For her entire career in the camera business, Zoe Borys of Cineverse (formerly Fletcher Camera) has been servicing and supporting the camera equipment needs of an ever-widening world of high-level cinematographers, with the highest professional standards.
Her contributions were recently rewarded by the Board of Governors of the American Society of Cinematographers, which welcomed her into their elite ranks as an ASC Associate Member.
This honor is even more noteworthy given the fact that Borys is one of only 15 female ASC Associate Member out of 186. This number is slightly higher than the 12 women who belong to the select 372 member ASC.
Only three other Chicagoans are ASC Associate Members. Tom Fletcher was the first local vendor so honored in 2009 and Zacuto owners Steve Weiss and Jens Bogehegn received their framed certificates last year.
“I am humbled to be recognized by my cinematographer colleagues, who I work very hard to serve,” says Borys, a 22-year veteran of camera rental services in the US and Canada.
Borys had been Fletcher Camera & Lenses’ general manager from 2007, until Last November when LA-based VER (Video Equipment Rentals) and changed the name to Cineverse.
Borys’ Cineverse title is national client service liaison, meaning she travels to key film markets throughout the world easily 50% of the time.
Her mission is to introduce Cineverse and assure her cinematography colleagues, and the many European directors being hired for Hollywood movies, that they can rely on Cineverse engineers in many cities to accommodate their every need, day and night.
Lifelong career in cinematographer support
Borys, who has been in the big-name camera rental business for 22 years, feels her biggest professional accomplishment was helping family-owned Fletcher Camera expand from servicing local films to major Hollywood entertainment projects, accounting for 70% of its business.
She was ideally suited for this challenge when she returned to Chicago for the second time to work for Fletcher Camera.
Borys’ first tour of duty here was in 1998. Panavision brought her up from Orlando to help with transition of its purchase of Victor Duncan, the largest independent camera rental house in the country at the time. Their Chicago office closed two years later when the 2000 SAG strike paralyzed local production and Borys moved to Panavision’s Toronto branch.
Seven years later at Fletcher, she brought her cinematographer alliances and knowledge gained from working for Chapman/Leonard in Orlando serving Universal and Disney/MGM, as an Eastman Kodak production account executive covering 10 states and seven years as a Panavision marketing executive.
Borys says in 25 years she still wants to be working with cinematographers, although she cannot begin to fathom what image capture will be like in a world of ever-evolving technology. Unquestionably, she’ll three steps ahead in whatever’s going on.
