Air, Water, Earth, Fire: DP Michael Balfry Brings “Avatar: The Last Airbender” to Life
Netflix took on producing the live-action remake of the long-running, beloved Nickelodeon animation Avatar: The Last Airbender, about four elemental kingdoms (fire, air, water, and earth) who live in harmony until the Fire Nation starts a war to take over the world. The series, which premiered late last month, is true to the original story. Twelve-year-old Aang (Gordon Cormier) is the sole remaining airbender after a Fire Nation attack, and he survives after being frozen in an iceberg for a century before waking up in an icy part of the world of the Southern Water Tribe.
“Maestro” Cinematographer Matthew Libatique Makes Music With the Camera
Spanning four decades of love, art, and loss, the tortured yet deeply moving marriage of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and Costa Rican actress Felicia Montealegre Bernstein (Carey Mulligan), serves as the crux of Cooper’s sophomore directorial offering. Rather than a pure biopic, Maestro — the visually (and sonically) absorbing musical drama from Netflix — anchors its narrative verve on the couple’s tumultuous marriage and the sacrifices that art demands.
Best of 2023: “Ahsoka” Cinematographer Eric Steelberg on Lensing a Rebel Jedi’s Journey Through Time & Space
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
For Ahsoka cinematographer Eric Steelberg, lensing the latest live-action Star Wars series was a dream come true. Growing up in thrall to George Lucas’s original trilogy, Steelberg would find himself on set while filming the new series, surrounded by massive spaceships both practical and virtual (the latter thanks to Industrial Light &
Best of 2023: How “The Color Purple” DP Dan Laustsen Made Visual Music
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year. This interview with “The Color Purple” cinematographer Dan Laustsen more than qualifies, and, with the film opening wide in theaters today, it feels like a fitting Christmas Day post. Happy Holidays!
Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen has been shooting movies for forty years, earning two Oscar nominations along the way for his contributions to Guillermo del Toro’s films The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley.
“All of Us Strangers” Cinematographer Jamie Ramsay on Lighting a Lonely Life
Based on Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers, writer and director Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers takes place between a barren tower block in London, where Adam (Andrew Scott) leads a solitary existence, and his childhood home in the suburbs, where he frequently visits his parents, who died thirty years earlier. In London, Adam spends his days alone, until his neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) appears outside his door, proffering whiskey.
How “The Color Purple” DP Dan Laustsen Made Visual Music
Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen has been shooting movies for forty years, earning two Oscar nominations along the way for his contributions to Guillermo del Toro’s films The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley. Director Blitz Bazawule, on the other hand, had never made a major Hollywood motion picture before helming The Color Purple (opening Dec. 25). But together, director and cinematographer melded their talents to resounding effect to create a sumptuous-looking movie musical based on Alice Walker’s 1971 novel.
“Saltburn” Cinematographer Linus Sandgren on Creating a Fluid Painting for Emerald Fennell
The comic drama Saltburn from director Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) is as beautiful as it is macabre. It’s 2006, and Oliver (Barry Keoghan), an awkward, lonely student at Oxford, finds his place within the scenic confines of his university by becoming friends with Felix (Jacob Elordi), who is everything Oliver is not — handsome, charming, and rich. Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer at Saltburn,
“Radical” Cinematographer Mateo Londono Takes us to School in Christopher Zalla’s Moving New Film
A maverick teacher challenges the norms at an elementary school in the border town of Matamoros in northern Mexico. Such is the fact-based story that unfolds in Radical (in theaters now), led by Mexican star Eugenio Derbez (Coda, Instructions Not Included) in a film directed by Chris Zalla (Blood of My Blood).
The teacher, Sergio Juarez Correa (Derbez), aims to teach his students lessons that will help them navigate the difficult world outside the classroom,
“The Killer” Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt on Re-Teaming With David Fincher
David Fincher’s lean, mean The Killer is a film stripped down to its bare essentials, much like the work of its titular assassin. Based on a French graphic novel and adapted by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en), Fincher’s adaptation tells the story of an unnamed killer (Michael Fassbender) and the strict, self-imposed protocols of his trade. It’s the rules of the process that concern the titular character, not moral dilemmas,
Cinematographer Oliver Curtis on Bringing Intimacy and Opulence to “The Buccaneers”
With director Susanna White’s The Buccaneers, an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s unfinished final novel set in the 1870s, Apple TV+ adds a period drama with a modern spin to its lineup. If any 19th-century chronicler of the era’s mannerisms can withstand a contemporary update, it’s Wharton, whose insight into upper-class idiosyncrasies on both sides of the pond ring true, even set to a modern soundtrack and present-day dialogue as is the case here.
