Dick Fisher

Dick Fisher began his professional career in 1978 as a cameraman shooting 16mm newsreels and commercials for a tiny television station (WUTR) in Utica, New York. Returning home to New York City in 1980, he pioneered the video news magazine format as the first videographer for PM Magazine. Applying film style lighting and production values to the fledgling location video field, he launched his own company, Videography Productions, Inc. His photographic talents were then applied to many reality based broadcast television programs such as Entertainment Tonight, Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous, Inside Edition, A Current Affair, Hard Copy, Extra, Metromedia and Fox News. In 1994, working on weekends and in his spare time, he created a breakthrough film that proved to be a watershed for independent film. The highly acclaimed, The Brothers McMullen. The first release of Fox Searchlight Pictures, its phenomenal commercial success demonstrated the mass-market viability of micro budget independent films. Working with his production assistant, the talented writer/director/actor Eddie Burns, and a crew of enthusiastic volunteers, Fisher realized his conviction that, "the best production value is a story well told." In addition to winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival (1995) the film also received an Independent Spirit Award, a Special Jury Prize at the Deauville Festival of American Film, and the Producer's Guild of America's Golden Laurel NOVA Award for outstanding achievement by an emerging producer. Variety Magazine reported the film as the 2nd highest grossing independent release of 1995, and the most profitable film of the year ($13.4 million domestic gross against a final production cost of $275,000). Fisher studied communications and film making at Fordham University (BA, 1970) and Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communication (MA, 1978). Practical feature film experience came on the sets of Quiz Show, The Paper, Age Of Innocence, Carlito's Way, The Scout, It Could Happen To You, and other feature films on which he served as a video camera operator.