Cybel Martin Welcomed as New ASC Member
The cinematographer’s recent work can be seen in the series All Rise, Kindred, Beacon 23 and XO Kitty.
Cybel Martin, ASC was steeped in the visual arts from an early age. Her parents owned the New York ad agency JP Martin Associates, and film was frequently discussed in the house. As a communications major at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned an undergraduate degree, Martin studied film theory. During that time, her fascination with cinematography gelled in Amos Vogel’s class when Martin realized how composition, lens choice and lighting played into the overall effect of Taxi Driver, shot by Michael Chapman, ASC.
After graduating from New York University’s graduate-film program with an MFA, Martin shot her first feature, Dregs of Society, on Super 16 in 12 days, an experience she recalled as “exhilarating” when profiled by American Cinematographer to honor her selection as one of the Rising Stars of Cinematography in 2020.
Her other features include Black as Night, Queen of Glory, Orange Bow, Sangam and Title VII.
Documentary work, Martin found, offered the same kind of rush, usually with the added benefit of travel. “There’s no better way to learn about yourself than to travel,” she said. She recalled that when she took her first trip to Africa, to shoot the documentary Dressed Like Kings for NYU classmate Stacey Holman, “I thought I was going to hear South African music everywhere, but when [Holman] and I asked our sound mixer to put on some music he liked, he played a Beyoncé song! It’s fascinating to come face to face with your assumptions.”
Alan Caso, ASC was particularly encouraging to Martin when he brought her onto the ABC series The Rookie to shoot second unit and work on double-up days. Martin, who is equally inspired by Michael Mann’s Heat, Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool and Agnès Varda’s La Pointe Courte, had a ball on the show. “I’d come in never sure what I would shoot that day,” she said. “Sometimes the whole day was gun battles, which was very exciting. I shot one of those at night. We closed down several blocks of downtown L.A. and had multiple condors, three cameras and crane shots. It was the most massive thing I’d done!”
On the courtroom series All Rise, Martin was pleased to get some of her artistic sensibilities into the work. One episode, she explained, “has a flashback scene that shows a bit of my character.” Judge Lola Carmichael (Simone Missick) “is usually seen in her courtroom, generally with bright L.A. light coming in. For the flashback, we created a different look, rainy and overcast — June gloom. We used Lee Silver gels on the windows to help create that look.”
The cinematographer’s other credits include the period drama series A League of their Own, based in the 1992 film of the same name. Martin alternated episodes with cinematographer Dagmar Weaver-Madsen. In an AC production story about the Amazon Prime series, Martin emphasized their close collaboration, explaining, “On any show, you're constantly learning how best to shoot your locations. Same thing with your talent — how best to light them, how to approach them, what works well. But we just happened to be in dialogue constantly, and that was really fun because I like her as a person and respect her. So it was easy.”
Martin has since shot episodes of the series American Horror Stories, Kindred, Beacon 23
and XO Kitty.
She has also shot commercials for clients including Timberland Apparel, Reebok, Sony and L’Oreal.
Being a cinematographer, Martin said, “has never felt like work. I love the collaboration, the creative process and the constant problem-solving. It’s the best job on the planet!”
Her home page can be found here and Instagram here. An avid painter, her artwork can be seen here.
