Jiménez recently received a Student Heritage Award from the American Society of Cinematographers and saw his work screened at Sundance
When a young Oscar Jiménez looked ahead to potential education and career paths, none of them placed him behind a camera. He certainly didn’t envision his college years taking him to the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, nor in his wildest dreams did he imagine himself accepting an award from the American Society of Cinematographers — he didn’t even initially see himself at BYU.
“In high school, I was convinced I was going to go to culinary school,” said Jiménez. “After I was baptized, my bishop told me about BYU — I didn’t know anything about BYU or Utah — and I decided to come to school here for marketing. I hadn’t even considered the arts, but after my mission I took a film class as an elective. I thought it would be easy, but instead it was heavy on theory and analysis. It was cool to see that there was a class dedicated to thinking critically about media.” Though drawn to film — and specifically camerawork — Jiménez didn’t feel that he was ready to jump into the media arts major. He took a year off from school to learn basic technical skills by working on local sets and watching tutorials on YouTube. “I took a lot of really lousy pictures, but eventually I started figuring out how to make the camera work for me rather than the opposite,” said Jiménez. “I was just absorbing information like a sponge. By the time I applied and heard back from the media arts program, I had made up my mind that I wanted to be a cinematographer.” Despite his emphasis on the technical side of filmmaking, Jiménez continued to resonate with the thoughtful and contextual approach to film that he found in the Department of Theatre and Media Arts. “In retrospect, the more theoretical stuff was huge for me in becoming a better storyteller,” he said. “Cinematography isn’t just about pretty pictures; it’s about telling a cohesive story through images. Now I’m putting more thought into everything I do — I can tell you why I chose a wide angle or why this lens or that lighting.” Read the full story at the Department of Theatre and Media Arts website.