Bo Hakala

Who are you?
My name is Bo Hakala.
bohakala.com




What do you do?
I freelance in cinematography, photography and dabble in music video.





























Inspirations?
Oh gosh... I grew up watching sci-fi and noir flicks so that had a huge impact on me... I'm open to being inspired by people in other disciplines (not just film/photo world)... music is especially inspiring to me. I always look for sincere music... there's a lot of stuff that gets produced for "effect" and that always offends me.















Please describe your creative process, or highlight a specific process used for a recent project.
Creating an image can be a very complex process and hard to communicate the nuances to collaborators or "clients". I find that describing things in terms of emotion and texture is often the best starting point... once a sort of understanding is reached, there is usually a stage of planning (sometimes as simple as "bring a camera and some film" and sometimes as complicated as a month of planning, coordinating and preparing). Then we go in and paint the picture... this is the best part for me... I love being on set or location and playing with all the variables that the task has to offer... Lighting is the most fun for me... I think a shot can be made with mediocre lenses if the lighting is good, but if you have the best glass in the world and your lighting sucks, the shot will always be mediocre... so if I had to pick a side, I would say that I'm a lighting geek.

I think I'm in the beginning stages of my development as an artist, so the discovery process is always changing and different, trying to discover what works for a given situation is a difficult but rewarding challenge. Then there is the post process... in photo world this usually consists of me monkeying around in photoshop to define a look based on the initial conversation... in film world it means hoping the color correction is what I expect and learning how to communicate things to a colorist. And then the final and hopefully gratifying stage of showing the work... but mostly this stage just stresses me out.












Please describe your average workday.
There is no average... but if there were, I'd probably be 10 minutes late getting to it.














What are things that you would like to do in the future that you haven't done already?
Play with bigger toys (larger spaces). My imagination is epic, but my art-form is expensive as all hell... so hopefully someday I will see a few things that are kicking around in my head play out for an audience. I would also like to work on my organization and communication skills.