Lawrence Sher, ASC

 Lawrence Sher is an award winning cinematographer/director and the founder of the popular filmmaking tool ShotDeck. As a cinematographer, Mr. Sher has shot over 35 feature films, numerous pilots and 100’s of commercials and music videos in his 30 years in the entertainment industry. Known for such films as The Hangover trilogy, Garden State, Due Date, and most recently the Joker films, his films have grossed over 4 billion dollars in Worldwide Box Office. For Joker, his cinematography was nominated for an Oscar, BAFTA and won the Golden Frog at the Camerimage Film Festival in Poland. As a director he recently helped kickstart the Peacock original series Rutherford Falls directing multiple episodes including the pilot as well as the 2017 feature Father Figures which starred Owen Wilson, Ed Helms, Glenn Close and JK Simmons. Recently as cinematographer, he completed the Joker followup film Joker Folie au Deux which arrives in theaters October 4th and The Bride from Maggie Gyllenhaal which stars Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley which comes out in fall 2025.

Growing up in Teaneck, New Jersey, filmmaking wasn’t part of Larry’s plan growing up. But after his doctor father lent his 1967 Nikon F still camera for a school trip, a creative spark was ignited in me and his passion for photography began. But even still when he went to Wesleyan University for college, his goal was to play baseball and become a doctor or lawyer or something normal. Failing chemistry early, and shifted gears Lawrence majored in economics. But late in his studies, a film survey course lit that creative fuse again. Spending the rest of his college years barely studying economics and passionately learning filmmaking while helping his film major friends shoot their thesis films, he knew trying to become a cinematographer was what he wanted to do. Upon barely graduating, he packed up his car and drove to Hollywood and started to find work as an assistant and shooting on weekends. Using all the waking hours, taking still photos to learn the craft of cinematography and cutting teeth on C movies and cheap music videos he got some gracious opportunities lucky breaks and to help pave a path towards a future in the industry.

In addition to his work as a filmmaker, Mr. Sher built the website service Shotdeck.com. After years of prepping for films and needing reference material for research and inspiration in all phases of the production process, he wanted a site that would be an image database of millions of infinitely searchable shots each keyworded in dozens of categories that would become the definitive visual library of the moving image. A site for people across all creative industries and universities to inspire, educate and help make the prep process more efficient and successful. So in 2015 he started building it and in 2021 launched it as Shotdeck.com. Personally, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife Hema and 3 kids Max (18), Matilda (7) and August (5).