Michael Slovis

Showrunner Vince Gilligan aside, Michael Slovis is the man who did more than anyone to make Breaking
Bad beautiful. As a director (four episodes) and cinematographer (loads of episodes), he took over the
formidable mantle of multi-Oscar-nominated DP John Toll and broadened the show's visual style in
lockstep with Walter White's ever-growing narc empire. Nine months later and he's back at home in
Montclair, just up the road from Tony Soprano's patch in east New Jersey, reflecting on the show's glorious
finale. "I'm here trying to figure out what I'm going to do for the rest of my working career!" he laughs.
"Once you've done a show like that the difficult question is whether you go back and do a pedestrian piece of
work? That's why I'm sort of taking this year to let things settle down."
The affable Slovis' MO is simple: is the cinematography in harmony with the story or a distraction, an eyecandied sideshow? "Lots of cinematographers - and I don't fault them for this, it's just how they are - love
beautiful imagery," he points out, "but what I love is organic storytelling." He illustrates the point with his
favourite moment from Breaking Bad, a choice, he says, that often confounds in its relative lack of visual
fireworks. "It's Bryan Cranston watching Krysten Ritter die in Aaron Paul's bed, when he could have saved
her," he explains, "and they say, 'But why? It's just a close-up of Bryan.' My response is that there was no
better place to put the camera - with the right performance, with the right angle, with the right everything and feel at one with the story."
When Empire called, Slovis shared his admiration for the great Gregg Toland on Citizen Kane, and Caleb
Deschanel's work in a film "that really made me think about cinematography".

THE SHOT

CITIZEN KANE
YEAR: 1941

DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES

CINEMATOGRAPHER: GREGG TOLAND

Gregg Toland emerged in a time when cinematography was considered a disposable skill by executives, and
cinematographers would be shunted from one show to another like they were making potato chips, and he
elevated it to an art form. All cinematographers owe him a huge amount. What was really incredible about his
Orson Welles partnership on Citizen Kane, the go-to visual stylising project I would beckon to, is that all that
stuff needed to be pre-visualised and conceived before they got on the set. To me, real cinematography is
never done on the set, it's always done ahead of time. It's in the pre-visualising and the conception phase
when the look, the textures, the visual language of a [production] is written. For those guys to have conceived
that movie and made all that stuff happen with matte paintings, with set breakaway pieces, with background
paintings, with blue screens... it's a miracle. I saw Citizen Kane in a movie theatre and it was still jawdroppingly beautiful. Every single frame holds up.
To me, the most expressive shot in Kane is that move down through the sign outside of the nightclub, through
the window in the rain, to Susan Alexander Kane sitting, and then the guy standing in silhouette around her.
But you can go on and on and on, because it's just a genuinely told, honest story. Do I see parallels between
Charles Foster Kane and Walter White? If you think about it, the two stories are absolutely paralleled. They're
both about facing the consequences of your actions.
A more recent example of equal brilliance - and one that transferred European sensibilities to American
cinematography - is Caleb Deschanel's work on The Black Stallion. Every single frame is drop-dead
gorgeous. Like The Deer Hunter, the first half of this movie is all visual storytelling; there is dialogue but you
could turn off the volume and still get the story, without any doubt. There are two sequences in the movie that
are beyond brilliant: the first, a boat is sinking, the young boy (Kelly Reno) and the horse are in the water, and
as the ship goes down, it's lit with the fire of this boat. You're at the edge of your seat, immersed in that event
with them. And that's followed by an entire sequence where this boy is learning to become friends with the
horse on a desert island. And it's a dance, a pas de deux on the beach, as beautiful as any ballet you could
see in a theatre in three dimensions. They take you through an entire range of emotions with absolutely no
dialogue at all. Just the snorting of a horse, and a boy, and a little music. And it's wonderful.

Roger Deakins
The great Roger Deakins CBE is the man who made Skyfall shimmer like no other Bond movie, whose
stellar work with the Coens began with Barton Fink ten Joel-and-Ethan movies ago, and who currently has
11 - count 'em - Oscar nominations to his name.
Beloved of directors and all of his fellow cinematographers, it's safe to say he's high on the Christmas card
list for most of the actors he's lit, too. "Sometimes you get a cinematographer who shoots something, and
you walk into their light, and they're doing 50 per cent of my job," Jake Gyllenhaal recently told The
Hollywood Reporter. "I walked into Roger Deakins' lighting in two different movies, and I didn't feel I had
to give a performance." The Academy has agreed and included his work on Prisoners in this year's Oscars
shortlist.
In short, Deakins is a giant of his field. He spoke to Empire from Sydney, 10,000 miles from his native
Torquay, where he was working on Angelina Jolie's wartime drama Unbroken.
THE SHOT

IVAN'S CHILDHOOD
YEAR: 1962

DIRECTOR: ANDREI TARKOVSKY

CINEMATOGRAPHER: VADIM YUSOV

I don't know how to pick just one shot - I guess it depends on what mood you're in that day - but there's a shot
in Ivan's Childhood where the boy is crossing between the German and Russian lines that I absolutely love.
It's this incredible black and white landscape, illuminated by flares like a kind of ghostly hinterland, with this
downed fighter plane jutting out of the earth. I don't know what camera Vadim Yusov shot with in the water,
but I'm sure it was a lot heavier than the ones we use now. He also shot Solaris for Tarkovsky, which is also a
remarkable-looking film. Yusov died recently - I was sad not to have been able to meet him.Antonioni's films
always had beautiful cinematography - L'Eclisse, Red Desert, The Passenger. There's this beautiful sequence
in L'Avventura where Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti stop in an abandoned town and the camera tracks
down this deserted street.
I'm in Australia at the moment and have rewatched On The Beach (shot by Italian great Giuseppe Rotunno),
which is set here in the aftermath of a nuclear war. There's a shot where Gregory Peck, an American
submarine commander, surfaces off the coast of San Francisco to see what's left and it's just nothing.
Emptiness. It's simple but beautiful.

Ben Seresin
New Zealander Ben Seresin has shot for Tony Scott (Unstoppable), Michael Bay (Transformers: Revenge Of
The Fallen) and Gore Verbinski (Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End), which means he's probably
filmed more explosions than we've had hot dinners. More recently, he photographed World War Z for Marc
Forster, a production he describes with Kiwi understatement as "challenging", and Pain & Gain for Bay.
Picking a single shot for this piece is a task he likens to choosing his favourite food. "I have a million
favourites, and all for different reasons!"
THE SHOT

I AM CUBA
YEAR: 1964

DIRECTOR: MIKHAIL KALATOZOV

CINEMATOGRAPHER: SERGEI URUSEVSKY

What most interests me is the power of cinema and the opening shots of I Am Cuba have an authenticity and
beauty that's unique. In some ways, it's a pretty inaccessible film - it's 50 years old, culturally very different
and super-stylised, but the opening sequences show the power of filmmaking to transport you. There's no
acting, and when the acting does start it's pretty flawed, but you really feel like you're there. You can touch
and taste the atmospere. It's visceral.
The opening is a fairly straightforward helicopter shot over the treetops, using almost a fixed camera locked in
a three-quarter angle. Then the camera is mounted on a boat and it's a guy heading downriver, with the
camera rigged at foot-level. It's a very wide angle, almost fish-eyed but not distorted, and it's beautiful
considering how old the technology is. Then it's on a rooftop with a band playing, and the camera goes down
in a crane or lift and follows people into the swimming pool and underwater. The filmmakers spent days and
days building these complex, Heath Robinson contraptions to transport the camera, and apart from that
opening shot the camera is always very close to whatever it's shooting. I have no idea how they did it, but it's
very powerful. If a shot doesn't connect you with the story or move you in another way, it hasn't done its job.
Is Michael Bay a fan of I Am Cuba? No, he would 100 per cent not be a fan of I Am Cuba. He's a fantastically
talented guy and I've talked to him about films and references, but in the context of work they have to fit into

his very particular style. He's not someone who sits around talking about old movies.

