The cinematography & creative philosophy of Florian Hoffmeister BSC

Florian Hoffmeister BSC has built a body of work marked by both intimacy and scale. His credits include features as wide ranging as The Deep Blue Sea and Johnny English Strikes Again, and renowned television work including True Detective: Night Country and episodes of The Terror and Pachinko. In this interview, he reflects on foundational moments of inspiration, the relationship he builds with directors, and the fleeting but powerful moment when the clapperboard strikes.

Origin Story

Reflecting upon his childhood in Germany, Hoffmeister shares, "I think I did have an early love for the visual image. I grew up in a tiny village. We had this little theatre group. We would set up these performances, and that's how I kind of entered that entire world.

"When I was 21, I first did an internship at a small rental place in Berlin," he continues. "I did half a year in the camera department, half a year in the lighting department. I decided to apply to film school, and that was probably the biggest change because it was all about film as an art form."

A Foundational Encounter

Hoffmeister's experiences at film school proved to be hugely influential and inspiring. "When I was at film school," he recounts, "we had a new head of school who was very motivated and an esteemed filmmaker in Germany called Reinhard Hauff. He brought a lot of masters of their craft to the school at this point, which was quite unusual. I was in my first year, and I happened to walk down the corridor, and Reinhard Hauff comes racing past me. He says, 'Come with me. Jump in this car. We're going to the Berlin Film Festival. We're going to meet Elia Kazan.'

"I think he received his Lifetime Achievement Award, and he had asked to meet students on his own ambition," Hoffmeister says. "So we're all sitting there, and Elia Kazan comes in, and the only thing he said [was], 'Do what you want.' That's what he said! 'Do what you want to do.' I have thought about that because it means that you have to really figure out what it is that only you can do and only you can want to do. It's very simple, but I have thought a lot about that encounter." 

While attending film school, Hoffmeister shares, "I kept on working as a spark. I always had one foot in the so-called real world, for lack of better words, and then one foot in the world where you sit in an editing room till like 4 o'clock in the morning, and you discuss if you want to take out one frame or not. So it was a very passionate time, and I still take a form of inspiration out of that devotion that we felt back then when we were at film school."

From Germany to the U.K.

After completing his film-school education, Hoffmeister continues, "I just by chance happened to run into a British director. Her name was Antonia Bird. Her regular British DOP wasn't available, and the German Service Production introduced me to her. That brought me to the U.K., because Antonia was a very exposed and highly regarded director in England."

Once he was in the U.K., he adds, “I shot my first BBC television series [Five Days] with a director called Otto Bathurst and [director and executive producer] Simon Curtis." On that production, the focus puller introduced Hoffmeister to Charlie Todman and others at Panavision London. As Hoffmeister recalls, the focus puller told him, “‘You’ve got to meet these guys because they're going to seriously help as collaborators in the filmmaking process.’

"I was very, very interested in testing, and we would just go over there," the cinematographer says. "Panavision London, they literally had every piece of glass that one could imagine. They were terribly supportive for me. So that was a very, very key relationship I had."

Travailler avec les réalisateurs

Regarding his working relationship with directors, Hoffmeister offers, "I find that collaboration is always quite intimate, and ideally you do it more than once. I shot a couple of films with Antonia, then I had a chance to work with Terrence Davies on two films. So ideally I have these relationships, but I don't have that singular relationship with a director that I go back to all the time."

The longtime, repeat collaboration between a director and cinematographer is "one of the ideals you grow up with in film school," Hoffmeister muses. "You think of Scorsese and the great collaborations he's had with his regular DOPs over many, many films. But I find there's also something liberating in [working with numerous directors] because you get exposed to so many different emotions and styles. I find it always invigorating to work with somebody I don't know."

Collaborative Concentration

"There's always a very singular moment that I find astonishing, which is when the clapperboard gets hit," Hoffmeister shares. "There is a moment when everybody gets quiet. There is a form of collaborative concentration that is created, and I think that is one of the most beautiful things that human beings can do. When you get lost in all the bad things because you haven't been home, and you're tired, that's the moment when I always think, 'This is a cool thing to do.'"