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John Guleserian
John Guleserian
Born	April 7, 1976 (age 48); Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Cinematographer
Spouse	Theresa Avram Guleserian (m. 2010)
Children	1

John Guleserian (/ˌɡʊləˈsɛriən/;^[1] born April 7, 1976) is an American cinematographer. He is best known for his collaboration with Drake Doremus on Like Crazy and Breathe In, and for the 2013 film About Time.

Early life

Guleserian aspired to be a filmmaker from a young age.^[2] He worked as an ice cream truck driver before studying cinematography at college, first as an undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago and then graduate school at the AFI Conservatory.^[3] While studying, he spent his spare time "shooting short films for any director that would let me" to gain experience.^[2]

Career

Guleserian began a longstanding collaboration with writer–director Drake Doremus at AFI, which both men attended at the same time. In 2006, Guleserian photographed Doremus's thesis project, and they paired up again to shoot numerous commercials and music videos in addition to the 2009 feature film Spooner.^[4] They later collaborated on Like Crazy, a romantic drama film that premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and won the festival's Grand Jury Prize, an achievement that Guleserian later said "opened up a lot of opportunities" for him.^[5] One such opportunity was the 2013 romantic comedy About Time, which was the first big-budget studio film Guleserian worked on; previously, he had only shot independent films with smaller budgets.^[5] The same year, he returned to work with Doremus as cinematographer on Breathe In, starring Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce.^[4] Since Doremus's films are largely improvised, Guleserian filmed these projects unconventionally, with mostly handheld camerawork in takes that usually last over ten minutes.^[2]

Guleserian's television credits include I Heart Vampires and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!,^[3] and he was the director of photography on the 2014 films Parts per Billion, Song One and Before We Go.^[2]^[6] He shot the 2015 film Equals, a science fiction romance directed by Doremus and starring Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult.^[7] He also filmed the 2015 sex comedy The Overnight, a project he became involved in because of his wife, a production designer hired to work on the film, who introduced Guleserian to the director, Patrick Brice.^[3]

In December 2014 he was named one of Complex magazine's "Underrated Cinematographers Poised to Make It Big in 2015".^[7] He has expressed an interest in working as a visual consultant on animated films.^[2]

Filmography

Short film

Year	Title	Director	Notes
2003	The King, the Lawyers, and the Cheese	Brigid Maher	Documentary short
2006	Name of the Game	Danny Buday
2006	The Shirt	Drake Doremus
2008	Whirlybird	Danielle Corches
	Plain and Simple	Merrin Marra
	Buddy 'n' Andy	Shaun Peterson
2012	Here	Luca Guadagnino
2012	I Have No Hold on You	Tim Thaddeus Cahill
2017	Come Swim	Kristen Stewart

Film

Year	Title	Director	Notes
2009	Spooner	Drake Doremus
2009	ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction	Kevin Hamedani
2011	Like Crazy	Drake Doremus
2013	Breathe In	Drake Doremus
2013	About Time	Richard Curtis
2014	Song One	Kate Barker-Froyland
	Kiss Me	Jeff Probst
	Parts per Billion	Brian Horiuchi
	Before We Go	Chris Evans
2015	The Overnight	Patrick Brice
2015	Equals	Drake Doremus
2018	Love, Simon	Greg Berlanti
	Zoe	Drake Doremus
	Trial by Fire	Edward Zwick
2020	An American Pickle	Brandon Trost
2020	Happiest Season	Clea DuVall
2021	He's All That	Mark Waters
2021	Candyman	Nia DaCosta
2023	Cocaine Bear	Elizabeth Banks
2023	Genie	Sam Boyd
2025	You're Cordially Invited †	Nicholas Stoller	Post-production

Television

Year	Title	Director	Notes
2006	Orastories	Annie Mebane Lindsay Stidham	TV short
2007-2009	Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!	Tim Heidecker Eric Wareheim Jonathan Krisel	29 episodes
2008	My Alibi	Oren Kaplan
2008	The Juice Box	Shaun Peterson Oren Kaplan
2009	Electric Spoofaloo	Shaun Peterson Oren Kaplan Tim Thaddeus Cahill
2009	I Heart Vampires	Shaun Peterson Oren Kaplan	6 episodes
2015	Transparent	Silas Howard Jim Frohna	Episodes "Bulnerable" and "The Book of Life"
2015-2016	Casual	Jason Reitman Max Winkler Michael Weaver Tricia Brock Fred Savage Karyn Kusama Iain B. MacDonald Lynn Shelton	23 episodes
2017	Friends from College	Nicholas Stoller Andrew Gurland Francesca Delbanco	All 16 episodes
2020	Homemade	Kristen Stewart	Episode "Crickets"
2023	Platonic	Nicholas Stoller Francesca Delbanco	10 episodes