Commercial Spotlight: Cinematographer Bron Moyi

From a young age, Bron Moyi knew he wanted to tell stories with images. As a teenager, he would shoot skits and short movies with his family's Handycam, and still photos with his grandfather's vintage film camera. Fast forward to present day, and Moyi is now an established photographer and cinematographer with a body of work that includes music videos, commercials, narrative features and documentary shorts. In 2018, his talent was recognized with the Best Cinematography Award at the 29th Annual New Orleans Film Festival.

Moyi recently had the opportunity to work on the three-part series The Trees Remember for REI Co-op Studios. Directed by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Angela Tucker and developed by her TuckerGurl production company, the series of fiction shorts feature Black women of different ages growing and thriving in the outdoors. The series aims to help expand the historically narrow definition of the outdoors and address barriers to collective healing outside. The three stories span 60 years, with Movement set in 1960 during the civil rights movement, Maintenance set in 1990 in a woodsy Philadelphia park, and Migration set in 2020 in New Orleans.

Panavision recently spoke with Moyi to discuss his work on The Trees Remember, which he captured in three formats Super 35, anamorphic, and large format with three distinct lens series, all with Panavision's Millennium DXL2 camera system.

Panavision: You wanted to work in the film industry at a young age. When did you get your start?

Bron Moyi: My grandfather is really supportive and gifted me my first digital camera, which I thought was incredible. It was around that time when I started doing photos and videos around town. I had my first client at 17 a friend of mine in high school who wanted a baseball promo that he could send off to colleges to get a scholarship. It turned out well, and he actually did play in Miami semi-professionally, which is cool.

His uncle is a production designer, so that project led to my first real job in the film industry, which was working as an art department PA on a movie that the creators of The Blair Witch Project did. I think I was 19 when I first got on set, and I was like, This is exactly what I want to do with my life.'

I spent a number of years working in the art department, and I always found myself trying to bump shoulders with the people in the camera department and asking them a lot of questions about the gear. I would also do independent projects as a DP for music videos and short films, and eventually I made the switch over to camera as an AC. Just within the last three years I made the jump to working as a DP full time.

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