For most of us, attending a film festival generally means standing in giant lines and hoping to spot as many celebrities as possible. Even for celebrities, the festival setting is generally pretty relaxed with only one or two panels at which they have to appear.

But for Austin-based cinematographer Peter Simonite, who is spending this week at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the festival experience will be a bit different.

Besides taking in as many movies as he possibly can (like the jealousy-inspiring premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master), Simonite is also bouncing between not one but six different screenings of his own films throughout the Canadian city.

"I can see how this will get pretty hectic," says Simonite over the phone after landing in Toronto. "But I love festivals, going to screenings and seeing all of my friends at the screening who I sometimes haven't seen since the movie wrapped years prior."

Included in the screenings at TIFF are the Colin Firth/Emily Blunt vehicle, Arthur Newman; the Tim Burton-esque magical morality tale, The Brass Teapot; and the new Terrence Malick directed epic To the Wonder, starring Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck and Javier Bardem.

It seems mind-boggling that one person could even have six submissions to enter into a festival in a single year. But as a cinematographer, Simonite is able to lend his Texas-sized talents to more projects in a given year than would a full cinematic director or an actor.

Thanks to his impressively thorough resume of over 50 feature films, Simonite is now a highly sought after director of photography and a consultant for second unit photography. His attention to detail in lighting has been called obsessive and masterful, earning the nickname even of "The Mad Genius of Light."

In addition to his cinematic photography, one of the six screenings in Toronto is for the fantastically beautiful music video he directed for Explosions in the Sky's "Postcards from 1952." You would never know it by looking at it, but according to Simonite, the video was actually done on a rather small budget, "made out of love" for the members of the band.

The video is an excellent translation of many of the techniques and lessons Simonite attributes directly to working alongside Oscar-nominated Tree of Life Director of Photography Emmanuel Lubezki. While working as the Second Unit for that film, Simonite talks fondly about the opportunity he had to learn from "a master craftsman who truly inspires collaboration."

After TIFF wraps up, Simonite is really looking forward to getting to spend some time back in Austin. "I just cannot wait to get back to Texas. I'm so homesick," he says, after months of commercial shoots in India and beyond. "I'm definitely a Texas filmmaker, having lived here almost 20 years, and I feel really lucky to get to work so regularly with so many other Texas filmmakers."

Indeed, Simonite cut his teeth in the movie industry with directors with strong Austin ties like Robert Rodriguez (The Faculty), Mike Judge (Idiocracy) and Richard Linklater (A Scanner Darkly).

"What's different about Texas [film] crews from, say, New York or L.A. crews is this real spirit of inclusion," he states. "Everyone working in a Texas crew is a filmmaker themselves. They know the craft from top to bottom, so they are all doing it for the art of it. Since it's not an industry town, per se, there's not this sense of over-specialization."

While Simonite does prefer and has gained a prominent reputation as a cinematographer, he does have directing projects in mind as well. Specifically, Simonite has been documenting for several years the rise of Austin indie rock band Spoon, thanks to a close friendship with frontman Britt Daniels during Simonite's early Austin rock n' roll days.

"[The Spoon documentary] is a long term project for sure. There's really no idea of how long it should be or how far shooting will go; that's really up to Britt," he explains.

As luck would have it, Daniels is in Toronto the very same night doing a show with new side-project, Divine Fits, which features members of Spoon, Wolf Parade and New Bomb Turks. So that's one more event for Simonite to put on his already busy Toronto itinerary.

"It really feels a lot like SXSW up here so far," says the energetic cinematographer. "It's a bunch of people wearing badges looking for their friends to go see some good shows with. That's generally the best place I can think of to be."