arts@sfbg.com

FILM A few wordless minutes into Meek's Cutoff, we see a boy carving the word "LOST" into a log. You know then that Kelly Reichardt has made another movie about being stranded in America, this one a neorealist western. The year is 1845, and a three-wagon caravan is crossing the hardscrabble northwestern plains en route to the Willamette. The families have hired the rogue guide Meek (Bruce Greenwood) to show them the way, but he's only got them low on water. The place we now call Oregon remains contested territory. There are dire murmurs that Meek may be a British agent, purposefully leading American settlers astray; Meek redirects this unease toward the prospect of race war. When the group captures a Cayuse man (Rod Rondeaux), the guide advocates hanging. Sanguine Solomon (Will Patton) maintains that they should keep him on to find water.

The distant shots of the men deliberating their best route — patent guesswork — could be from any of the three women's perspectives, but we have little doubt the attentiveness belongs to Solomon's wife Emily (Michelle Williams, reprising her role as Reichardt's moral center). Millie (Zoe Kazan) is young and weak-minded (she falls prey to Meek's fear-mongering); Glory (Shirley Henderson) is pious, pregnant, and reluctant to accept charity. Emily is skeptical of the wisdom of men.

Meek's Cutoff is in large part about Emily's being brought to action — first to try to earn the Indian's trust by mending his moccasin, and second by holding Meek at gunpoint when he aims to fulfill his blood lust. Unlike the Indians in classical "progressive" westerns like Broken Arrow (1950), the Cayuse does not prove himself as the noble embodiment of liberal values. He remains wholly Other, and any perceived alignment with Emily is ultimately incommensurable. The film offers a clear moral preference for Emily's stand, but Reichardt and screenwriter Jon Raymond's loose chain of scenes — one imagines them as chapters with plainly descriptive titles, as in 19th century novels — neither rewards nor punishes such conviction.

After working with different cinematographers on each of her previous features, Reichardt has found a keeper in Chris Blauvelt: the slow, nearly psychedelic dissolves, distant views of riders approaching and lamp-lit conversations burnish this film with a newfound compositional integrity. Reichardt's expressive sound design (a squeaky wheel is practically a character) and knack for staging muffled performances remain in evidence, but not everything works so well in Meek's Cutoff. In particular, the title character's transformation from charismatic braggart to hateful sociopath feels roughshod. By the time Emily has him at gunpoint, the scales have tipped. She's too brave by half, and his monstrousness is similarly overstretched.

Yet one forgives this narrative convenience because Reichardt in other ways acknowledges the difficulty of mounting a western with a female protagonist. Gone are the telling gestures, close-ups, and music cues glinting through Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008); the oblique camera style shies away even from the minor pleasures of detail. These things have everything to do with the film's torn attitude toward the genre: one in which key dualities of wilderness-civilization and individual-community are resolved by the arrival of a man who knows how and why to use a gun.

Williams submerges into the role as she did with Wendy, another marooned pilgrim, projecting tense defiance rather than magical iconography. Reichardt and Raymond cast the ideal of heroism still further adrift from any notion of destiny in their stand-still plotting of scenes. Meek's Cutoff may be the antithesis of Cormac McCarthy's The Road — instead of a fantasy of fatherly love slicing through a postapocalyptic nowhere, here we have the struggle for the soul of a fragile community that may not survive, but is liable to be remembered.

MEEK'S CUTOFF opens Fri/6 in Bay Area theaters.

arts@sfbg.com

FILM A few wordless minutes into Meek's Cutoff, we see a boy carving the word "LOST" into a log. You know then that Kelly Reichardt has made another movie about being stranded in America, this one a neorealist western. The year is 1845, and a three-wagon caravan is crossing the hardscrabble northwestern plains en route to the Willamette. The families have hired the rogue guide Meek (Bruce Greenwood) to show them the way, but he's only got them low on water. The place we now call Oregon remains contested territory. There are dire murmurs that Meek may be a British agent, purposefully leading American settlers astray; Meek redirects this unease toward the prospect of race war. When the group captures a Cayuse man (Rod Rondeaux), the guide advocates hanging. Sanguine Solomon (Will Patton) maintains that they should keep him on to find water.

