John DeFazio is a Los Angeles based cinematographer, film-maker, and mixed-media artist. John holds two degrees from Carnegie Mellon University's Design and Art programs and a Masters from USC's Film Production Program. He is an active member of Film Independent, the Music Video Production Association, the International Cinematographer's Guild Local 600, and also Local 80. DeFazio has shot for legendary Hollywood directors and producers such as Joe Dante ("Gremlins"), Paul Schrader ("American Gigolo" and screenwriter of "Taxi Driver" & "Raging Bull"), and Roger Corman ("Death Race", "Little Shop of Horrors").
Versed in a multitude of formats and visual languages, John has shot over 45 award-winning and internationally recognized short films, some of which have hit Sundance ("Crossing", "Roam") and the Cannes International Film Festival ("9:30"). DeFazio has served as the cinematographer on "The Canyons" starring Lindsay Lohan and written by Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Less Than Zero). He has also shot Joe Dante's "Splatter" horror series starring Corey Feldman and Tony Todd. One of DeFazio's first features, "Undoing", Starring Sung Kang (Fast & Furious) and Kelly Hu (Scorpion King), was singled out by the Los Angeles Film Festival for its "striking imagery."
John's directorial work, Stream (2007), Arc to Vega (2008) and Samsara (2010), are personal narratives all exploring consistent threads: (1) the decay and rebirth of the human consciousness (2) the fragility of the human condition in relation to the limits of world energy and being, in particular-the fluid boundaries of love, loss, and rage and (3) the contextualization of an otherwise inconsequential existence of one's life (and non-life) in all worlds (both macro and micro). DeFazio has described his work as a mechanism for interfacing with the instinctive fear and love of the meta-consciousness, and to the relentless pursuit to cope with the overwhelming distances in feeling and pain within the vacuum of humanism.
Off the movie set DeFazio is an avid mixed-media and glitch artist, exploiting the aesthetics and procedure of art-making through data-moshing, compression artifacts, intra-frame video break-up, and physical degeneration. His work tends to utilize non-traditional materials such as organically grown rust, grease, resin, and grunge remnants mixed with more traditional materials such as photographs, glass, steel, plaster, and found metal objects. DeFazio is a firm believer in the "process" of art as the ultimate message and does not display his work publicly. He often destroys his works upon completion, only retaining documentation of their completed forms.
In his spare time, John is an avid weight-lifter and spaghetti sauce specialist-his most notable being a Bolognese ragu slightly modified from his Great Aunt Lilliana's secret recipie. In the much distant future, John plans to retire in paradise, most likely in Thailand, where the lighting is always perfect, the colors saturated, and the beers cold.
