Carissa Henderson: Cinematography from Journalism to Independent Movies
A traveller, explorer, lover of nature and curious minded cinematographer, Carissa Henderson graduated in Film and TV Production from NYU’s Tisch School, with a focus on documentary. Throughout her career, she worked on really awesome and prodigious projects, focusing on very different themes, which she always investigated with care and purpose. Among others, she shot hundreds of documentary short films around the world for Vice on HBO’s nightly news, an Emmy award-winning show, the New York Times ‘Who Gets to Be an Influencer?’, exposing the racism that hides within the social media/influencers culture and the Emmy nominated Netflix original series Connected, where Latif Nasser, a science journalist, investigates the ways in which we are connected between ourselves and the universe we live in. Carissa’s work will never stop to surprise you.
Read on to dig deep into her story and learn how she found her own dance in filmmaking.
You have been a creative soul since a very young age, shaping your passions and skills by doing. Tell us more about your story, first approach to visual media, and the academic path that brought you to where you are today.
Growing up as an only child, my parents used to distract me with various art tools to keep me from bothering them every time I got bored... so I was always painting, drawing, writing, taking photos on little Kodak disposable cameras. I loved reading, and from a young age I always wanted to write. In middle school, I took an elective class about writing and communications, sort of like a journalism starter program. I learned to shoot on VHS and edit the footage, and began writing articles for the middle school news. In the eighth grade, I applied to a mass communications specialty school that if accepted, I would attend for four years in addition to basic high school. I was accepted to the program, where I took classes on advanced writing and video journalism, graphic design and photography. I learned to shoot with mini-DV cameras (the Canon GL2 was my first “real” video camera), and began transcoding and editing in Final Cut Pro 7.
For my college years, I wanted to pursue something that felt expansive and not reductive. When you’re young, you are often expected to choose what your major (and consequently, life path) is going to be, and you can get a bit cemented into some world you know little about... so I wanted that world to be one that could open me up to other worlds. I applied to NYU’s film program, despite having never been to New York City in my life, and to my shock I was accepted. I clicked with the city’s energy from the moment I moved, and probably learned just as much from clawing out a living in NYC as I did from attending classes at NYU. As our curriculum became more specified toward career orientations, I focused on documentary production. Documentary is the most innate method for the way I personally relate to any given environment, using a camera as a tool to heighten my own awareness (both physically and figuratively) and explore the world through that medium.
You had such an interesting career from your teenage years until today… you really tried them all, traveling the world, being in contact with different characters and situations. What are your favorite stories to tell?
This is hard to know, as I feel that I am still living these stories. When I was first starting to work professionally, I was keenly aware of how young I was, and how little I knew. I did not want to solidify myself just yet through any particular perspectives or stories I might have been seeking out, but rather I wanted to position myself to be open, absorbent and capable of witnessing a world beyond what I could imagine or project myself. Observational documentary and video journalism felt like the right approach to that, and VICE became the perfect place to plunge into it.
I started working at VICE while I was in college and it was incredibly hard work, balancing 18 credits, a work-study part-time editing job on campus, various craigslist gigs to save extra cash, and nearly full time work assisting with the launch of the VICELAND channel. But there was this excitement, this strong energy of young people getting together and making something new. Questioning old platforms and mediums, trying to reinvent television. No rules, for better or for worse. There was a lot of freedom and room to grow. As a 19-20 year old it was the best place to be – I could pitch an idea, pick up a camera and shoot it, and maybe it would end up on TV... but if not, it was still a valuable learning experience.
After a little over a year at VICELAND, I became one of five staff cinematographers for Vice News Tonight on HBO. Again it was the launch of something new, and there were a lot of wildly talented and driven people coming together to try and reinvent the news - the goal was to make short films about and within the news. Chasing politics and weather, but doing so with more attention to character and place.
The news cycle is such a deafening grind, both to participate in capturing and to receive as an audience. It's the source of so much anxiety and depression for all who bear witness, so to have the chance to try something different - like filming a breaking news piece entirely on prime cinema lenses, no zooms allowed, or filming a feature story without a correspondent or voiceover - was enticing and inspiring. That said, while my camera colleagues and I had opportunities to get inventive and intentional with visuals, ultimately the stories we were telling were hooked into the hyperloop of immediate and constant news. We were on the front line of anything that was happening, from hurricanes and fires to abuse in detention centers to some flashy new weed factory, you couldn’t predict it. I would get texts from my coordinator like “can you get ready to go to Africa tomorrow or North Korea for a month or Oklahoma tonight?”, and off we went.
As challenging as this work was, both physically and psychologically, the effort of working alongside such thoughtful filmmakers and journalists trying to make more meaningful work within the news cycle was its own reward. I was stronger and more confident as a filmmaker and a human being when I left.