The distant shots of the men deliberating their best route — patent guesswork — could be from any of the three women's perspectives, but we have little doubt the attentiveness belongs to Solomon's wife Emily (Michelle Williams, reprising her role as Reichardt's moral center). Millie (Zoe Kazan) is young and weak-minded (she falls prey to Meek's fear-mongering); Glory (Shirley Henderson) is pious, pregnant, and reluctant to accept charity. Emily is skeptical of the wisdom of men.

Meek's Cutoff is in large part about Emily's being brought to action — first to try to earn the Indian's trust by mending his moccasin, and second by holding Meek at gunpoint when he aims to fulfill his blood lust. Unlike the Indians in classical "progressive" westerns like Broken Arrow (1950), the Cayuse does not prove himself as the noble embodiment of liberal values. He remains wholly Other, and any perceived alignment with Emily is ultimately incommensurable. The film offers a clear moral preference for Emily's stand, but Reichardt and screenwriter Jon Raymond's loose chain of scenes — one imagines them as chapters with plainly descriptive titles, as in 19th century novels — neither rewards nor punishes such conviction.

After working with different cinematographers on each of her previous features, Reichardt has found a keeper in Chris Blauvelt: the slow, nearly psychedelic dissolves, distant views of riders approaching and lamp-lit conversations burnish this film with a newfound compositional integrity. Reichardt's expressive sound design (a squeaky wheel is practically a character) and knack for staging muffled performances remain in evidence, but not everything works so well in Meek's Cutoff. In particular, the title character's transformation from charismatic braggart to hateful sociopath feels roughshod. By the time Emily has him at gunpoint, the scales have tipped. She's too brave by half, and his monstrousness is similarly overstretched.

Yet one forgives this narrative convenience because Reichardt in other ways acknowledges the difficulty of mounting a western with a female protagonist. Gone are the telling gestures, close-ups, and music cues glinting through Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008); the oblique camera style shies away even from the minor pleasures of detail. These things have everything to do with the film's torn attitude toward the genre: one in which key dualities of wilderness-civilization and individual-community are resolved by the arrival of a man who knows how and why to use a gun.

Williams submerges into the role as she did with Wendy, another marooned pilgrim, projecting tense defiance rather than magical iconography. Reichardt and Raymond cast the ideal of heroism still further adrift from any notion of destiny in their stand-still plotting of scenes. Meek's Cutoff may be the antithesis of Cormac McCarthy's The Road — instead of a fantasy of fatherly love slicing through a postapocalyptic nowhere, here we have the struggle for the soul of a fragile community that may not survive, but is liable to be remembered.

MEEK'S CUTOFF opens Fri/6 in Bay Area theaters.

arts@sfbg.com

FILM A few wordless minutes into Meek's Cutoff, we see a boy carving the word "LOST" into a log. You know then that Kelly Reichardt has made another movie about being stranded in America, this one a neorealist western. The year is 1845, and a three-wagon caravan is crossing the hardscrabble northwestern plains en route to the Willamette. The families have hired the rogue guide Meek (Bruce Greenwood) to show them the way, but he's only got them low on water. The place we now call Oregon remains contested territory. There are dire murmurs that Meek may be a British agent, purposefully leading American settlers astray; Meek redirects this unease toward the prospect of race war. When the group captures a Cayuse man (Rod Rondeaux), the guide advocates hanging. Sanguine Solomon (Will Patton) maintains that they should keep him on to find water.

The distant shots of the men deliberating their best route — patent guesswork — could be from any of the three women's perspectives, but we have little doubt the attentiveness belongs to Solomon's wife Emily (Michelle Williams, reprising her role as Reichardt's moral center). Millie (Zoe Kazan) is young and weak-minded (she falls prey to Meek's fear-mongering); Glory (Shirley Henderson) is pious, pregnant, and reluctant to accept charity. Emily is skeptical of the wisdom of men.

Meek's Cutoff is in large part about Emily's being brought to action — first to try to earn the Indian's trust by mending his moccasin, and second by holding Meek at gunpoint when he aims to fulfill his blood lust. Unlike the Indians in classical "progressive" westerns like Broken Arrow (1950), the Cayuse does not prove himself as the noble embodiment of liberal values. He remains wholly Other, and any perceived alignment with Emily is ultimately incommensurable. The film offers a clear moral preference for Emily's stand, but Reichardt and screenwriter Jon Raymond's loose chain of scenes — one imagines them as chapters with plainly descriptive titles, as in 19th century novels — neither rewards nor punishes such conviction.

