‘I saw “Cool Hand Luke” and decided that I wanted to shoot movies.’

Today his studio is designed to look like an emergency operating room of a hospital. Tomorrow it could resemble the corporate offices of a lumber company. Flexibility and ingenuity are key words to John Mincey, 45, a cinematographer and film director who has been making commercials and feature films for 25 years. Recognizing San Diego’s potential as a serious contender in the Southern California film market, Mincey sold his production company in Portland, Ore., and moved here last year. He bought a local production company that had gone bankrupt, and, after adding new management and new walls, says his Mincey Productions is on solid ground. He has returned to his haven behind the camera. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed him and Don Bartletti photographed him.

To do a car commercial or to do a corporate film, you’ve got to learn a little bit about, and sometimes a lot about, what you’re talking about. And, when you do that, you broaden your mind and you can talk about anything. I can talk to you about just about anything here. I can tell you how this table is made. I can tell you how that’s put together.

Like this hospital thing in the studio. We didn’t put that hospital together from out of our brains. We actually went to the hospital, had the designer go shoot a hospital hallway, a hospital room, so we know how to put that set together. And when we come back and do those things, at least it has some authority. We can’t go in a hospital and shoot this right now because it would interrupt what’s going on in that hospital . . . you don’t want to have a bunch of cameras and lights in there. So, to duplicate that, we have to bring in builders and designers and people who are just artists, lots of different kinds of artists. And that’s fun.

I was kicking around Florida looking for a job and one night I stopped off at a couple studios in Orlando and I went to a movie called “Cool Hand Luke.” I walked out of that moving theater saying, “That’s what I want to do. I want to shoot movies.” That movie is what made me really lock into that. Conrad Hall shot it, and you could feel the heat, you could feel the misery, you could feel the excitement. That movie really had a lot of feeling to it, and it came across. And I said that’s what I want to do, is make movies you can actually feel. I went back to Jacksonville, Fla., where there was a company that had offered me a job as a cinematographer for $600 a month, and I took it.

Sometimes people go out and be directors right off the bat, and they make their mistakes and all. To me it was a natural marriage in the fact I worked with directors and watched them, and they would have problems getting across a point, or they would have problems with composition or trying to get somebody to do something. So, pretty soon I was helping them in getting that taken care of, and, before you know it, I was winding up directing the stupid things. I thought, “Well, why should I let that guy have all the credit?” That’s basically what happened.

The thing that’s neat about me, I have the understanding and desire to be a director, but I also have the knowledge of a cinematographer, and, with those two combinations, you have an advantage over some people only because you know composition, you pretty much know exactly what you want.

I direct a lot of times from behind the camera, not out to the side, because I like to see what’s going down on film. That’s total control. That way I know when I walk away, that it’s there. It’s in the camera, and I don’t have to worry about, “Did he make the right move?” or “Did he pan at the right time?” “Was that a good zoom?” or “Is the composition the way it should be?”

I’m my own worst critic. Most of us are. If I ever did something I liked, that I couldn’t improve upon, then I’m going to quit. You keep striving for the ultimate and you’ll never get the ultimate, there’s no such thing. It’s just a goal we shoot for. That’s why we keep moving on.