Eye on the Prize
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Cinematography
By Bob Fisher
Woody Omens, ASC and Michael Margulies, ASC were talking about how difficult it is for people who work in the motion picture industry, let alone critics and fans to recognize and appreciate artful cinematography. “Great cinematography rarely calls attention to itself,” Omens observed.
The conversation between Omens and Margulies took place in 1985. They were concerned because Oscar® nominations and awards were consistently going to cinematographers who shot epic movies with magnificent exterior settings. Many times the critics lauded cinematographers for scenes photographed by the second unit.
“You can do artful cinematography on epic films,” Omens said, “but we felt it was important to recognize that cinematography is a language with countless subtleties.”
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Omens’ and Margulies’ conversation led to the inauguration of the annual ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards in 1986. The purpose was to recognize and inspire the pursuit of artistic excellence, however there was also an underlying goal of educating peers in the industry, critics and fans about the understated role of the cinematographer.
The ASC Awards have subsequently become a reliable forerunner for predicting Oscar® nominees and award winners. Generally, at least four of the five ASC nominations are finalists in the Oscar® race, and more often that not, the same person wins both awards.
Conrad Hall, ASC is high on almost every ASC members’ list of potential winners this year for his artful rendering of images in Road to Perdition, his second collaboration with director Sam Mendes. Their first film together was the Oscar®-winning American Beauty.
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| Road to Perdition |
You aren’t going to find that type of nuance in textbooks or even in most classes at film schools, but those are the types of visual clues audiences know how to read.
Janusz Kaminski, ASC is also earning kudos from his peers for two distinctly different films, Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can with the common denominator being Steven Spielberg at the helm of both.
Catch Me If You Can is the yin to the yang of Minority Report. The latter film is visually punctuated with an in-your-face visual style that uses intentionally blown out images and textures as signals that the audiences readily interpret as signs of impending danger.
Catch Me If You Can is a straightforward story, but don’t let that fool you. “Light doesn’t always have to be motivated,” Kaminski said. “It can be totally or partially unrealistic and stylized if it fits the story. You can analyze it, but it still has to feel right. The big question is do you have the guts to trust your instincts.”
ASC members have their own opinions in handicapping the Oscar® race. Laszlo Kovacs, ASC is talking up Ed Lachman, ASC, and his stunning work on Far From Heaven, which captured the cinematography award at the Venice Film Festival. Kovacs was a jurist. He said that Lachman’s artful rendering of images was an essential thread weaved throughout the fabric of the story.
Kovacs recently shot Two Weeks Notice. The story works because you believe that the two leading characters portrayed by Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant are falling in love. Watch how Kovacs uses light and camera angles to show the audience that Bullock’s character is looking increasingly more alluring, including such niceties as using touches of backlight on her hair to make it gleam as the story evolves. But Oscar® frequently overlooks comedies.
Two other names that come up regularly are Rodrigo Prieto, ASC for 8 Mile and Wally Pfister, ASC for Insomnia. It was Prieto’s first collaboration with director Curtis Hanson. “This is a story about relationships, and most of the time we had three to five characters in shots,” he said. “We wanted tight close-ups on characters with their environments in the background.” Prieto used “just enough” of a bleach bypass process at Deluxe Labs to give the look edginess.
It was Pfister’s second outing with director Chris Nolan. The film is set in Alaska in the middle of summer, which means the sun is shining and penetrating the hotel room rented by Al Pacino’s character deep into the night. "It’s like a fourth main character, and a metaphor for the feelings of guilt that permeate the story," Pfister explained.
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