After working with different cinematographers on each of her previous features, Reichardt has found a keeper in Chris Blauvelt: the slow, nearly psychedelic dissolves, distant views of riders approaching and lamp-lit conversations burnish this film with a newfound compositional integrity. Reichardt's expressive sound design (a squeaky wheel is practically a character) and knack for staging muffled performances remain in evidence, but not everything works so well in Meek's Cutoff. In particular, the title character's transformation from charismatic braggart to hateful sociopath feels roughshod. By the time Emily has him at gunpoint, the scales have tipped. She's too brave by half, and his monstrousness is similarly overstretched.

Yet one forgives this narrative convenience because Reichardt in other ways acknowledges the difficulty of mounting a western with a female protagonist. Gone are the telling gestures, close-ups, and music cues glinting through Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008); the oblique camera style shies away even from the minor pleasures of detail. These things have everything to do with the film's torn attitude toward the genre: one in which key dualities of wilderness-civilization and individual-community are resolved by the arrival of a man who knows how and why to use a gun.

Williams submerges into the role as she did with Wendy, another marooned pilgrim, projecting tense defiance rather than magical iconography. Reichardt and Raymond cast the ideal of heroism still further adrift from any notion of destiny in their stand-still plotting of scenes. Meek's Cutoff may be the antithesis of Cormac McCarthy's The Road — instead of a fantasy of fatherly love slicing through a postapocalyptic nowhere, here we have the struggle for the soul of a fragile community that may not survive, but is liable to be remembered.

MEEK'S CUTOFF opens Fri/6 in Bay Area theaters.

Today Red Giant Software released two new Magic Bullet effects for Final Cut, Premiere, and After Effects, and they are 100% free for any kind of use.

First up is Colorista Free. Part of the goal of the original Colorista was to create a single, easy-to-use 3-way color corrector that would be consistent across multiple platforms. When we updated it to Colorista II, the goal expanded to packing as much color correction power as could possibly fit into one effect. Colorista II has been extremely popular, which warms my hear because it means filmmakers everywhere are putting real care into their color correction work.

But I never lost sight of that original goal of creating a color corrector that everyone could use. I pointed out to the team that Rebel CC continues to be a popular download from Prolost. We joked internally that Colorista II was so powerful, we should just give the original Colorista away for free.

And then I stopped laughing.

Colorista Free isn’t exactly the original Colorista. It lacks a few features, most notably Power Masks. But by stripping it down to something simple, we enabled a feature that even Colorista II can’t boast: CDL compatibility.

CDL stands for Color Decision List. Like an EDL, but for color corrections, the CDL is a method of sharing simple, primary grades between different systems. It was created by the American Society of Cinematographers and is supported by nearly all high-end color grading systems.

Twirl open the CDL section of Colorista Free and you’ll see nine sliders called Slope, Offset, and Power. These, along with the Saturation control, are the ten values that the CDL uses to communicate a grade. You can edit them directly if you like, but you don’t have to—they are a mirror of the color wheels. If you have CDL values from another system, you can enter them manually, or create a scripted workflow that transfers values to and from these sliders.

The CDL is an emerging standard and the workflows surrounding it are not set in stone, so we’re releasing Colorista Free as “workflow ready,” in part to help encourage people to use the CDL, and maybe even share the scripts and tools they use to build a workflow around Colorista Free and other CDL-compliant tools.

If you want an easy way to ensure that CDL values stay attached to your shots, Colorista Free allows you to burn them in to the image. In this way you could do a rough color pass on an edit and send it along to an online color session. The colorist can use the values burned-in to the image as a starting point for their grading, even if they don’t have an automated CDL pipeline.

Or you can just ignore all that stuff and add a free color corrector to your arsenal, confident that you can share your projects with others without requiring them to buy any plug-ins.

Magic Bullet Colorista Free works with Adobe After Effects CS3, CS4 and CS5, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and Final Cut Pro 6 and 7.

LUT Buddy is also about sharing color corrections, but in a completely different way. Look Up Tables, or LUTs for short, are compact files capable of holding complex color adjustments. People use LUTs to share color grades, simulate display devices and film stocks, and correct gamma and color space issues. The problem is, they’re hard to make. LUT Buddy solves that handily by drawing an unfolded color cube on your image. You can then color correct it however you like. A second application of LUT Buddy reads the corrected colors from the cube and stores the adjustment as a LUT. You can then save that LUT in a variety of formats, or load it back in to LUT Buddy to apply the color correction. With LUT Buddy, a ten-layer-deep color correction can be compacted into one, tiny file that can be loaded into almost any high-end system, and even used for real-time previews on set.

