Meet Logan Regnier | Cinematographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Logan Regnier and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Logan, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota but moved when I was pretty young to a tiny town called Randolph. It had a population of about 300 and probably still does. We had a post office, fire department, two bars, a gas station called Woody’s Pump n’ Munch and a K-12 school which I lived across the street from.

I have a lot of fond memories from growing up there. I don’t think my parents were too consumed with some of the worries that may have come along with living in a bigger city and so my brothers and I had a lot of freedom growing up. My friends and I would spend summers skating and biking around town. On hot days we’d ride a couple miles out and jump off burnout bridge into the Cannon River. There was a small ‘x’ spray painted on the railing that marked where to jump from and made it easier to avoid the rusty refrigerator and lawn chairs someone had thrown in there at some point. Randolph is really small but it provided a seemingly endless amount of places to discover. Abandoned barns, gravel pits, the school rooftop and the woods behind the football field – this was our turf! At that age we weren’t really worried about trespassing like you might be after you get a bit older.

I went to school with an interesting mix of kids that mostly came from blue-collar families and I met plenty of characters growing up there. One day for show-and-tell, someone brought in a giant mushroom he found growing on the wall in his parents’ trailer. A year later in fourth grade he showed the class how to make Jell-O shots and then offered some to my mom on his way home from school that day. It was awesome.

Around 3rd grade was when I think I recognized that what we had there was pretty special because at some point I started recording a lot of it on my family’s Hi-8 camcorder. I definitely wasn’t thinking about it this way at the time but I credit that time period with being the start of me getting into cinematography. It all came from an interest in documenting the things my friends and brothers and I were doing. I loved being able to look back at the videos we created together.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I’m a cinematographer and I work with directors to create and execute the visual style for films, music videos and commercials. This includes everything from lighting and camera movement to frame composition. On certain projects I’m looking to find beautiful and unique ways of showing something. On other projects I’m working closely with the director to create a visual language that takes into account characters and their relationships, story arcs and the environments these things unfold in. It’s my goal to create imagery that encourages people to feel something.

Prior to a shoot starting I spend many hours in pre-production. This means scouting locations, creating lighting plans, creating shot lists, doing camera and lens tests, making gear lists, assembling the G&E and camera team, lots of meetings with the director and plenty more.

On set I work closely with the director to finalize each scene’s blocking. We’ll set up our frame and go through any camera moves to make sure things are working the way we want on screen – usually before capturing any real takes. A lot of the time while blocking I’m simultaneously working with my G&E team to dial in our lighting plans. I like to enter shoot days with a detailed plan but also leave room for spontaneity because unexpected things come up all the time on set. It’s never fun having a last minute location change or unexpected pivot but I’ve also had some really great footage come out of those unplanned moments.

After a project is finished shooting the large majority of my work is finished and I often won’t have much to do with it until the edit is locked. At that point I work with the colorist to help zero in on the final color grade for the project.

It’s a hard job! You have to be extremely organized and I think I realized quickly that starting off, I had to be able to wear a lot of hats. Sometimes the projects I was on often didn’t have budgets for a lighting or camera department so if I didn’t know how to do those things in addition to cinematography then it just wouldn’t work out. This is such a labor and resource intensive art form. It’s incredibly difficult to create freely when money is always a part of the process even at a low level.

I definitely try taking my early roots in video into my cinematography today. I’m of course not the first filmmaker to be inspired by my time spent skateboarding but I stand by there being a lot of beauty in the simplicity of this kind of video capture. I like the raw nature of it and while I love creating beautiful images – the prettiest shots aren’t always what a scene needs. I try to remind myself often to keep the spirit of “grab whatever camera you have and shoot” alive.

If there’s anything I’ve learned as a cinematographer thus far it’s how to create something cohesive and of quality with little to no budget. I’m usually happy if I can make a zero dollar or low budget look like it actually had something behind it and hopefully down the road this is part of what allows me to work on bigger projects. Being a freelance cinematographer can be a rollercoaster – especially with the state of the film industry as it is currently. There have been plenty of times I’ve thought about the financial sustainability of this career path – it can be tough.

I’ll always be doing this in some capacity though. Getting to create the imagery that draws people into a story or project still gets me really excited and that’s what keeps me going. I have so much fun on set when I’m shooting and it’s amazing to be able to collaborate with so many other talented artists.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’d take them to the Huntington Library. It’s sure to charm anyone and you can spend all day there. I’ve never seen a botanical garden like it.

For food I’d bring them to something memorable like Dan Sun Sa and for drinks my go to is usually The Red Lion Tavern.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Easily my parents!

They’ve been incredibly supportive of me pursuing my passions throughout my whole life and I can’t thank them enough for it. They didn’t even try to dissuade me from going to film school! My parents had me when they were pretty young which probably meant setting aside a lot of their own individual passions and goals in order to allow my brothers and I to grow into ours so freely. I sometimes feel selfish knowing that I’m currently not ready to do what they were doing at 23.

My parents have always been creative people. My Dad loves any sort of project that involves constructing something but specifically woodworking. When I was about 9 he built a half-pipe in our yard that my friends and I skated for years. Literal blood, sweat and tears went into that thing. Just a couple winters ago we spent days building a small igloo in the back yard. It had stained glass windows made from food coloring and ice and was big enough to fit the whole family including our dogs. Those are just some highlights – he’s always been down for cool projects like that.

My Mom is a crafty woman and is pretty tuned into visual aesthetics I’d say! She has a great eye for interior design and decoration and she puts a lot of care into details which I’ve always envied. If she moved to LA she would do really well as a Set Designer or Art Director. When my brothers and I were younger she’d periodically clean out the spice drawers and let us make potions with whatever had expired. The one I concocted to make the cat fly never worked surprisingly. She also has amazing style and finds unreal – sometimes questionable – things at thrift stores with more frequency than anyone I’ve ever met.

I like to think that some of my parents’ good taste has rubbed off on me. I remember destroying a Hi8 tape once because I thought I had accidentally captured my friends and I swearing during one of our days spent building a jump-line for our bikes. I was in my room ripping out the tape by 4 foot lengths when they walked in. I hadn’t even thought of an excuse so they were understandably confused while I just sat there unable to explain the scene. We found out later that this particular tape also had my youngest brother’s first steps on it. Oh man I felt bad then. A delinquent with a secretly foul mouth and destroyer of family treasures. If they didn’t have that Hi8 camera though, who knows if I’d be in the film industry.

Website: https://www.loganregnier.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loganregnier/

Other: Here’s a link to a trailer for the most recent short film I shot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9p6r3n8Cpk