Laurie Rose
It's always a challenge," Laurie Rose says of his filmmaking partner-in-crime, Ben Wheatley's, fast-andfurious MO. "He pushes me to do my best." The results, a four-film run of twistily brilliant Brit flicks, kicked
off with the week-long Down Terrace shoot in their native Brighton ("A bit mental," laughs Rose of a feature
film that was virtually miracled into existence) and, most recently, offered the stark, monochrome beauty of
A Field In England.
Most recently he shot Nick Frost salsathon Cuban Fury. "I've never made a decision to be a
'cinematographer' as such," he told Film Doctor. "It's a peculiar word that I don't entirely identify with and
never call myself. It sounds way too grand for me.
THE SHOT

HUNGER
YEAR: 2008

DIRECTOR: STEVE MCQUEEN

CINEMATOGRAPHER: SEAN BOBBITT

No single shot defines cinema for me. That's the joy of it - the possibilities. On a technical level, I love and
appreciate the sense of achievement of the 'impossible' shot, that 'how-the-fuck-did-they-do-that?' moment
made possible by the evolution of technology - the 'toys' - combined with choreography and intense planning.
The car interior in Children Of Men or the flying shots in Hugo. But most of all, I love the simple shots that
anyone might achieve with a bold idea. Jaws' contra-zoom, dating back to Vertigo, is a mind-blowingly simple
optical effect that throws your world into disarray, creating a moment of epiphany, of fear. By contrast, I Am
Cuba defies these ideas. And to achieve those shots at that time? It's inspiring.
I'm fascinated by a performance that can be so strong it defies the received grammar of an edit, even cinema
itself. Does that make it theatre? Hunger's 20-minute prison dialogue between Michael Fassbender and Liam
Cunningham is a triumph. The performance carries the scene, it doesn't need an edit. It's really bloody bold.
We're in that room, but we're not taking part in the dialogue - it's their conversation. But I'm not sure this shot,
or any single shot, can really exist in a vacuum outside of the context of the story. You need to have a

relationship with what they're talking about, and perhaps to know a little of the characters and their
relationship to each other. If Hunger consisted of just that scene, it would be theatre. As one scene within the
whole story? That's cinema.

Sean Bobbitt
"It's fun to work with someone you get on with," 12 Years A Slave cinematographer Sean Bobbitt enthuses of
his decade-and-a-bit partnership with Steve McQueen. With five short films and three features (Hunger,
Shame and now their Oscar-nominated slavery drama) behind them, the pair have become entwined as
creative partners as well as friends.
If there's a creative hive mind at work, and 12 Years' dazzling visuals, inspired by Kara Walker's
contemporary cut-paper silhouettes and period photos, suggests there is, it's evolved into something
formidable. Evidence is also found in Hunger, where that famous 17-minute sequence between Liam
Cunningham and Michael Fassbender slotted into a startling depiction of prison-as-hell, and the glare and
neons of Shame's Gotham.
It was Bobbitt's work on Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland that brought him to the artist/director's
attention. "He was looking for someone to shoot his art installation work," remembers the 55 year-old
Texan, "so he found out who my agent was and it went from there." Their move into feature filmmaking
was always on the cards, believes Bobbitt. "Steve is such a film buff. He's seen every film ever made and
analysed every shot." When Empire asked him to do something similar, he turned to a film that was
shunned on release back in the mid-1960s but has since been recognised as a pioneering masterpiece.
THE SHOT

I AM CUBA
YEAR: 1964

DIRECTOR: MIKHAIL KALATOZOV

CINEMATOGRAPHER: SERGEI URUSEVSKY

There are a number of unique shots in I Am Cuba, but this one is remarkable. It starts tracking over a flag
draped over a stretcher being pulled down a street in a funeral for... I think he's a student who's been killed by

the government, and then the camera goes up about four storeys - still looking at the funeral procession - and
sideways into a cigar factory. Then it moves through the building, all the way through the cigar factory to the
far end where the workers are looking out of a window at the procession, and then moves across the street
where it stops, suspended over the procession and then it just carries on... and you know, this is 1964.
As a cinematographer, you look at these shots and think, "How did they possibly do that?" There are no
Technocranes or Skycams to use, it was just wires and pulleys. That simple. The operator had a body vest
with hooks and rigging attached to it and the camera sort of strapped on, and he was literally lifted by a series
of pulleys and wires.
It's a Russian film that was directed by Mikhail Kalatozov and shot by Sergei Urusevsky, but it went down so
badly when it was released. The Russians didn't like it. The Cubans didn't like it. I think it was just a chance
screening at a Telluride festival, years ago, that actually brought it back to life again. Scorsese has been a
great hero of the film and helped to get it revived, and I think some of his Steadicam stuff nods towards it, like
the shot through the restaurant in GoodFellas.
The shot tells the story so succinctly, it's just astounding. I've never forgotten it and I never will.

Dan Mindel
The man given the heady and high-pressured task of capturing J. J. Abrams' Star Wars on celluloid, South
African-born DP Dan Mindel is soon returning to England, his home of nearly 30 formative years growing
up, to reunite with his Star Trek director for the foreseeable future. Before he can start all that worldbuilding, though, he has kids to pick up from school in LA and, presumably, some packing to do.
Empire's call, hopefully not at the expense of collecting children, has Mindel casting his mind back to
formative cinema experiences as an English student in the late '70s. "[Back then] my idea of America was
shaped by the films I saw," he recalls of his London moviegoing life. "There's a period of filmmaking from
the late '70s to the late '80s when American filmmaking was so strong. Spielberg hasn't done anything
Earth-shattering for a while, neither has Ridley (Scott) or (Martin) Scorsese. As a viewer, I'm dying to see
smaller stories with less CGI told to me by masters." With that in mind, he picked one of The Deer Hunter's

tautest sequences to talk about with us. Greedo, be warned: everyone shoots first here.
THE SHOT

THE DEER HUNTER

YEAR: 1978

DIRECTOR: MICHAEL CIMINO

CINEMATOGRAPHER: VILMOS ZSIGMOND

I was heavily influenced by movies I saw on TV as a kid. When I was old enough to go to the cinema and see
films in giant colour there were a couple of movies that jumped out at me. I remember seeing The Deer
Hunter as an 18-year-old at the Odeon on Kensington High Street and it changed my life and the way I looked
at film. My pick is the first Russian roulette sequence where the guys get pulled out of the water. It makes me
squirm every time I watch it, a perfect study in brutality. It does what all storytelling should do: resonate.
I haven't found a cinematographer I like as much Vilmos Zsigmond. His style is so natural and has so much
more gravity and grittiness than this slick, glossy photographic style, although there are guys like Bob
Richardson out there now who have amazing eyes. Vilmos's photography is totally real. I never felt like I was
watching a movie, and that's something I perpetually search for when I go to films. I'm waiting for the day
when I can show The Deer Hunter to my kids.
The visuals help us focus on the soldiers' plight in a way in that claustrophobic environment, as strength of
character becomes the means of survival. We don't know where they are... they're in a room, around a table.
A lot of its impact is lost on TV but in the cinema the close-ups are bigger and you can feel the air diminishing
around the frame.
I still think about the photography and the texture of it. When I frame shots, I think about how those frames
were made. Given that it was shot with low-tech equipment and unforgiving film stock, it's just brilliant - the
colour palette,

Donald McAlpine
Most recently behind the camera on Ender's Game, Aussie DP Donald McAlpine was a key figure in the
emergent Australian film industry of the 1970s. His work with Bruce Beresford (Money Movers, Breaker

Morant, The Club) and Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career) helped a resurgent Aussiewood onto the
world stage and got him noticed by Paul Mazursky, who hired him for his adaptation of The Tempest. This
led the New South Welshman into Hollywood projects, including a pair of Jack Ryan actioners, Patriot
Games and Clear And Present Danger, with fellow Australian Phillip Noyce, and a pair of Baz Luhrmann
movies, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge.
He's also the man who shot Predator for John McTiernan ("That was great fun - McTiernan was at his best
then, but he became morose as he became successful"), and while he probably doesn't have time to bleed, he
had a few minutes to chat to Empire on a balmy Friday evening in New South Wales.
THE SHOT

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
YEAR: 1962

DIRECTOR: DAVID LEAN

CINEMATOGRAPHER: FREDDIE YOUNG

I find picking shots exceedingly difficult, because if they're well done, they're integrated into the film. But Omar
Sharif emerging from the desert mirage in Lawrence Of Arabia is great storytelling. It's an incredibly simple
shot. They probably just shot on a tripod and would have rolled every two or three minutes for about a minute.
Its simplicity is its strength.
I've always very much admired Freddie Young. I had the chance to meet him a couple of times, and he was
really down-to-earth. He was what he was: a working cameraman. He had to do a job and he did it. I've spent
a great part of my career assessing what the bloody hell it is that I do and what I've concluded is that my job is
to interpret into a visual what the director has in his mind. It precludes having a personal style, because the
inference of that is contrary to the other theory because you can't have both. It's been interesting to see those
wonderful cameramen who were incredibly self-stylised vanish off the scene; they'll survive with one director,
but once he stops working they'll vanish. You've got to be a chameleon.
I'm almost anti-historical. I rarely watch old movies but I had reason to stick on the DVD about six months ago
and actually the film was pretty terrible. I'm exaggerating but it didn't live up to my memories of it, because I
remembered it as something fantastic and for whatever reason, fashion or slowness, it didn't work for me by
today's standards.
This was in the days of gentlemen filmmaking. They didn't go too hard (laughs) and the films show it. In my
career I've watched Hollywood go from the wonderful excesses there were when I first joined the club to the
commercial world it is now. You don't get a teamster picking you up in the morning, you get a rental car.