Magic Bullet LUT Buddy works with Adobe After Effects CS3, CS4 and CS5, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, Final Cut Pro 6 and 7, and Motion 3 and 4.

Filed under: Columns, Cinematical

Earlier this year, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel was awarded with the American Society of Cinematographers' Lifetime Achievement Award. While he received widespread acclaim for 'The Black Stallion' and 'Being There' early on in his filmography, it was the work he did with independent cinema legend John Cassavetes that launched his career. Deschanel and the director teamed up for 'A Woman Under the Influence' -- the harrowing story of a working-class family, starring Peter Falk and Cassevetes' wife and muse, Gena Rowlands.

"I'll be whatever you want me to be," Mabel Longhetti tells her husband, Nick. He's a blue-collar worker who shouts before talking and slaps before caressing. Mabel's prone to some odd behavior -- it's like another part of her that tends to crawl out of hiding when Nick isn't around. She searches for affection at a bar with strange men, and is totally unprepared for what happens after they share a drink and a kiss. Casual meals at the family's impossibly long dining table (that often feels empty even when it's completely full of people) turn into awkward and inappropriate arenas for dancing and singing and flirting. Long pauses and longer eye contact make everyone around her uneasy, particularly her husband.

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LOS ANGELES, October 11, 2010- Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC will receive the 2011 American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Lifetime Achievement Award. The presentation will be made during the 25th Annual ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards celebration here at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel on February 13, 2011. "The Lifetime Achievement Award is a reflection of the impact that a cinematographer has made on the art of filmmaking rather than the capping of a career," says ASC President Michael Goi. "It is our way of acknowledging a true artist in his prime. Roger Deakins raises the artistic profile of our profession with every movie and he will continue to do so for many years." Deakins has earned Oscar® nominations for The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Fargo (1996), Kundun (1997), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), The Assassination of Jesse James and the Coward Robert Ford (2007), No Country for Old Men (2007) and The Reader (shared with Chris Menges, ASC, BSC, 2008). His peers nominated all eight of those films and Revolutionary Road (2008) for ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards for feature film cinematography. Deakins claimed top ASC honors for The Shawshank Redemption and The Man Who Wasn't There. "I had mixed emotions when I was told about this recognition," Deakins says. "To be honest, I am flattered, but I also feel like I am only just getting started. I'm enjoying what I do more than I ever have and there seems to be so much more I want ... Read More »

Anyone who goes to the movies in Toronto can attest to the quality of this city’s rep cinemas. In the downtown core, The Bloor, Royal, and Underground consistently provide quality second-run films, and more importantly, special presentation screenings designed to further expand the horizons of this city’s cineastes. Exceptional amongst these is The Revue on Roncesvalles, which gives way-westenders the rep cinema experience with a little education thrown into the mix.

Alan Bacchus struck a chord with Toronto film-goers with his Canadian Cinema in Revue program, which gave audiences a chance to see some underrated Can-con classics on the big screen and received Best Revival Programming honours from NOW in 2009. Bacchus is now preparing another ongoing series, Great Cinematography in Revue, which kicks off this Sunday with a screening of Terrence Malick’s epic 1998 war drama The Thin Red Line.

Nearly limitless in its scope and ambition, Malick’s film looks at the emotional and physical wages of war through the eyes of American soldiers stationed in and around the island of Guadalcanal during the Second World War. Featuring an ensemble cast including everyone from Nick Nolte, Jim Caviezel, Elias Koteas, Sean Penn, John Travolta, Adrien Brody, and George Clooney (briefly), The Thin Red Line may be the definitive masterpiece by one of American cinema’s undisputed (if under-appreciated) greats. Bacchus managed to contact the film’s cinematographer, John Toll (who took back-to-back Oscars for shooting Legends of the Fall and Braveheart), who will be appearing at the Revue for a post-screening Q&A; period.

We talked with Bacchus about the Revue’s programming, Malick’s film, and the future of Great Cinematography in Revue.

