Biography

Dan has been fascinated by photography his whole life. The power of the visual image as it magically appears in the developing tray or leaps onto the screen in a darkened movie theater always gets him. When he was a kid in New Jersey he and his dad built a darkroom in the basement. Dan spent countless hours shooting photos and enlarging images. He and his twin brother Michael made 8mm movies and charged the neighborhood kids to watch them. Their most successful production, a science fiction thriller entitled "The Atomic Burp", grossed over $15 the first week in their basement. When his folks to him to see 2001 A Space Odyssey at Radio City in New York, he was hooked on movies.

At Wesleyan University Dan majored in Biology and in Film Production. After teaching junior high school science for a few of years he left the east coast for Graduate School at USC in the film department. After USC he was accepted to the Assistant Cameraman Training Program. Dan moved from one studio camera department to the next learning to load film magazines, keep darkroom paperwork, and becoming familiar with the cameras and equipment that passed through the loading rooms at Warner Brothers, Universal, CBS Radford, and Paramount Studios. As a trainee he was then assigned to various production crews and began to get experience on the set of a different TV show, feature film or commercial every 3 or 4 weeks. When he found myself as the trainee on the set of Pennies From Heaven he couldn't believe he was working with the likes of first assistant Alan Disler, camera operator Craig Denault and director of photography Gordon Willis. After a year Dan joined the union, Local 659 of the IATSE as a second assistant cameraman.

Dan spent 3 years as a second during which time he was lucky enough to work with some of the best people in Hollywood including Laszlo Kovacs, Sven Nykvist, Tag Fujimoto, Owen Roizman and their crews. Moving up to become a first assistant his good fortune continued as he had the pleasure of pulling focus for Caleb Deschanel, Robbie Greenberg and Don Thorin, Sr., among others. After 10 years as a first assistant cameraman, Don Thorin, Sr. moved him up to camera operator. Now he's got the best job on the set. He gets to see the movie before anyone else, right through the viewfinder on the camera.

As a camera operator Dan has been fortunate enough to be able to operate the "A" camera for Directors of Photography Michael Ballhaus, John Seale, Fred Elmes, Michael Chapman, Jeffrey Kimball, Larry Sher and Barry Peterson.

For more than 20 years he has been able to contribute his talents as camera operator to some terrific projects. Spider-man, Air Force One, Primary Colors, The Perfect Storm, The Hangover, and 21 Jump Street were all amazing experiences. Dan has gotten to work with interesting and creative directors, actors, and cinematographers. People like Mike Nichols, Harrison Ford, Wolfgang Peterson, Barry Sonnenfeld, Ang Lee and Gordon Willis are his heroes.

And somehow while all this was going on Dan managed to stay happily married to his amazing wife Nancy while they raised three wonderful girls, Allie, Rickie and Jessie.
- IMDb mini biography by: Daniel Gold