Haris Zambarloukos
When Empire catches up Haris Zambarloukos, he's at the end of a day of horsey business at Pinewood
Studios. Cinderella, a Disney romance with Lily James as Cinders and Helena Bonham Carter as the fairy
godmum, marks the Cypriot DP's fourth collaboration with Kenneth Branagh - and a more painterly
approach than their last. "We have very similar tastes, but we try to start from scratch on every project.
Jack Ryan has an urban, gritty look that homages '70s thrillers, but we have to do Cinderella as if Walt
Disney drew every frame. They're big shoes to step into!"
The Nicosia-born Zambarloukos, whose first Branagh collaborations came capturing Sleuth's sleight of
hand and Thor's Asgardian gleam in 2011, also shot Venus and Enduring Love for Roger Michell and has
survived (our words, not his) Pierce Brosnan's Mamma Mia! warblings. His pick comes from David Lean's
seminal take on Charles Dickens' orphantasy.
THE SHOT

OLIVER TWIST
YEAR: 1948

DIRECTOR: DAVID LEAN

CINEMATOGRAPHER: GUY GREEN

For me, a film's set-up is its most interesting element, and the opening sequence of David Lean's Oliver Twist
sets up the story in the most beautiful way. The first six minutes are without words. I think the greatest
moments in cinema are usually told in the emotions of the actor that are wordless and enhanced by the
editing and the cinematography and the music. When all those forces come to play, you get that magical
feeling in your stomach. And what a great idea this scene is: a pregnant woman, Oliver's future mother,
caught in a thunderstorm in the middle of the night, dealing with the worst elements nature can throw at her.
Talk about pressing emotional buttons! If you didn't know the story, you'd go into it thinking, 'My god, that
woman's been through everything. I think that child is going to make it.'

It should have been impossible to create a storm at night in 1948. Obviously there was no VFX, and they
were doing shots looking up at the dark skyline with clouds passing through the frame. To this day, I have no
idea how they did it. Technically, it's absolutely remarkable, but you don't even notice that because you're so
enthralled by this sequence. You just breathe it in.

When it was shot at Pinewood, Michael Powell and Jack Cardiff were also shooting The Red Shoes - what a
great year for British cinema. Interestingly, Lean reshot this scene because the first opening was deemed too
romantic so they went back and did it in a darker, grimmer, edgier, contrastier way, and what a great idea that
was. It goes to show that even the great masters can have a second opinion about something

Marcel Zyskind
If you've noticed the rain-flecked nightscapes of Copenhagen in The Killing, the shakycam vrit of peoplesmuggling docudrama In This World or the handheld intimacy of A Summer In Genoa, you probably won't
be surprised to hear they're all the work of one man: Marcel Zyskind. The Danish DP's partnership with
Michael Winterbottom, now totalling 11 feature and documentary films, is hallmarked by digital
camerawork, natural lighting and an immediacy that catapults the viewer into the British director's
dizzying worlds. "Michael tries to throw things up in the air and see what happens," Zyskind has said of
their work together, and that in-the-moment magic has translated into a special alchemy on screen.
When Empire speaks to him, he's finished colour grading Hossein Amini's The Two Faces Of January and is
working on his house in Denmark. Still in his early thirties but already a 12-year veteran of the craft, the
cinematographer won his spurs as a focus puller on Lars von Trier's Dancer In The Dark, before repeating
the trick on Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, an introduction that has helped guide his path ever since.
"Michael has a particular way of working, cut to the bone with a small crew, and it's one of the most
difficult," he explains, "so I feel like I can do anything now. A good cameraman can adapt."
THE SHOT

CHINATOWN
YEAR: 1974

DIRECTOR: ROMAN POLANSKI

CINEMATOGRAPHER: JOHN A. ALONZO

One film that came to mind straight away - and I watched it a lot last year before making (con-man thriller)
The Two Faces Of January - is Chinatown. It's the scene towards the end when Jack Nicholson's character,
Jake Gittes, is talking to John Huston - Noah Cross. He's found Hollis Mulwray's glasses and realised that

Huston's character is the crook behind his murder. Huston comes in, they're talking and he reveals that he
committed the crime, and it moves on to the climactic scene when Faye Dunaway is shot. It's very unfancy,
but it's set up so simply, which I like, and they're acting so well.You see Jack Nicholson's cigarette smoke drift
in from the left hand side, so you know he's there. When he steps into the frame they have this long
conversation and then the camera turns around to where Mulwray was murdered in the pond in the back
garden where Gittes found his broken glasses.
All of Roman Polanski's films have a great storytelling camera. There's also a shot in (Polanski's) Rosemary's
Baby where Mia Farrow is sitting sadly on the bed but the camera framed so she's half-covered by the
doorframe. William Fraker, the cinematographer, said: 'Shouldn't we move the camera, so you can see her
completely?', but Polanski wanted to manipulate the image a little bit. The Ghost is really nicely made as well.
The camera stays very close to McGregor's character, so you feel like you're with him. I like to get close to
actors when I'm working, although long lens films are interesting as well. Heat and The Insider were a good
reference for my work on The Killing.

Jo Willems
Belgian DP Jo Willems grew up just outside Antwerp. He left for the UK as an ambitious 21 year-old and
shot music videos, before moving to the US where he began a fruitful partnership with David Slade on 2005
thriller Hard Candy. "That was a great one to do as my first movie," he reflects. "It got a lot of cred and
people still mention it all the time." He's currently in Atlanta shooting Katniss's final battles in The Hunger
Games: Mockingjay with one Ms J. S. Lawrence. "Jennifer is a gem," he says. "She says what's on her mind
and lets it flow."
Willems' choice of sequence is the opening scene in Rosetta, a 1999 drama from his fellow Belgians the
Dardenne brothers and their career-long cinematographer Alain Marcoen, a fellow member of The Belgian
Society of Cinematographers. "They inspire me, but I don't strive to copy their style," Willems adds in a
follow-up email. "I just try and bring their naturalism and honesty to all the work I do." The film's first
scene introduces Rosetta (milie Dequenne), a teenager struggling with an alcoholic mum and the sudden
loss of her job.

THE SHOT

ROSETTA
YEAR: 1999

DIRECTOR: LUC AND JEAN-PIERRE DARDENNE

CINEMATOGRAPHER: ALAIN

MARCOEN
Whenever I start a movie, I always revisit one of the Dardenne brothers' movies - even on The Hunger
Games, a movie I shot 90 per cent handheld, and Limitless, where Neil (Burger) and I talked about them
beforehand. Their style has been copied, but nobody has been able to keep it as honest and truthful as they
have. They've very unsentimental, grounded filmmakers and they've always inspired me - I know they
inspired Darren Aronofsky on The Wrestler, too.
It's hard to pick one sequence, but I've chosen a movie of theirs that won Cannes in 1999, Rosetta, and its
opening shot. It's always inspired because it's very naturalistic. When you first start your career as a DP it's all
about style and form and making things look as good as you can, but there's a real simplicity to this - it's very
pared-down filmmaking. The whole sequence is handheld, which is always kinetic and makes the operator
much more aware of what the actor is doing. You're not attached to a crane or a dolly, which makes it very
human.Their lens choice and proximity to the character of Rosetta - 80 per cent of the time you're within two
or three feet of her - makes you feel like you can touch her, like you're part of her world. Instead of constantly
cutting from one person to another, you almost sit on this girl's shoulder. They grab you by the collar of your
shirt and force you to go on Rosetta's journey. You can actually 'follow' her story and every movement she
makes. When doors close, the camera does not get access like most movies would do. Instead, the door
shuts in front of us.
The Dardenne brothers' films are honest; not sentimental but very emotional. There is nothing artificial or fake
about their work - they're raw and the performances are so real. They don't use music in their films, either, but
sound is very important. When you're lighting these sequences you have to do away with everything you don't
need. We did the same with The Hunger Games, which is bigger and more expensive, but it was always
about paring it down and discovering the human character. Their style is not from the school of hand-held
gritty indie movies, they have a strong visual idea behind their style, but it's all about naturalism.