Torontoist: It was exciting to find out that you guys are screening The Thin Red Line.

Alan Bacchus: That’s, like, one of my favourite films. A movie I can watch over and over again. I hadn’t seen it screened in Toronto in the last, maybe, ten years or so. I can’t recall another screening. So that was a no-brainer.

So how do you put together a program like Great Cinematography in Revue, or Canadian Cinema in Revue?

The cinema is a community-run cinema. It does second-run movies like other rep cinemas do, but there’s a strong sense of community involvement in the cinema. It was revived by a couple who lived in the area who put up the money to keep it from being abandoned. And they kept that spirit alive. They always welcome new ideas. I first got to know them by calling them out of the blue. When I met with them they sensed my enthusiasm and I pitched them the idea of doing a series where we screen Canadian films on the big screen. And the cinematography thing I just came up with and pitched them on it. In the spirit of community involvement, the cinema has been open to any ideas outside of just the usual second-run movies.

How much look-ahead goes into this? How many films and guests do you have lined up before you get a program like this off the ground?

The cinema doesn’t program too far in advance. They like to stay flexible. They’ll only program two or three weeks in advance. I’m not really sure what’s next. We kind of play it one screening at a time so it’s not too onerous for anybody. We’re all very flexible. We’re not mandated to do something every month or every two months, as long as we keep the fire burning. Everyone who works there—well, except for the manager and that—is a volunteer. It’s called the Revue Film Society, and it’s a board of directors kind of thing. With this screening, I made a connection with the Canadian Society of Cinematographers, which I assumed would be interested in helping to present these screenings. They helped with getting the connection to John Toll, the Q&A; speaker.

Besides it being a favourite of yours, what is it about The Thin Red Line that works within the context of this series?

Obviously it’s a fantastic film. It’s a war film, but an art war film. It’s so ambitious. It kind of turns some people off. It’s not Saving Private Ryan, but it has a much deeper meaning. I have more emotional attachment to The Thin Red Line than I do to Saving Private Ryan. As a piece of cinema it’s just elegant.

I’m also really attracted to the making of the film—and hopefully John Toll can enlighten us on that—and this idea of Terrence Malick waiting twenty years in between his second film and this third film. And the fact that he doesn’t do another Days of Heaven, he does this hugely ambitious war film. I remember reading back in the day, and this is before internet buzz was commonplace, reports of this film and where it’s being shot and who’s being cast in this project that nobody really knew anything about. It had this kind of aura to it that really stuck with me. And that’s something I want to learn about more.

What you do at the Revue is interesting, because a lot of rep cinemas will do special presentations, but you seem to have an almost educational mandate. You’re teaching people about the art of cinema as a cohesive whole, whether it be through looking at the screenwriting process or cinematography. Is this part of any official directive or plan on the part of the Revue Film Society?

Not really. It’s just something I’ve been doing. Because I’m a filmmaker as well and I work in the film industry and that’s what I’m interested in. And I assume that if I’m interested in it, then there’s got to be a group of people out there who are interested in it. There’s no specific mandate or anything we’re actively trying to tap into. If anything, it’s a little sub-market of programming that’s under-represented in Toronto. There’s lots of great alternative programming here with what the Toronto Underground does, and what The Bloor does, and The Royal, and the Fox. Everyone’s doing their own cool little thing. And I’m just trying to do my own cool little thing that maybe some of the others aren’t doing.

The Revue (400 Roncesvalles Avenue) presents The Thin Red Line on Sunday, August 1 at 3 p.m. And you may want to pack a snack, given that the film is 170 minutes long.

The film ends in the head of the viewer, not on the screen.
--Michael Haneke

Perhaps because I'd recently read L. Timmel Duchamp's interesting and thorough review of the new Library of America edition of Shirley Jackson's major works, Michael Haneke's Palm d'Or-winning film The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band), felt like a movie inspired by a Shirley Jackson story.

It is, though, very much a Michael Haneke film, though a bit of a departure from the movies he's most famous for. We still have the focus on suffering, violence, and guilt; the tone and affect is still analytical, cold, distant; mysteries remain unsolved, their solutions unimportant to an overall scheme in which what matters is not so much the mystery, but the effect of the mystery -- and yet there is a tenderness to some of these scenes that has been rare in much of Haneke's other work. Part of that comes from the large cast of characters: it would be very odd to portray an entire village without showing any people who are basically decent, or without portraying any moments of kind, even loving, emotions. But there's a thematic purpose to the moments of tenderness, too.

