Editor's pick

Behind The Scenes, With One Of the best Cinematographer -Hao Yu

When you look at photographs of “behind the scenes” of movie making from the 1930s up to the 70s, which we are sure that Hao Yu, the excellent cinematographer has done, you get the impression that the huge cameras themselves weighed hundreds of pounds and took geniuses and really ultra-macho men to manhandle them each day of shooting. In reality, however, they weren’t that big and not necessarily overly heavy. The thing that made them look so large and bulky and awkward was the blimping. That was the housing built around the camera that kept its own sound from being recorded during the motion picture filming process. After 1972, Arriflex and Panavision came out with smaller, self-blimping cameras that changed everything.


Hao Yu, the very talented and highly experienced cinematographer, is one of the fortunate filmmakers who doesn’t have to deal with any bulky cameras. The film cameras today usually weigh between 7 and 20 pounds, which make it much easier to be a mobile movie maker than it was sixty years ago. Hao Yu has been the cinematographer on countless projects, including, shooting films to promote national and international companies like, Honey, by PayPal, JED, The JED Foundation, College Humor, OnDemand Korea, Adobe Frame.io, About Face and Roku, among others. He is also the cinematographer for the Apple Music Zane Lowe interview series and for the Emmy nominated show Robot Chicken S11. Hao Yu also shot the highly successful music video “Geek” by the band KQ Fellaz 2 MV.


He has been the cinematographer on countless short films and several of them are award winners. LA FADEAWAY, which Hao beautifully shot and lit, was an Official Selection at the Live Action Shorts Film Festival. It was also honored to be selected at the Independent Film Festival Boston, as well as the Zsigmond Vilmos Film Fesztival in Hungary. The 18th Annual Ojai Film Festival made LA FADEAWAY an official festival selection also.


Hao Yu’s work is quite artistic in how he moves the camera and how he seems to always place it in the perfect spot to capture the perfect image. He was Director of Photography (same as being the Cinematographer) on the beautifully filmed documentary Asian Inspirations, for ONDemand Korea. The short film Fair Games was shot by Hao Yu and it was a multi-award winner: GOLD REMI Award at the Worldfest Houston International Film Festival; BEST SHORT and AUDIENCE FAVORITE at the Nacogdoches Film Festival. Besides being considered for awards for his own cinematography and the films he has worked on, Hao Yu is also a respected judge of other films. He was a final judge this year for the HPA Awards (Hollywood Professional Association), for Color Grading of theatrical feature films which included Top Gun, No Time to Die and others. Hao Yu’s cinematography expertise and his well-trained eye enables him to see beauty as well as excellence in everything he does.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.