Matthew Jensen
Chronicle and Filth DP Matthew Jensen is enjoying some well-earned downtime before for getting back
behind the camera. "That freedom is coming to an end quite soon," he says over Skype. This year he'll finally
see his most recent feature, an Irvine Welsh adaptation with a fag in its mouth and a cocaine headache, on
home soil in America. "I have no idea if it will play well in the States," he says of its likely reception.
"Trainspotting was huge here and that's the only thing I can compare it to in terms of tone and trying to
understand the Scottish accents."
Singled out by industry bible Variety for Filth's "zesty" visuals and his "bright, restless lensing," Jensen is
making a name for himself in film circles. Teeth cut on prestige TV shows like CSI and True Blood, he helped
Josh Trank find a fresh slant on the seemingly tired found-footage genre with 2012's Chronicle. He shot that
indie superhero film with the newly launched Arri Alexa, joining Newton Thomas Sigel (Drive), Robert
Richardson (Hugo) and Manuel Alberto Claro (Melancholia) in adopting a lightweight digital camera that's
since become a key tool on blockbusters from Iron Man 3 to World War Z. Neither of those strapped it to a
skateboard or levitated it, mind you, two of the tricks Jensen and Trank used to expand the movie's
Camcording device into superhero realms.
THE SHOT

THE GODFATHER PART II

YEAR: 1974

DIRECTOR: FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

CINEMATOGRAPHER: GORDON WILLIS

Gordon Willis is the cinematographer who's had the biggest stylistic influence on me. I love all his '70s with
Woody Allen and Alan Pakula, but The Godfather: Part II is the one I always come back to. There are so many
things that I do that I view as second nature but I'll go back and revisit that film and I'll think, 'My god, it came
from there!' So much of my understanding of film language is from that movie.My sequence comes when
young Vito Corleone, played by Robert De Niro, is pursuing Don Fanucci through Little Italy. He's walking
along the rooftops and looking down at him while this big Catholic festival is going on. There's something so
extraordinary about the shot structure and those marvellous tracking shots along the rooftops. You're looking
from another set of rooftops up to De Niro across the street and he's prowling across the roofs like a mountain
lion over his prey. It's got this marvellous bronzy, warm patina to it, the skies glow and the browns of the
costumes and the tenement buildings are so rich.
It's intercut with his point of view looking down at Fanucci while the festival is going on, and there's all these

layers of symbolism, and then these layers of extraordinary detail in the wardrobe and production design and
extras.
Movies now just can't seem to accomplish that same sense of scope and scale, and we're so accustomed
now to digital extensions of sets and digital matte paintings that we accept things being creating in the
computer, but everything you see here is in front of the lens. I still can't believe the level of detail. The shops
stretch on for blocks and everything had to be painstakingly recreated. It gives you a very accurate sense of
period but it also immerses you in the early 1900s and makes you feel like you're there - and in a way that few
films have been able to replicate. Gordon Willis's lighting is dramatic and moody and yet so naturalistic. I have
no idea how they got the shots: these were the days before Steadicam and they're not using cranes, they're
simple tracking moves so they must have brought dollies and tracks up to the roofs. The camera is very
grounded and often at eye-level in Gordon Willis movies but it's just so elegant.
Do I prefer Part II to The Godfather? Well, you can't have number two without number one, but I rank it
higher. It's deeper, it's darker and it's richer.

Danny Cohen
"I've got a long list!" warns Danny Cohen when Empire asks for his pick from cinematography's rich
history. The This Is England and Les Misrables DP, an Oscar nominee and member of the British Society of
Cinematographers, is a day away from heading to France to shoot Stephen Frears' Lance Armstrong movie
and taking a breather from "sorting out all the gear". He's chuffed to hear that his tongue-in-cheek grumble
about having to pick just one sequence has echoed Roger Deakins' thoughts. "Fucking hell, we're obviously
like-minded!", laughs the Londoner. "What you've asked is impossible though. I think it depends on your
mood; you like different films at different times."
In his decade-and-a-bit behind the camera Cohen has already amassed four Tom Hooper collaborations one of which, The King's Speech, carried him all the way to the Oscars - two Shane Meadows films, Dead
Man's Shoes and This Is England, and music promos for Arctic Monkeys and Blur. He's also a keen cineaste,
as that list soon reveals. Blade Runner, The Leopard and Apocalypse Now all feature - "I've got tons and
tons of films" - but he settles on a moment in Michael Mann's The Insider, shot by Mann's long-standing DP

Dante Spinotti.
THE SHOT

THE INSIDER
YEAR: 1999

DIRECTOR: MICHAEL MANN

CINEMATOGRAPHER: DANTE SPINOTTI

To me, an amazing shot is something that essentially encapsulates the whole film in one shot - a shot that
really tells a story. There's one in The Insider, when Russell Crowe is walking out of the hotel and the camera
is following just slightly behind him. There's a little speed ramp, a really simple trick which switches from
normal speed to slow motion without interfering with the image, so as he's walking, boom, it kind of goes into
slow-mo. In that moment the whole angst of what the Russell Crowe character is all about, and the kind of
conflict he's existing in, is laid bare. It's all about an existential crisis this one man is going through.I've never
met Dante Spinotti, but he's a top geezer. He's amazing. I've used speed ramping myself, but never as well as
this. I've been prepping the [Lance Armstrong] film and keep thinking, 'There's got to be one amazing shot we
can do.'
If I had a second pick it'd be from Michael Clayton. There's a shot - and again, to me, it says everything about
the film - and it's a really simple shot of George Clooney's character driving on the freeway. His sat nav stops
working, and he bangs the dashboard. And I don't know what but there's something about the way they
framed it, the texture of the shot and the quality of the light but there's something about it. If you blink, you'll
miss it, but it's an amazing shot. Like Dante Spinotti, Robert Elswit has done amazing films - these guys have
done hundreds of amazing films and they're all wrapped up in their work.

Barry Ackroyd
Oldham-raised DP Barry Ackroyd has enjoyed a long partnership with Ken Loach, scored an Oscar nod for
Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker and translated his skills to the small screen, with HBO shows and
prestige Stephen Poliakoff projects to his name. But since 2006 brought him together with Paul Greengrass,
the pair have formed a formidable creative alliance that's yielded the skittish handheld work of United 93

and Green Zone, and most recently, a high-seas drama, both epic and intimate, in Captain Phillips. "It's the
opposite of The Hurt Locker," Ackroyd reflected on the film's heavyweight Oscars campaign. "There's a lot
more hoo-ha this time."
When Empire catches up with him, he's not long back from Gilles Paquet-Brenner's occult mystery Dark
Places. The film's shoot, in Louisiana's high summer, "wasn't the greatest" climate-wise, but at least dry
land offered simpler challenges after Greengrass's hijack thriller. "We'd be coordinating between different
ships and the lighting boats seven or eight miles into the Atlantic," he remembers of Cap'n Phil's multiple
set-ups. "There were camera positions inside the lifeboat, the frigate, the helicopter... I was like, "Can we
pull this off?"
Suffice to say they managed to do just that and now everyone wants to know how. Soon after our call
Ackroyd will be in LA for 24 hours to participate in The Hollywood Reporter's cinematographer roundtable,
a rare opportunity to share war stories with his fellow DPs. "I've met Bruno [Delbonnel] at the Oscars and I
know Sean Bobbitt very well. He's the only American [there]", Ackroyd chuckles, "and he lives in Chertsey."
Bobbitt's work on 12 Years A Slave has caught his eye, while veteran DPs, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins
are both recipients of warm praise. "Roger and I go way back and even though we're opposites, I love what
he does," he enthuses. "That's the great thing about cinematography: when it's right for the film, you know
it's right."
THE SHOT

