You really have to be dedicated to fly over 8,000 miles to further your career. Leaving home and your friends behind in one country to be a stranger in a strange land and entering one of the most competitive industries in the world is real dedication. That’s exactly what Gurdeep Singh did a few years ago when he decided to come to the U.S. to work in the movie business. Since landing in Los Angeles, it didn’t take long for Gurdeep to meet new friends and to establish himself as a person who was quite capable, responsible and one who, basically knows what to do and gets things done on schedule and within budget.
Gurdeep has built quite a reputation for himself as an expert cinematographer of features, short films, commercials, documentaries, music videos and TV series. He is also an award-winning cinematographer. Gurdeep was the Director of Photography (another name for cinematographer) on the highly praised and critically successful short film, Fenced. The film won Best Picture and Gurdeep won for Best Cinematography at the 7th Mumbai shorts international film festival. At the Beyond the Curve International Film Festival – 2021 he won Best Cinematography, and the Triloka International Film Festival awarded Gurdeep the trophy for Best Cinematography for the film From A Barren State. Some of the other films Gurdeep was cinematographer on are: The Soul, Dac, Hope, Turning Table, Silent Noise, 27 Club, A Family Barbecue and Paranormal Monster’s Society, among others. Gurdeep has also worked as Executive Producer on over fifty music videos which have garnered over 50 million views.
Besides his vast working knowledge of filmmaking, specializing in cinematography and producer skills, Gurdeep also immersed himself in those filmmaking elements and more, at the New York Film Academy, Los Angeles, and he earned a Bachelor of Technology degree in TV, Film, and Media production, from Punjabi University, Patiala. He is well qualified from his years of hands on experience as well as intimate knowledge of the state of the art technical aspects of film and digital shooting and processing.
When Gurdeep was growing up in India, filmmaking never crossed his mind as a possible career. He says that all he wanted to do in life was to become a sportsman, more specifically he wanted to be a Cricketer (one who plays cricket). He dreamed of representing India on the cricket field. After playing a while, he ultimately realized that he wasn’t a natural athlete and that he had to choose a more practical career. Engineering seemed like a fine choice, even though it was a rather dry somewhat colorless field. After some emotional disappointments Gurdeep began to write and that made him felt lighter somehow. It was then that he knew that storytelling through film and video was what he wanted to do and what he needed to do.
As he wrote more and more, he saw his life from a whole new perspective. During that time he was studying engineering because the world (as he was told) would always need engineers and it would be a steady job and a steady income. Making a career in filmmaking was something that never stood out as a practical employment choice, but the more he wrote, the more he could see clearly that he should be communicating with the world through the medium of films. So, he quit the engineering courses and learned everything there is to know about filmmaking and came to L.A. to learn more and to actually work at it. And that is what Gurdeep is dedicated to doing.