Over time I’ve learned that my connection to the camera is strongest when it feels like an extension to my physical body, and I can move with it really intuitively… it becomes a dance that requires a bit of emotional sensitivity and spatial awareness, creating a unique hybrid of choreography between mind and body. Few people outside of this industry are accustomed to having a big camera pointed at them, but learning to do that well, with compassion, and navigating spaces with sensitivity, became such an important part of the job.
A couple years ago I had the joy of shooting a few dance films for a close friend who is both a dancer and a filmmaker. We rented a space in Brooklyn near the sea, this sprawling historic house with great natural light, and made a passion project for a poetry foundation that combines poetry with dance and film. That was an incredible experience because I was able to literally dance with the dancers… I had to physically be so present in that space.
Reflecting about the course of my growth thus far through news and documentary, this idea of the dance between camera and character brings me to an independent project I took on in the summer of 2020. The pandemic was very much still at large, but large-scale productions were edging back into the game, and I had just received an offer to DP a doc series for a prominent network - a role that could garner a lot of industry attention and creative power. At the same time, I was approached by filmmaker Nesa Azimi, and we got to talking about this film she has been developing for years about women truck drivers in the US. At first we discussed story mechanics and shoot logistics, but quickly scaled into philosophical musings about art and filmmaking, living and observing and growing with quiet compassion and curiosity in a world that is swiftly becoming so sensationalized and loud. I was (and am) concerned with the motives behind why we make anything, especially in such a sensory and influential medium of film, be it news or TV or documentary; there seems to be a constant scramble to produce, without full regard to why or the impact this all has on society - the frenzy of creation feels detrimental on some level.
So this really felt like an important moment, early in my career, where by recognizing these two paths, I had a choice about what kind of filmmaker and person I could choose to grow toward becoming. I considered the two possibilities: working on a fully crewed set (in a region with high community spread of COVID-19), heading a camera department, negotiating creative decisions with multiple tiers of “creatives”, earning a reliable and satisfying income at time when everything else felt unstable, being comfortably removed from the “subjects” by the inherent boundaries of a larger production, and filling a prestigious role where I could prove a version of myself to be capable of such responsibility, while inevitably making significant compromises to my own creative interests and lifestyle (because when I take on a project, I recognize that the flow of this project will determine the flow of my personal life - there are few boundaries between the two while immersed in production, you live your work).
On the other hand, I could take the leap into the mildly terrifying independent filmmaking realm, where budgets are scant and boundaries barely exist if at all; you’re truly on your own in the field and nothing is guaranteed. But talking with Nesa and realizing how she is grounded by this deeply authentic and sincere care for the people whose stories she is telling, was affirming on a heart level. Learning that her motivations for making this film were rooted in curiosity and love, as cheesy as it may sound, was all I needed to know. A month of phone calls and prep later, we were driving cross country together with my camera and her sound mixer, backpacks full of PPE and snacks, and a vague sense of reckless abandon.
It was just the two of us for weeks on end, navigating tiny truck cabs with women who had specifically chosen a career that guaranteed solitude, but now here we are beside them, filming them, following them constantly. It was the ultimate test of this emotional and physical dance of filmmaking, with baseline respect for the women on the other side of the lens. These were some of the most mentally and physically challenging shoot days I’ve experienced, with no shortage of growing pains and learning to adapt, but the work that is coming out of it is possibly my proudest. There’s a rawness, an honesty that you can only achieve at that level of proximity, and you can only reach that proximity with genuine intimacy and trust. I was constantly amazed by Nesa’s humility and empathy even in some of the darkest and most painful moments on the road, when we were overcome with pandemic anxiety or blinding fatigue or good old fashioned production burnout. It’s a standard of grace and resilience that I really admire, and have since worked to uphold in any shoot I am a part of.
Thank you for describing such different and key projects in your career. I really appreciate your constant desire to be mindful of people’s spaces, stories and voices, no matter what story you are telling.
Thank you for making the space to have this conversation!
I do think that creating a place where people can experience beauty is a responsibility for filmmakers today.
Even in the portrayal of violence and the most inhumane horrific experiences, the aim is to give those people some humanity and recognition beyond just pointing a camera at their face. This work doesn't have to be traditionally beautiful to still be poetic and reach people. That's the work I am forever trying to do better - being mindful of how I move through the world with my camera and how that translates to the screen and people’s lived and watched experiences, just trying to avoid adding to chaos and suffering.
Enough reading now… head over to Carissa’s website to watch some of the projects she curated, you will be blown away by her work: https://www.carissahenderson.com/
All photography courtesy of Carissa Henderson.