How “Lessons in Chemistry” DP Zachary Galler Created a Show-Within-a-Show
In writer Susannah Grant’s adaption of the novel Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, currently airing on Apple TV+, Brie Larson plays a budding chemist, Elizabeth Zott, thwarted in her work by her male colleagues who put politics and patriarchy above credible scientific achievement. Shut out of any hope of a chemistry career despite her brilliance, Elizabeth falls into a television career. It’s the early 1950s, and cooking shows are still relatively new,
“Killers of the Flower Moon” Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto Illuminates Martin Scorsese’s Twisted Tale
When I connected with Rodrigo Prieto for our video interview, as one might imagine a cinematographer to do, he was perfectly lit in a warm amber glow, perhaps a nod to a fire motif visually laced in Martin Scorese’s Killers of the Flower Moon – a love story between Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) and Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) wrapped in the travesty the Osage Nation faced during the 1920s.
Having spoken previously with the Mexican native as far back as Argo (2012),
How “Quantum Leap” DP Ana M. Amortegui Keeps the Show Dynamic Across the Centuries
The past is prologue, but on Quantum Leap, the past is also the present and the future as Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee) and his team embark on dangerous lifesaving excursions through history. The time travel epic is back with more mysteries that continue to escalate and may even threaten the project itself.
Director of photography Ana M. Amortegui kicked off the style of the series last season working on the pilot and several other episodes.
“Special Ops: Lioness” Cinematographer & Director Paul Cameron on Taylor Sheridan’s International Thriller – Part Two
As noted in part one of our interview with Paul Cameron, he took his first turns at directing for series helming two episodes of Westworld, and he drew on his experience as a cinematographer and from his work for some pretty important mentors. “I learned so much from working with Tony Scott,” Cameron said, referring to collaborating with Scott on films like Man on Fire and Déjà Vu.
“Special Ops: Lioness” Cinematographer & Director Paul Cameron on Taylor Sheridan’s International Thriller
As director of photography, Paul Cameron has shot such disparate films and series as Man On Fire, Collateral, Déjà Vu, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and Westworld. He has worked with a slew of top-tier directors, including Michael Mann, Tony Scott, and Jonathan Nolan. Now, for Paramount+’s acclaimed limited series, Special Ops: Lioness, Paul Cameron – as he did with Westworld – worked both as a cinematographer and director.
“Ahsoka” Cinematographer Eric Steelberg on Lensing a Rebel Jedi’s Journey Through Time & Space
For Ahsoka cinematographer Eric Steelberg, lensing the latest live-action Star Wars series was a dream come true. Growing up in thrall to George Lucas’s original trilogy, Steelberg would find himself on set while filming the new series, surrounded by massive spaceships both practical and virtual (the latter thanks to Industrial Light & Magic’s LED immersive soundstage the Volume), astonished by his own job.
“You’re sitting there trying to figure this out and tell the story because it is a job,
Best of Summer 2023: How “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” DP Fraser Taggart Pulled Off That Insane Train Sequence
*It’s our annual “Best of Summer” look back at some (not all) of our favorite interviews from the past few months. This non-comprehensive look back includes the Barbenheimer phenomenon and the wonderful interviews that followed those two history-making films, chats with the talented folks behind Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, our profile of MPA Creator Award Recipient and filmmaker extraordinaire Gina Prince-Bythewood and more.
Editors’ Note: This story contains mild spoilers.
Emmy-Nominated “Barry” Cinematographer Carl Herse Steps into the Darkness for the Final Season
The life of a hired hitman may seem mysterious and exotic, but Barry has a blunt message for us all. No one is immune to insecurities, mundane moments, or our own very bad ideas. The series’ final season freed the characters to face their fates, be they heroic, humble, or humorous. Barry ended with tight and tense action where no one was able to outrun their past and step out into the light.
“Oppenheimer” Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema on Making History With Christopher Nolan
Oppenheimer marks the fourth collaboration between director Christopher Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. And like their past efforts, the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the theoretical physicist who spearheaded the effort to create the atomic bomb and then came under attack when he warned the world of its dangers, is anything but routine. It’s a three-hour epic that has mesmerized audiences around the globe,
How “Sanctuary” Cinematographer Ludovica Isidori Turned a Single Room Into a Dynamic Psycho-Emotional Arena
How do you make a single location subliminally consume an entire story? That was the question Italian cinematographer Ludovica Isidori had to answer in director Zachary Wigon’s sophomore film Sanctuary.
Starring Christopher Abbott (Girls) as Hal, an heir to a luxury hotel empire, and Margaret Qualley (Maid), a dominatrix named Rebecca who is equal parts seductive, smart, and clever, Sanctuary is a slow-burn psychological thriller that reveals the intimacy of their unorthodox relationship with delicious restraint.
