In an industry mostly dominated by men, 24-year-old Ellie Hughes spoke about what it is like to be a female camera operator and how barriers can be broken to inspire the next wave of cinematographers.
In the nineteenth century the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century it was the fight against totalitarianism. Now, in this century, it is widely believed that the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality.
As a twenty-first century society, we would like to believe that attitudes towards gender have progressed from where they were a few decades ago. We would like to believe that in this era women can do anything a man can and vice versa.
But the truth is there is still a great deal of work to be done.
Cinematography and Camera Operating are known for being tough areas for women to enter. Although there are a handful of established female camera operators such as Sally Potter, Josephine Decker and Lynne Ramsay, there are plenty who’ve struggled to get their foot in door or who have had to deal with the stigma of being a woman working in a man’s industry.
Ellie Hughes, a camera operator at BBC Scotland, spoke of how people still get surprised to hear about a woman working behind the camera despite being in the job for four years.
“The thing that I get the most is when people ask me what I do, and I say, ‘I’m a camera operator’, they go ‘Oh. I’ve never seen a female camera operator before.’ That happens a lot,” she explained.
“That sort of thing gets picked up on and I’ve become more and more conscious of it. To start with I was just doing the job I want to do, but it’s becoming quite apparent that it is something that’s not very well established. There’s not a lot of us.”
"It’s becoming quite apparent that it is something that’s not very well established. There’s not a lot of us.”
Ellie works across a variety of different shows as a camera operator, including football matches, music festivals and concerts at the SSE Hydro and the Royal Concert Hall. She also works inside studios for game shows, politics shows and news programmes such as Reporting Scotland. She is one of a few females in an industry that, as a whole, remains largely male-dominated.
The latest Center for the Study of Women in Televsion and Film Indie Women Report demonstrates just how true that statement is. Figures show that the percentage of women in positions behind the camera and in TV production remains dismally low.
The report, published in May 2018, shows that women comprised 29% of directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors, and cinematographers working on independent films in 2017-18. Which was a 1% increase from 2016-2017.
However, in those positions, cinematographers accounted for the lowest percentage of woman employees, coming in at only 17%. Women fared best as producers (36%), followed by directors (29%), editors (27%), executive producers (26%) and writers (26%).
However, there has been a slight increase in women camera operators over the past few years, and there was a 6% increase from last year.
This is something that Ellie has noticed in her work.
“On a job that I was working on last year, there were two female camera operators on it,” Ellie said. “One of guys said ‘Oh, there’s a lot more females on this than usual.’ And there were only two of us.”
Despite the still-low numbers, there have been some (albeit overdue) breakthroughs in the industry.
Back in June in 2017, American actress Zoe Lister-Jones made her directorial debut after working in film for 13 years. But her indie comedy, “Band Aid”, was the first for her for another reason: it was the first film ever to have an all-female crew. She was inspired to do this because out of the 40 TV shows, films and short films she worked on, only three of them had female cinematographers. “I wanted to see what it would feel like,” she said, “if a community of women exclusively created a piece of art together.”
Also, Rachel Morrison’s Academy Award nomination in the best cinematography category in January 2018 was a landmark for women in film. For the first time ever since 1929 when the awards began, a woman has been included in this category, which has been known as the toughest Oscar ceiling to crack.
Ellie spoke about how we can improve attitudes towards women in camera operating and cinematography roles by teaching the next generation to be more accepting.
“I’d like to think attitudes have changed, but it’s only going to definitely be better when there’s a better ratio of male to female camera operators,” Ellie said.
“You’re never going to change people’s attitudes, it’s about teaching the next generation to be more open minded and then that’s what will change it. You know, teach your kids how you want to see the world.”
A positive thing to take from this, though, is that if you are a woman who is good at a job that’s usually considered a man’s job, then you are easily noticed, and in certain situations it’s requested. Ellie talked about a time when she was requested.
“There was a job I went on where a female camera operator was specifically asked for because it was a story about women only swimming clubs. They wanted a female camera operator because they weren’t comfortable talking about it in front of a man. So sometimes it can be a good thing.”
Not everyone is going to ignore you or say that your opinion is invalid because you’re not a man in a man’s industry.
If Ellie could offer any advice to those trying to get into the industry, it would be this: “Just do it. It’s not just camera operating, its any job that you want to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s a job that mostly men do, if you can hold your own – and you shouldn’t have to – but if you can stand up and go ‘This is what I want to do, I don’t care if there’s loads of other people in the way’, then just go for it.”