APOCALYPSE NOW
YEAR: 1979

DIRECTOR: FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

CINEMATOGRAPHER: VITTORIO STORARO

I like people who take risks with the material, like D. A. Pennebaker, whose documentaries dare to do
something different, and (The Killing Fields cinematographer) Chris Menges. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back,
and other early American documentaries from the early '60s onwards, were a big influence on my career.
There are shots without light and a freedom to everything. It felt like you could break all the rules and find an
energy in it not being perfect. I relish the imperfect. I like to see things unexposed or badly framed... well, not
badly framed but the audience should sense the struggle to capture the image. That's the essence of my work
on The Hurt Locker or United 93 or Captain Phillips: daring to keep the camera in the right place, daring to
capture this moment that shouldn't be possible.
Paul (Greengrass) and I both refer to The Battle Of Algiers - that genre of filmmaking which tried to show what
was really happening in the world, but with great, great images. But I'd have to fall back to Apocalypse Now
which is rich in these beautiful qualities, and captures the intimacy and the scale at the same time - turning
ugly things beautiful, and beautiful things ugly. The sequence that sticks in my mind is when they go up the
river at night. The fires are burning as they approach the tribe, and they're drawing closer and closer to Kurtz.
I thought about this shot a lot on Captain Phillips because if you shoot night on water you have to have light,

and in Apocalypse Now they generate light from all kinds of things: from fires and gunfire to light festooning
across burning bridges. In the back of my mind on Captain Phillips I was always thinking, "How can I justify
light here?", because ships at battle stations don't have their lights on. It was like that with Green Zone, where
we'd rule out any source of light in a scene but that would give rise to sequences that fit back into my vision of
Pennebaker's daring. It's exciting. We'd joke with each other: "Some people would say this isn't possible."
I'd love to have shot Marlon Brando, too. There's that story of how he went days and days without
cooperating leaving Vittorio (Storaro, Apocalypse Now cinematographer) with a snap decision about how he
had to light him. We didn't have that with Tom Hanks!

BrunoDelbonnel
Vying with Roger Deakins (Prisoners), Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity), Philippe Le Sourd (The Grandmaster)
and Phedon Papamichael (Nebraska) for this year's Best Cinematography Academy Award, Bruno
Delbonnel's work on Inside Llewyn Davis adds a fourth Oscar nomination to previous nods for Harry Potter
And The Half-Blood Prince, A Very Long Engagement and Amlie. His first collaboration with Joel and
Ethan Coen had the Frenchman finding inspiration in unusual places. The LP cover of The Freewheelin' Bob
Dylan and the darker-hued paintings of New Yorker Mark Rothko both informed the frostbitten blues and
greys of wintry Greenwich Village circa 1961, adding a shiver of cold to the world of a jobbing musician
who, let's not forgot, doesn't even own a winter coat.
Only the fourth DP the Coens have hired - Barry Sonnenfeld, Lubezki and Roger Deakins are the others he's worked across movies of vastly varying scales, from a $250m Harry Potter movie to the $11m Llewyn
Davis, and style, largely staying true to the graininess of film over digital along the way. Delbonnel, a late
'70s grad from Paris's College of Cinematography, is now three decades into that gilded career. Tim Burton,
Alexander Sokurov and Jean-Pierre Jeunet would all testify to his brilliance, although he prefers to
downplay his style ("I'm known for lighting up big, empty, black spaces," he told ICG magazine) in favour of
a grander vision of the medium and an evisceration of his pet peeve: shooting coverage. "There are maybe
20 amazing directors in the world, and the rest just do coverage," he says. "People who use cinema as a
language are the masters, and I'm fortunate to have worked with some of them."
As for his peers, one of his fellow nominees stands out. "Roger Deakins is a magician," he "It's not only
about the way he lights, it's the way he thinks. When you see The Assassination Of Jesse James, there are a

couple of shots which are just mindblowing, because it's not only the way he uses light, it's the way he tells
the story with light and composition and the actors."

Anthony Dod Mantle

Chatting with Anthony Dod Mantle can be as breathless an experience as being immersed in the haremscarem worlds he's captured on 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire. Perpetual motion is the name of the
game as the Oscar-winning DP shifts from topic to topic with a speed and celerity that belies the fact that
he's been "shooting round the clock" on Ron Howard's In The Heart Of The Sea. He touches on Orson Welles
and the subjective camera of Kieslowski, his traumatic experiences shooting documentaries in Bosnia,
shooting Rush with Howard, and the formative influences that guided him from a successful career as a
photographer and into filmmaking with 1992's Die Terroristen!, an agitprop drama swiftly banned in
Germany.
"When I've relayed my thoughts [on cinematography] to students down the years, I've always reverted to
Tarkovsky or early Polanski or, in common with Danny (Boyle), early Nic Roeg," Dod Mantle reflects with
typical modesty. "I sound like an old fart!" Those luminaries, he explains, coincided with a late twenties
epiphany and a gradual shift from the still to the moving image that led to an alliance with Danish
filmmakers Thomas Vinterberg (Festen) and Lars Von Trier (Dogville and Antichrist) and that similarly
fruitful partnership with Boyle.
Marrying up Slumdog's India-in-widescreen panoramas with handheld haring about in Mumbai's slums
cost him 11kg in bodyweight but earned him a well-deserved Oscar for his troubles. A long-time resident of
Copenhagen, he's currently back on British soil shooting that Moby Dick movie, In The Heart Of The Sea.
Dod Mantle's pick comes at the end of Elem Klimov's great war-as-horror film Come And See. Twelve yearold Belarusian Florya (Aleksey Kravchenko), aged beyond his years, is confronted with a photograph of
Adolf Hitler as a baby.

THE SHOT

COME AND SEE

YEAR: 1985

DIRECTOR: ELEM KLIMOV

CINEMATOGRAPHER: ALEKSEI RODIONOV

I could show you endless scenes or shots, but I have to focus on the final scene of Elem Klimov's Come And
See. You can pull out scenes all the way through the film - this extraordinary journey Florya makes through
this horrendous world. From this unbelievably disturbing scene where tracer bullets fly across the screen, just
like we've seen in Iraq or Syria, to the bodies piled up against a shed that reminded me of being in
Srebrenica. It's so true to life. But for all the hate and fear and anxiety that foments in anyone who dares see
this film, by the time you get to the final scene and that fucking picture of this horrible man and all he
represents, the impact is still staggering. The boy points the rifle at the baby but can't bring himself to pull the
trigger.
Films work on you in a very primitive way. When they start to touch on incredible victimisation and you find
yourself feeling for a character, the director has you in the palm of his hand and can do incredibly primitive
things that are warranted in the narrative. They can [encourage the audience's desire for] colossal acts of
vengeance. In this scene that doesn't quite happen and it leaves you with this tremendous void.
The whole film is an accumulative experience. It's deeply disturbing but it's got all the paradoxes, like
Tarkovsky's work. I could also pick Walkabout or Don't Look Now here - I could even pick Wall-E - but
Klimov's ending is so powerful. It's the way it throws you back to the whole film and to everything you've tried
to absorb or refused to absorb because you've found it so repugnant.

Claudio Miranda
One of the few good things to emerge from long-forgotten Matthew McConaughey rom-com Failure To
Launch was its cinematographer, a newbie lenser by the name of Claudio Miranda. That first DP gig came
after earning his spurs as gaffer on The Game and Fight Club. There were many arduous multiple set-ups
demanded by David Fincher but the director's patronage and the tutelage of its DP, the late, great Harris
Savides, proved invaluable. "Harris was a huge influence on me," Miranda reflects. "He taught me that you
can fuck it up a little bit, that you don't have to be perfect all the time. I kind of grew up through the ranks,
so I've always been inspired by the people I've worked for."