For instance, we see a young boy bring his cruel father, the village pastor, a bird in a cage and offer it to him as a replacement for the father's recently-killed bird because, the boy says, his father seemed so sad. The boy's performance is so affecting that it's difficult to keep a dry eye as he speaks, but it's also a moment rich with various meanings and implications. The White Ribbon is a film about the ways brutality reproduces itself, and we can't help but wonder if this boy will escape the fate the other children seem destined for: personalities hardened by the rigid ideology of sin and punishment that has so tortured them all. Yet at the same time, the boy is offering his father a bird in a cage. A small, free creature that is now trapped and owned. We think back to an earlier scene between the boy and father, one in which the boy brought an injured bird (presumably this bird) and asked if he could keep it. "How do you plan to do that?" the father asked.

BOY: We'll heal it.

FATHER: Don't you think, you’ll be attached to it then? Will you let it fly away?

BOY: Peepsie also lives in a cage.

FATHER: Yes, but Peepsie grew up in captivity. This one is used to living in freedom. Will you set him free, as soon he’s healed?

The boy nods. The pastor asks him if he's asked his mother, and the boy says yes, she said it was for his father to decide. The pastor seems a little surprised at this, or perhaps pleased that his wife is recognizing his authority. He says, "You'll really to take care of it? That’s a heavy responsibility. You know that, don’t you? Well. You're its father and mother now. We'll have to find a cage for your patient."*

The discussion holds one meaning on its own -- freedom versus captivity, parental responsibility -- especially since it comes soon after we have seen the pastor beat two of his older children for arriving home late. In this scene, it's difficult to see the pastor as anything other than a despicable man, his son as an innocent whose childhood will eventually be marred by the conjunction of his father's sense of parental responsibility and his apparent sadism. But the later scene, shot at very similar angles to this one, shows the boy sacrificing his healed, caged bird to his father so that, perhaps, his father may be happy. We do not perceive much change in the father between scenes, and what change we have seen likely doesn't cause the word "sadness" to spring to mind, but that is what the boy has seen, and he wants to fix it. He has healed the bird, and perhaps the healed bird can heal his father. (But the bird is still in a cage. If it is to be freed, as the father implied it must be, it is now his responsibility to do so. A later scene will show, unobtrusively in the background, a bird in Peepsie's cage, suggesting he chose his own pleasure at owning and caging a bird over that bird's freedom.)



It's a lovely scene, and even causes us some sympathy for the father -- if the boy, so truly innocent, can care for this horrible man, perhaps we, too, can spare him some sympathy. Interestingly, in the screenplay (PDF) provided by Sony Classics, the end of scene is described thus:

For a moment, neither of them knows what to do. Then the boy leaves the room. The pastor follows him with his eyes. Then, he sits down. He tries to keep his composure, but in the end he bursts into tears. He sobs haltingly, trying hard not let it be heard.

That's an awfully conventional, sentimental, almost Hollywood sort of end for such a scene, and Haneke, being the artist he is, did not film it as written (or may have filmed it so, but did not edit it to fit the description). Instead, the pastor gives only the barest hint of emotion toward his son's gesture, then, after the boy has left, his lips tremble slightly, he swallows, and he looks down at his desk. Cut to a shot of the outdoors seen from inside, the frame dominated by window bars that make the world seem as if it is viewed from inside a cage.

We could continue to analyze each scene of the film, and particularly their relationships within the structure of the whole, but I'm not feeling compelled to do so right now, partly because I think that's a pleasure best left to each viewer. This is a film that leaves out as much as it includes, and thus requires us as viewers to take a deliberate and active role in the meaning-making. Haneke is not the sort of filmmaker to create scenes just because he likes them or they offer an interesting opportunity for actors or because they have aesthetic value; whatever is in his films is there because it is useful to his overall thematic point. His are movies of ideas. If they offer other pleasures, then so be it, but the basic reasoning for why scenes exist and why they exist in the particular place they do is strictly thematic. This is not to say that there is only one theme, however, or that the best of Haneke's films screech that one theme at us relentlessly (my dislike of Funny Games comes from feeling that there is, in that film, only one theme, indeed a Message, and that every frame of the damned movie is determined to pound us over the head with it).

