number of years in Toronto and Vancouver working on television programs such as ‘Friday the 13th - The Series’, ‘The Commish’, ‘The Hat Squad’, and ‘TekWar’ – for which he received a Gemini nomination for Best Photography - Rodney relocated to the U.S. in 1996 as DOP for the first season of the TV series ‘Nash Bridges’, following up later that same year with ‘The Pretender’.

His work on ‘Roswell’ in 2001 led to the groundbreaking series ‘24’, where he adapted his years of documentary experience to bring a tense, gritty realism never before seen on a primetime

television series. That look depends heavily on the work of the camera operator, who has the freedom to interpret a scene instinctively. In describing ‘24’, he explains, “The images have life, they pulse with energy, they are edgy and single-minded in their need to tell the story.” Then he added: “The photography is truthful and honest.”

Two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Cinematography echo that sentiment. It’s a huge challenge to achieve that ‘on-the-edge’ tension within a frenetic schedule that keeps the crew moving at such a frantic pace, but Rodney takes it all in stride. Partly because he has the artistic talent and worldly experience that comes from a lifetime of photography. But mostly because he intuitively just knows how to visually tell a story. He once said, “To be a documentary shooter is to stage a delicate dance between you and the subject.” In 2008 Kodak Canada presented Rodney with the New Century Award for his services to the art of Cinematography.

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