The Santiago-born, LA-raised cinematographer is midway through the shoot of Tomorrowland when
Empire reaches him and happily shares his philosophy. "I like to be invisible as possible," he says when
asked how he approaches a project like Brad Bird's upcoming sci-fi. "If they're noticing me, it's like, 'Oh my
god, there's a big shaft of light beaming at the actor. Wow, it's obvious.' I'd rather people not notice I'm
there." So are cinematographers happy in the shadows? "Yes," he laughs. "People ask me to direct
sometimes and I go, 'Er...'."
He paid tribute to the work of American cinematographer Robert Richardson on a mystery romance with
timeless visuals.
THE SHOT

SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS

YEAR: 1999

DIRECTOR: SCOTT HICKS

CINEMATOGRAPHER: ROBERT RICHARDSON

When I saw it I thought the whole opening sequence of Snow Falling On Cedars, the ship sequence, was
absolutely stunning. All you can see when it starts is this light bouncing back and forward in the frame - it's a
completely overcast fog sequence - but as the camera keeps moving forwards towards this shrouded object,
it slowly reveals itself. It's a man fixing a lantern to the top of a sailboat. When the camera moves in for a
close-up on him, surrounding him, I was just thinking, 'Holy Jesus, that's stunning.'
How does it differ from Rob's normal style? Well, he's normally more pounding of light. He hits bars and he's
sometimes very obvious, and this one is just amazingly graceful and subtle. It was a new side [to him] I hadn't
seen before. Then again, hopefully we don't all have a style where people can go, 'Hey, it's that guy!',
because I feel like Benjamin Button and Life Of Pi are very different-looking movies, although I like soft light at
times. But this scene is so different from Bob's (Richardson) normal work, which I find pretty amazing.
Roger Deakins always influences me too. I love The Man Who Wasn't There. I look at that movie and... well,
not many people thought about it, but I thought it was really beautiful. I walked out stunned. He has the same
philosophy as me, which is sometimes just not to be overly there. That's what I fall for and those are the kind
of movies I love: The Man Who Wasn't There, The Shawshank Redemption and Snow Falling On Cedars, that
one opening.

John Schwartzman

Half-brother of Jason Schwartzman and nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, John Schwartzman has a branch
of the Coppola family tree to himself. His own entre to filmmaking was an unorthodox one. His uncle and a
family friend by the name of George Lucas promised letters of recommendation to USC film school should he
best them in a late-night game of Risk. "I came out of the Ukraine at 2.30am and took them down,"
Schwartzman laughs. "With those kind of recommendations you tend to get in."
When Empire catches up with the gregarious Californian he's in a wintry Belfast getting Dracula Untold in
the can. He reflects happily on his work in sunnier climes on Disney's Saving Mr. Banks. "When you
backlight golden grass it can look like a beautiful beer commercial," he explains of the film's Australian
locations - really the rural outskirts of LA - "so the trick was just not to make it too romantic." Mr. Banks
was an $11 million departure from the kind of massive budget event movies Schwartzman has specialised
in; closer in spirit to his Oscar-nominated work on Seabiscuit than Michael Bay collaborations
Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and The Rock - or 2012's Spidey reboot. "We'd spend the entire budget of Saving
Mr. Banks in two weeks on The Amazing Spider-Man," he points out.
Schwartzman's own pick of cinematography predates Travers and Disney's meeting by a couple of decades.
Orson Welles' Citizen Kane is never far from the minds of DPs. Here he explains why.
THE SHOT

CITIZEN KANE
YEAR: 1941

DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES

CINEMATOGRAPHER: GREGG TOLAND

"Citizen Kane is the one movie I take with me whenever I travel. I watch it before any movie that I do - it's my
bible. Everything you need to know about cinematography and directing is in this picture. They made it in
1941 and look how inventive it is: Gregg Toland is such a master. You can see Blade Runner in Citizen Kane;
you can see every work Vittorio Storaro has done; and you'll be looking at a scene and go, "Oh my god, that's
where Gordon Willis got the idea for the lighting in Klute!"They're in the projection room about 12 minutes in,
the newsreel has ended and you're thinking, 'Am I ahead of the movie? Am I behind it?' Then you see the film
projector, shafts of light and a bunch of journalists sparking up cigarettes which give their face a little bit of
lighting. It's incredibly edgy - this is way before film noir - and then it shifts to the reporter and a big crane shot
that goes down to the El Rancho restaurant, where Charles Foster Kane's second wife is drunk, in one
continuous crane shot with a dissolve. And then we go to the most spectacular shot: from this very intimate
interior with the guy on the phone bribing the matre d' to the pull-out of a statue. All of a sudden there's a sign
reading 'Walter Parks Thatcher' and a librarian sitting below it. You're a very small person in this giant set, a
door opens and these two huge shafts of light illuminate a table. You look at it and you go, "Okay, that's The

Conformist, that's what Bob Richardson did in JFK.'

This movie was the first to use wide-angle lenses and deep focus and forced perspective to create a sense of
those huge sets. I love what Michael Powell and Jack Cardiff did with colour, and the great Freddie Young's
work in the '50s and '60s, but when I watch Citizen Kane without the sound on, just studying the cutting and
the rhythm and the shots, it's as close to perfect as it gets. Every cinematographer probably watches it at
least once every couple of years.

Jeff Cronenweth
It's day 43 of Gone Girl's 90-day shoot and Jeff Cronenweth is, understandably, a tricky man to pin down.
Working with David Fincher, a multi-take perfectionist, is keeping him busy on location in the Midwest. Sixdays-a-week busy. "The hours are long, but it's a great book and hopefully we can do it right," Cronenweth
tells Empire when we reach him during some rare downtime.
It's Cronenweth's sixth movie with Fincher, not including his work on Madonna's Fincher-shot promo 'Oh
Father'. "I'd shot second unit on The Game and Se7en," the University of Southern California grad recalls of
his big break, "and I went for what I thought was an interview for second unit when he asked me to do Fight
Club. Everyone asks if Fight Club was fun to shoot and I say, 'It should have been, but I was scared to
death!'." Cronenweth's partnership with Fincher, which has garnered him an Oscar nod for The Social
Network, has him rhapsodising. "David has a clear vision of what he wants a movie to be, what he wants it
to look like, and how he's going to put it together. He's probably the most collaborative director I've worked
with. Our aesthetics are really similar, so that makes it easy."
Cronenweth's choice of sequence has personal resonance too. Blade Runner was shot by his father, Jordan,
and, as a 19 year-old college kid, he spent time witnessing his dad and Ridley Scott at work on the film's
Burbank night shoots. "It was the biggest movie in town at the time," he remembers, "and I had the choice of
working on it as a loader or going to work at a commercial house. I went with the latter, which was the
right choice for me at the time, maturity-wise. Of course, I've always wished I'd done Blade Runner..."
THE SHOT

BLADE RUNNER
YEAR: 1985

DIRECTOR: RIDLEY SCOTT

CINEMATOGRAPHER: JORDAN CRONENWETH

I'm picking this scene from Blade Runner because it's so close to me, but also because it amazes me as a
cinematographer to this day. You can take any of the shots in this sequence and you'd know it was from Blade
Runner. This was a space movie and detective film that was presented in a classic noir way and shot
anamorphically. The sets were massive, the lighting set-ups were huge and the film stock wasn't that fast, so
to get the level of subtlety and sophistication is just phenomenal to me. I've probably seen it 30 or 40 times.
This is the scene at the Tyrell Corporation headquarters when Deckard - Harrison Ford - is testing Sean
Young, Rachael, to see if she's a Replicant. It's beautifully delicate and emotional. Rachael is confused about
what's going on, Deckard is figuring it out and Tyrell (Joe Turkel) finds the whole interview amusing. It starts
off in this cavernous room, a practical set that was 80 or 100 feet long, and the light slowly changes, turning
this beautiful but harsh sunlight into a subtle cascading off what appears to be water behind Tyrell. Then you
get into the close-ups and the coverage of Harrison and Sean. Sean is absolutely stunning, with this beautiful
1950s hair all woven into itself, smoking a cigarette. She's extremely backlit and almost, but not quite, in
silhouette and the twinkle never leaves her eyes. It's magical, the way it engages the audience's emotions
visually and captures the weight of the scene.
Then it cuts back to Harrison. We don't know if he's a good guy or a bad guy, so the light's half on him and
half off. If you had to pick a moment from the scene, it's Sean exhaling cigarette smoke as she contemplates
a question, and the smoke almost dissolves out around her into a silhouette. I always thought of Lauren
Bacall when I saw that. It's stunning.