The White Ribbon offers more pleasures beyond thematic development than even my favorite of Haneke's previous films, Code Unknown (Code Inconnu). I usually find the acting and the cinematography in Haneke's work impressive, but both in The White Ribbon justify the over-used adjective stunning. Many of the main characters in the movie are children, and it is not easy to get great performances from young actors, especially in a film like The White Ribbon, which is serious and disturbing, requiring both nuance and restraint. In an interview included on the Blu-Ray edition (the DVD apparently has no extras), Haneke says his casting directors saw 7,000 children, seeking ones with both a natural ability to inhabit an imagined world and who had a certain look, one especially influenced by the photographs of August Sander. The months spent on casting paid off, because the children are some of the most compelling actors in the film, extraordinarily focused and yet also remarkably relaxed: they inhabit their roles in a way often aspired to by adult actors, but without the self-consciousness that haunts even the most wonderful adult performances.

Christian Berger won quite a few awards for the cinematography of The White Ribbon (including from the American Society of Cinematographers), and was nominated for more (including an Oscar, though the computer-created cinematography of Avatar won, demonstrating how problematic the term "cinematography" is in the digital age). Berger has called the look of The White Ribbon "modern black and white" in that it has a different tone, weight, and contrast from what something filmed directly onto b&w film has (White Ribbon was filmed on color Super-35mm, then converted to b&w in post-production). Haneke wanted the film to be in black and white to create a distancing effect for the audience, and because the look is so sharp and defined, it doesn't have the nostalgic effect that shooting on actual black and white film would have had -- the images may not look "real", but they certainly don't look like an old movie, either.

The composition of every shot, though, is so careful and evocative that just about every frame of The White Ribbon could be printed for gallery presentation. I was tempted at times to turn off the sound and the subtitles and just look at the movie, because there is much to luxuriate in in each image.


Along with the distancing effect of the black and white, Haneke uses a voiceover to further create a sense of distance from the events of the narrative. The schoolteacher tells us the story from his own old age, and he starts the film by saying that he can't vouch for the truth of it all, that some of it is based on hearsay. He begins to tell the story and says, "If I remember correctly..." We have no way to know if he does or not. We know he's an unreliable narrator because he tells us he is, but we don't know the extent of his unreliability -- what we have is his tale ... and only his tale.  Yet most viewers are used to assuming what is seen on film is "the truth", and so there is a consistent tension between our instinct that what is there in front of us is some sort of objective reality and the insistence of the narrator that he's telling a story, that maybe this is not how it all was, that memory is imperfect and the past unreachable.

The mystery at the heart of the story is not just the mystery of who caused the various accidents, disasters, and tragedies that befall the characters -- but rather the mystery of whether the items are connected at all. Maybe some of the events are connected and others aren't. Maybe none are. Some of the events seem to be punishments. Some of them are clearly the result of human action. Others, though, may just be accidents. Or they may not. We know what the schoolteacher thinks and whom he suspects, but we also know we're in his story, and his telling may stack the deck in favor of his interpretation.

The mystery is partly a religious one. The village is strictly and punishingly religious, questions of death and God arise repeatedly, the pastor is one of the main characters, and the children's chorus seems alternately beautiful and menacing. The question of the events' relationships is like questions about the existence of God and the existence of meaning in the universe. Is there a teleology? Or could the meaning we find in the events be nothing more than a meaning we impose because of our love of pattern and our desire for meaning?

Haneke has no desire to answer these questions for us. His film exists to raise the questions, to give them life and form. Viewers must come to their own conclusions.



*Dialogue adapted from the English-language screenplay available as a PDF here. The screenplay translation seems to be a bit more literal than the subtitles on the Sony Blu-Ray, and it is not a transcription of the film but rather either a late draft or a shooting script, and thus different from the finished film.

The American Society of Cinematographers has issued a poll settling definitively, once and for all (ha!) what the best-shot film of 1998-2008 was.

De American Society of Cinematographers publiceerde zijn tienjaarlijkse verkiezing van de fraaist geschoten films uit het tijdvak 1998-2008. Van de zeer verdedigbare lijst van vijftig genomineerde films drongen slechts twee niet-Amerikaanse films in de top tien door. Daaronder wel de winnaar: Amélie, geschoten door Bruno Delbonnel. De complete lijst leest u hier. Het is de [...]

