There's a lot to be said for learning alongside the masters, as star DP Jess Hall will attest to. A trusted right-hand man to such heavyweight spot helmers as Danny Kleinman, Ringan Ledwidge, Rupert Sanders and Chris Palmer, Hall's had a bird's-eye view of each director's tactics, observations that he's absorbed into his own work as a DP and burgeoning director.

"It's not that you're looking to poach other people's ideas," he says. "But, as a DP, you're collaborating with a director and looking to get into their head and fulfill their vision, to create in practice what they have in their imagination within certain restrictions of time and budget. It's a way of exploring people's approaches."

Exploring is something that's always come naturally to Hall, especially in the framework of his career. Beginning his studies in film and fine arts in London in the mid-'90s and crossing the ocean to continue his film schooling at NYU, Hall learned practically every aspect of filmmaking. "I was directing, cutting, processing and shooting my own films," he recalls. "I used to do everything when I first started, because that's how we worked." But a fascination with the image, lingering from his first love, still photography, led him to choose cinematography as a career.

Breaking into commercials in the late '90s, Hall first worked with Sanders in 1999 on jobs for Guinness and Barclays. He's worked with him steadily throughout the '00s on such shoots as adidas "Made to Perfection". His skill with shooting for a post-heavy production came to the fore with two Guinness jobs: Sanders' "Lava" in 2002 and Kleinman's Cannes Grand Prix-winning "Noitulove". The latter also called into play his stills photography expertise: its prehistoric backgrounds were composed from digital stills assembled and rigged to create time-lapse panoramas. He says it's important with post-heavy spots to maintain the balance between trickery and the tactile.

"I think people want post to look real - otherwise they tend to disengage," he says. "If you look at cinema stuff as well, there's a certain alienating effect that can occur when all that CG is bombarded at you. There is more of a value to the medium when it relies on something that's tactile, believable and doesn't need a lot of playing with. As a communication, it can work a lot better than blasting people with CG-created imagery." He cites the recent Orange "Pay as You Go" spot that he worked on with Ledwidge, which incorporated ever-changing sets manipulated by wires and mechanical rigs, as well as an "enormous" lighting grid to control the exterior environment, as a prime example of in-camera ingenuity that carries impact.

While Hall is more than happy to keep up with tech advances - he worked extensively in the development of the new version of Kodak's Look Management digital photography pre-vis system on the Hot Fuzz feature - he will also resort to the tried and true, busting out a hand-cranked camera for some scenes in the same film.

Balance is something he brings to his work life on a regular basis, now that he's also embarking on a directorial career (as a DP, he's repped by ICM, while as a director he's repped by Furlined in the US, Soft Citizen in Canada, and Outsider in the UK). He's helmed visual jobs for Visa, Heineken and ESPN and is looking forward to returning to spot work both as a DP and as a director now that he's just finished work on Emma Thompson's latest feature.

"It can create some complexities," he says of the dual roles. "But in this business, you're always juggling something, aren't you?"

Furlined http://www.furlined.com
ICM http://www.icmtalent.com
Outsider http://www.outsider.tv
Soft Citizen http://www.softcitizen.com