Jess Hall
Jess Hall has been "Wally Pfistering". An Englishman with Jamaican ancestry and degrees from London's
esteemed Central Saint Martins and New York University, he recently shot Pfister's first feature film,
cerebral sci-fi Transcendence. "Wally sought me on the basis of my work on Creation, and he also loved

Brideshead Revisited," explains Hall of the honour of playing DP to the esteemed DP-turned-director. "I
don't love every cinematographer's work but I've always liked his work and thought it was quite similar to
what I'd like to do, given the opportunity. We have quite similar aesthetics."
Hall can trace his career all the way back to a boyhood trip to see the Sistine Chapel. "I was incredibly
moved by the beauty of the images", he's explained, "but also kind of curious about how they could have
been executed". Skipping forward 30-odd years and he's added Hot Fuzz, Stander and Son Of Rambow to
that CV, as well as Ruben Fleischer's 30 Minutes Or Less which saw him riffing on Roger Deakins' Fargo
lighting. He's been based in Los Angeles for the past two years, and it's at his home in the notorious
cellphone blackspot that is Santa Monica that Empire catches up with him.
THE SHOT

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

YEAR: 1998

DIRECTOR: STEVEN SPIELBERG

CINEMATOGRAPHER: JANUSZ KAMINSKI

I haven't chosen this because it's the most influential scene I've seen or because it's particularly inspired me,
but because I remember the gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach when I saw it at the cinema. It was the
closest thing I'd seen to being in a battle. I'm a great lover of photojournalism - in fact, I kind of wanted to be a
photojournalist - and the shot that runs behind them when they hit the beach is so Robert Capa. His influence
is evident in the photography. It plays into another film I love, The Battle Of Algiers, one of the films that
inspired me to want to be a cinematographer.
Although I'm not a big Spielberg fan in some respects, I do think it's a significant sequence and quite
masterful. It puts you subjectively into a battle sequence in a way that nothing else I've seen has. It has that
great opening, which starts on the close-up of the hand and you tilt up to find your protagonist and from there
you go into quite a subjective vision of battle. What Janusz Kaminski did with the violent shutter and the
bleach bypass adds an extraordinary quality to the sequence. And then there's the brilliant handheld camera
work of (camera operator Mitch Dubin, who I sought out to work with on the strength of that scene and who's
become a collaborator. It was shot before the advent of lightweight cameras too.
If you see a wide shot, it's from a bunker. Everything is from ground level, or lower, because everyone's
crouching down, and all the views are partial, obscured by things people are hiding behind. Right the end in
goes into an overhead shot which reminds me of that powerful aftermath shot from Gone With The Wind, and
there's lovely symmetry in the way the sequence opens and closes on Tom Hanks' shaking hand.
This was a war of industrial weight and of equipment that was much more basic than we see in modern wars
and you really feel that in the sequence, as well as the absurdity of it. When Captain Miller finally gets on the
beach, you go into a close-up of him and then you see from his point of view this series of horrific and absurd
moments: men on fire; a guy looking for his arm; people praying. It captures the insanity of war. You're so in
the midst of it.

John Toll
A pre-eminent Hollywood lenser for more than two decades, John Toll began his career with a part-time
college job at a documentary film company. "I was always a kid with a camera," he recalls, "and I was
especially interested in film photography, but I was never sure how I would pursue that, so I was really
fortunate. I started as a PA and got a spot as a camera assistant on these 16mm classic documentaries,
before working my way to camera operator and then director of photography."
He's one of only three cinematographers to win back-to-back Academy Awards in 1996 when he followed
his Legends Of The Fall success with an Oscar for Braveheart. A magician of the great outdoors, he's
travelled the globe shooting big historical epics from British Columbia (Legends Of The Fall) and New
Zealand (The Last Samurai) to County Meath, Ireland (Braveheart) and tropical Queensland (The Thin Red
Line). The latter paired him with Terrence Malick. "Our introduction came over quite a few sessions on the
phone", Toll remembers, "before we met in person. He's a shy person but he's also incredibly gregarious."
The pair travelled to the Solomon Islands to scout it as a possible location for the shoot. "It's not a tourist
destination," he laughs. "It's not like going on vacation in Hawaii, put it that way."
The Ohioan has stowed his passport over the past 24 months to shoot Iron Man 3 in California and North
Carolina, and work with Lana and Andy Wachowski on Jupiter Ascending in Illinois ("A mix of sciencefiction and contemporary Chicago," is how he describes it). When Empire caught up with him he was back
at home in sunny Carpinteria, California, "working on TV commercials and catching up on odds and ends".
THE SHOT

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

YEAR: 1955

DIRECTOR: CHARLES LAUGHTON

CINEMATOGRAPHER: STANLEY CORTEZ

Stanley Cortez's The Night Of The Hunter is unique. It's a mystery-thriller that mixes European influences with
traditional Hollywood filmmaking in a way that's film noirish but very Hollywood-looking. You can see how
influenced it is by German Expressionism, with these very graphic, stark, contrasty scenes. Within it, there's
some unbelievably terrific images that have a way of staying with you. There are several sequences that just
stand out as being unique. There's the shot of the car in the lake and Robert Mitchum's character on a horse

silhouetted against the horizon. There's also a shot of Lillian Gish, who plays the old lady who adopts the kids,
sitting in a chair on the porch and Mitchum is visible through the screen, semi-silhouetted outside, and
another woman walks in with a lamp. The lamp illuminates the screen and he disappears, and when the lamp
goes out he's not there anymore. It's Hollywood trickery done in a way that you really appreciate.
The Night Of The Hunter is a film that's been reappreciated because it's so visually stylised but it's also got so
much of that era of filmmaking in it: it's a little corny, a little overdone, and Robert Mitchum is so over-the-top,
it's completely engrossing, You can't take your eyes off of him. I wasn't old enough to catch its original release
but somehow I caught in a theatre in the early '60s, I've no idea how, before I got involved in filmmaking. But I
could definitely recognise the photographic aspects of it.
Stanley was more recognised for this and The Magnificent Ambersons than any of his other work. Like most
cinematographers, he adapted his style for each project and each director. I don't think you can attribute a
particular style to Stanley, but sometimes an individual movie can become a hallmark of a cinematographer's
career.

Phedon Papamichael
From a 15 year-old with a Super 8, to a 17 year-old with a Nikon, to a spell as a photojournalist, to Cool
Runnings' cinematographer and now a 51 year-old with an Oscar nomination to his name, Phedon
Papamichael's early passion for the image, both moving and still, has flourished in a way that will surely
encourage dark-room devotees everywhere to dream big.
For Empire's celebration, the Greek-born DP has picked a sequence from a film shot a few hundred miles
across the Ionian Sea from his native land. Jean-Luc Godard's poignant lament to the slow death of a
marriage, Le Mpris (Contempt) charts the tumult of a screenwriter (Michel Piccoli), his wife (Brigitte
Bardot) and a Hollywood mogul (Jack Palance) as a sun-baked dance above the Gulf of Salerno on the
island of Capri. It's a film that's shot through with allusions to Greek mythology, boasting a Georges
Delerue score filled with cues that will be familiar to Scorsese fans and breathtaking beauty, thanks to the
craft of New Wave lenser Raoul Coutard.
That combination inspired Papamichael. "I used to take pictures of skies and walls and textures, but rarely
of people," recalls the naturalised American cinematographer of those snap-happy Nikon days. "Here was
someone doing something similar to what I was doing with my still photos, but telling a story with it."

