Upgrade Yourself: The Cinematographer's Lens with Bradford Young

Join award winning cinematographer Bradford Young as he shares his career journey and industry advice with us.
Young's film credits include When They See Us, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Selma, plus music videos, commercials, short films and TV.
For our upcoming film focused Upgrade Yourself, Director of Photography Bradford Young will focus his cinematographer's lens on the film and TV industries, offering us insight into his hugely successful career and giving some tips and techniques into how you could develop your own career in this artform.
The talk will cover areas such as collaboration, creating a vision, project management, connecting with actors and building a character, story-telling and communicating with your audience. Bradford will also take questions from you, our audience, about the projects that mean most to him and how a day in the life of an international cinematographer really takes shape. This is one peer exchange not to be missed.

[@colemanentertainmentllc7224]

Brad I am so proud of you brother! I look at you and I see the journey but I also see who you've always been since we meet at Whole Foods as workers thus finding out we were also Howard University students (you in the grad program and I undergrad). What I continue to observe in you is you're always seeking the truth in not just your inner struggles/challenges with life but big and or small purpose which helps guide your approach to storytelling. I tell young filmmakers the best way to approach this art form is to live more and have practical frames of reference. I learned that from you brother!!!

[@cyrusgomezalcala]

A lot of people I need start researching and of my own culture too. Thanks

[@DANAMIONLINE]

I appreciate this interview and sharing of Bradford’s process and responsibility as a filmmaker to the Black community.

[@bartbazaz]

Thankyou Bradford for your time and your insight

[@lejune]

Bradford, this was great. Learned a lot and very insightful. Ty

[@lejune]

+ Scott

[@sneakaholic011]

first off, this has less than 10k views... theee fuck? incredibly inspiring. thank u

[@buckromero2184]

Great discussion & insight - keep it going!!

[@paolinaweber5026]

"How do we tell the story of the story" " how do we make a contribution to the to the story...Im making a film on Josephine Baker's 1927 dance ( for a film school project) I want to use double exposure and have a back lit image ultra wide and then have these tight ECU sharp moments where I see the movement, layer them, not with opacity, but with light, like the James Van Der Zee images and also like the Chris Ofili shimmering golden light... all very formal, on sticks. The project is for my Black Cinema studies class at Feirstein. I'm reimagining her dance. putting it together again. and I want to tell the story of the story too

[@sisterbrothers1677]

I think of Bradford Young as a good cinematographer. He thinks of himself as a black cinematographer.

[@entrop1e7]

Are you a part of a minority or suppressed group of people? If you are not, that's maybe the reason why you write that.

[@scottwatson8659]

There is a context why Brad Young centers his inspiration on his "blackness". In the West "whiteness" is the de facto lens by which reality is perceived. It is so ubiquitous that most people understand this as reality. As a creative Brad knows that to get in touch with your raison d'etre you have to be in touch with the specificity of your background. It is out of this you contact your humanity. You understand the universal through the particular. The gaze of whiteness understands itself as universal but it's a particular manifestation itself. Thus it doesn't fully understand humanity in its particular manifestations.