Bill Dill
About the Author
Bill Dill is a cinematographer and professor of film and media arts. He is a past senior filmmaker in residence at the American Film Institute Conservatory and senior lecturer at the USC School of School of Cinematic Arts. Now he teaches at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University. He remembers the exact moment when "the world stopped spinning." At a photo exhibition by Walker Evans, Dill stood with a tear running down his face at the sight of a photo of an organ in a church in West Virginia. It was the moment when Dill began to pursue his interest in photography full time.
Thus began a career running the gamut from music videos to feature films. His work won local Emmys in New York City for magazine format TV. He did work for AT&T, the US Marines, and Apple. He shot television shows for Paramount and HBO, and features, including Sidewalk Stories, which won the Prix du Public in Cannes. He was elected to the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers (ASC)—the preeminent mark of recognition is his field.
But he also walked away from jobs and projects requiring that he shoot gory auto accidents for TV news or work on "insulting scripts" or make one more malt liquor commercial. As a professor of cinematography, he asks his students to follow the same path—to seek excellence, to pursue their work with a level of intensity that demands that they eat, drink, breathe, and sleep cinematography, and to seek to produce images that stop the world.