Lately he's been acclaimed for his work on Alexander Payne films The Descendants and Nebraska, and shot
George Clooney's art caper The Monuments Men. "I like to see what happens at the actual location when I
see them block it and rehearse it," he explains of his method, elaborating on that creative alchemy with
Payne. "Alexander is a very precise filmmaker, but we let the actor inhabit the frame. We don't just cover
the actor on every sense. Close-ups are for a reason." But can he remember that Cool Runnings slogan?
"Feel the rhythm, fee uh, do you know it?"
THE SHOT

LE MPRIS
YEAR: 1963

DIRECTOR: JEAN-LUC GODARD

CINEMATOGRAPHER: RAOUL COUTARD

This is my favourite Godard film. It's a movie that first made me aware of the cinematographer's job. I grew up
watching films and always had a fascination with it, but this was the first time I realised that there was
somebody else besides the director behind the camera. This sequence was shot at (modernist clifftop villa)
Casa Malaparte, and I was lucky enough to go there two years ago. You can't really get to it as a regular
tourist, because there's no road access, but I took a boat. It's completely overgrown with trees now, but in the
film it just stands as this incredible edifice on a rock.There's one shot in particular that stood out for me. It's a
little sequence on the roof of that house in Malaparte. It starts with a wide shot with Michel Piccoli looking for
Bardot and then cuts to a very graphic shot on the flat top roof as she's pacing and you have the blue horizon
line of the Mediterranean in the background. She waves to him, then she walks off and Godard holds this
composition without a cut until he re-enters the frame, doing a reverse pan. He's looking for her, leans over
the edge and sees she's sitting in the window now with Jack Palance. They kiss in the window. She's trying to
make him jealous. She has contempt for him because he's not jealous. It's like Odysseus returning to
Penelope. This CinemaScope colour phase wasn't typical for Godard but these wide, anamorphic frames are
so graphic. They're not traditional compositions from that era. Coutard was the first name I wrote down when I
discovered what a cinematographer does. I thought, "Okay, that's what I want to do."

Nancy Schreiber

"I've just been doing pick-ups for a small movie by a director from The Good Wife," Nancy Schreiber tells
Empire down the Skype wires from LA. "Our youngest cast member is 67 years old!" In her time as a
Hollywood DP, the Detroit native has worked with the young, old, and, in the case of 1992's Visions Of
Light, the truly venerable. Schreiber worked as one of the cinematographers on a documentary about the
art itself, capturing some of the masters of the craft on camera. No pressure, then? "I didn't have time to get
nervous about all my heroes," she laughs. "We had tube cameras heavy and hot and I'd almost be asleep
because the cameras were so hot." Alongside the likes of Greg Toland and Sven Nykvist, Schreiber vividly
recalls her encounters with Vittorio Storaro ("Unbelievable") and Michael Chapman ("He had these big
glasses on and kept looking up into my lights. I'd be, like, 'Oh my god!').
Schreiber, who has DPed films as diverse as Ryan Reynolds thriller The Nines and Neil Labute's pitch black
comedy Your Friends And Neighbors, came up not as a camera assistant but as a gaffer, the head
electrician. At the time, she explains, that was "the New York way" to make your way into the craft.
"Thankfully I [also] had to learn the camera but I didn't really pursue it, because lighting seemed more
relevant. Somehow I didn't blow up New York because we didn't have generators back in the day and we
had to tie into the power grid. It was the Wild Wild East back then!"
Now an established ASC and Academy member, the cinematographer plucks her choice of shot from a '60s
crime classic. "I've picked Point Blank", she explains, "because a week ago I filmed Angie Dickinson for a
series on women in film. She is so beautiful still, so together and so sharp. I hadn't seen Point Blank for
many years, I had to go away and see it again."
THE SHOT

POINT BLANK
YEAR: 1967

DIRECTOR: JOHN BOORMAN

CINEMATOGRAPHER: PHILIP H. LATHROP

It wasn't only the photography on Point Break that affected me when I first saw it, it was the sound. It all goes
together. The sequence I've picked is Lee Marvin walking though the airport when he's left San Francisco to
go look for his wife, who's cheated on him in Los Angeles. You see this very dramatic image: it's a tracking
shot at a low angle, with these great fluorescent lights and a very austere background, and there's nothing
there except Lee Marvin and great architecture. The film cuts several times to him and each time it comes
back to this tracking shot of Lee walking down this corridor. Then it cuts to his wife (Sharon Acker) and it's
very innocent. She's putting on her make-up, she's under a hairdryer, picking out her wardrobe, and it's
almost like she's waiting for him, which, of course, she can't be because she thinks he's dead. And do you
know what? He might be! This whole movie could be what's going through his head before he dies. What's a
dream and what's a reality? It's really confusing in this movie. I heard that at the time MGM didn't know what
the film was about, but somehow they let it through.outside and the same footsteps are still going on. He runs
into the bedroom and shoots the bed, thinking that's where his former best friend and now lover of his wife is.

The whole montage has built up to this very graphic shooting of a bed scene; it's very sexual. I just remember
the tonal quality from the corridor where Lee is walking to the place his wife is living, it's all in tones of grey,
monochromatic. As the film build later on, more colour comes in, especially when the Angie Dickinson
character arrives.
I'm calling Point Blank 'neo-noir', but it's shot mostly in the day. You see these great anamorphic images: very
spare, dramatic framing and great angles. I read somewhere that most of the film was shot on a 40mm
Panavision lens, anamorphic, which had just been built right before Lathrop and Boorman shot this movie.
You think of Mad Men and its production design, which is so self-conscious, and then you look at Point Blank ,
which was made during the same era, and John Boorman and (cinematographer) Philip Lathrop made Los
Angeles look like this very lonely, bleak place. It's very minimal.

Reed Morano
Still in her mid-thirties, Reed Morano has already consolidated her rep as a up-and-coming
cinematographer with a CV laden with indie gold. Emerging from the talent factory that is NYU's Tisch
School of the Arts, she worked her way up on the ladder as camera assistant and grip before breaking
through with 2008's Frozen River, a crime yarn that also yielded an Oscar nod for Melissa Leo. Despite
biting cold (her HD camera iced up at one point) and a zero-thrills budget, she lent the acclaimed drama a
naturalist look that caught the eye of critics and fellow filmmakers alike.
Since then Morano has brought her eye to bear on Rob Reiner's And So It Goes, Beat-era character drama
Kill Your Darlings and this year's Sundance hit The Skeleton Twins among others, and added her name to
the American Society of Cinematographers's still-small band of female members. She's also formed a onewoman logistics department on Shut Up & Play The Hits, managing a multi-camera set-up that farewelled
LCD Soundsystem with a stellar-looking concert doc, and is currently at work on Meadowland, her
directorial debut. Morano cites Gordon Willis as an inspiration for her work - "I like to go as dark as I can,"
she tells Empire, "and to take risks. Watching a lot of his work gave me the courage to do that" - but it's the
work of Wim Wenders' long-standing DP, Dutchman Robby Mller, that she picks for Empire's continuing
celebration of cinematography.
THE SHOT

PARIS, TEXAS
YEAR: 1984

DIRECTOR: WIM WENDERS

CINEMATOGRAPHER: ROBBY MLLER

I first saw Paris, Texas when I was about 19 and at college. I went to NYU and we used to watch a lot of Wim
Wenders films. I had an older boyfriend in film school at the time and he was really like well-versed in film and
made me watch La Jete and Le Mpris and all the movies I love now. I think I was so blinded by love that I
would just watch anything. (laughs)
What I like most about it is the use of mixed lighting. It's the mixture of very strong fluorescent colour light with
tungsten light in a framed shot, or, say magic hour light mixed like florescent light. It definitely affects the
mood, adding a sense of eerieness. As a DP you're making a strong statement [using it]. It reminds me of the
work of (American stills photographer) Philip-Lorca diCorcia. I don't know if his work inspired Paris, Texas but
he was taking these photos around the same timeframe that it was made. Maybe one inspired the other? Who
knows.
The first shot I noticed and it isn't a particularly tricky one is of the main character, Walt Henderson (Dean
Stockwell), at a gas station on his way to seek out his brother Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) in a different part
of Texas. There's very strong neon in the gas station and behind him is the most amazing sunset you can
ever imagine in the background. It's a strong statement a very beautiful shot. He's about to go to a weird
place: to find his brother who's been missing for four years. They haven't seen each other for four years and
he's been taking care of his brother's child. His brother is very strange. He doesn't talk for a while and you
never really learn in the movie why he went away, so it's a little eerie in that sense and I think that's why they
made this choice. Personally I like to use mixed colour temperatures. If you do it to an extreme, it's not very
naturalistic, but it's kind of cool, and if you use a slightly subtler version it can be very beautiful. It's natural
because in real life we have mixed up colour temperatures, they just blend a little bit better.