The American Society of Cinematographers has issued a poll settling definitively, once and for all (ha!) what the best-shot film of 1998-2008 was. The non-controversial answer: "Amélie," shot by Bruno Delbonnel. It's a bit of a bizarre choice, but one representative of the list as a whole, which tends to favor artificial color palettes (often computer-tweaked), virtuoso long takes and other strong assertions of of visual personality. Nothing wrong with that, of course -- it's easier to register work like that. Either way, it's impressive that Roger Deakins placed higher for the relatively unshowy "No Country For Old Men" over the absolutely staggering "The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford" -- but, of course, more people saw the former, and that's what happens when you let 17,000 people vote in the final, public vote. A clip from the latter: One could bitch and moan about the exclusion...

Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC, recently used the Canon 5D Mark II Digital SLR camera to shoot several short HD films about U.S. Navy rescue crews.

One of those films is below.

Navy Swimmer Short 720p from Shane Hurlbut, ASC on Vimeo.

 

PRESS RELEASE

Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR Cameras Capture Heroic Action in the Hands of Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut

The video imagery begins in dramatic slow-motion: The crew of a Blackhawk helicopter sprints toward a waiting aircraft. Upon boarding, it takes to the sky. Cruising over forbidding alpine terrain, the crew locates an injured mountain climber trapped in a crevasse atop a remote peak. The Blackhawk lowers a Navy diver, who straps the victim into a gurney. Then the two are hoisted aloft on a long, thin cable. Once aboard, the aircraft speeds off into the sunset, headed for the nearest hospital helipad.

Beautifully photographed in digital HD and impressive to see, this three-minute commercial is remarkable not only for its depiction of a highly trained U.S. Navy rescue team, but also for the fact that it was shot in just a few hours using Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR cameras. As its director of photography, Shane Hurlbut, explained, it could not have been made with any other camera system.

"It would have been impossible to shoot within the time parameters we faced,” Hurlbut said. “Nothing is as small and nimble as our Canon 5D Mark II camera packages. We rolled eight 5D Mark II cameras simultaneously in real-time. Re-loads and unlimited re-takes were not an option.

Hurlbut carefully pre-planned the shoot. He used one Canon 5D Mark II onboard a Jet Ranger helicopter to shoot the Blackhawk in flight. Another camera operator aboard the Blackhawk took advantage of the 5D Mark II’s compact size to capture shots from inside its cockpit. He also shot breathtaking views by holding the 5D Mark II out the aircraft’s door, and by aiming straight down the rescue cable. Later, airlifted part-way up the mountain, Hurlbut and his camera assistant hiked another 1,000 ft. carrying backpacks that held additional 5D Mark II’s, lenses, and a tripod. At the summit, Hurlbut shot the Blackhawk hovering overhead.

"If we had used motion-picture cameras it would have taken us half the day just to haul the gear up the mountain,” Hurlbut noted. “What we accomplished was all because of the compact nature of the 5D Mark II and our ability to take advantage of its still-photography platform to make beautiful motion pictures. It was amazing what we were able to pull off in so short a time.

Even more amazing was that it was the second U.S. Navy commercial they shot that day. Several hours earlier, Hurlbut and his team used their Canon 5D Mark II cameras for an equally complex shoot of Navy swimmers making a helicopter rescue of a downed pilot in the ocean.

Game Changer
A member of the American Society of Cinematographers, Hurlbut has captured moving images using practically every film and video format currently available. When he first saw the Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR camera, however, he immediately identified it as a “game-changer,” adding that he had “never been so excited by the creative possibilities a camera offers cinematographers.

"I call the Canon 5D Mark II a ‘game changer’ for several reasons,” Hurlbut elaborated. “The first is its big CMOS sensor’s ability to collect light in widely varying ISO’s. It’s very clean up to 1600 ISO. Its light-gathering capability has a nice, very film-like gradient. The 5D Mark II’s sensor also delivers ‘VistaVision’ depth of field. Not one digital HD camera out there will deliver that. I find that if you operate at the right f-stop with the 5D Mark II, you get a wonderful, shallow depth of field. You’re also getting skin tones unlike any delivered by other cameras. I don’t think the other manufacturers have put the kind of R&D into their cameras that Canon put into its 5D Mark II. Perhaps the biggest reason why the 5D Mark II is a game changer is because it’s so compact. You can capture perspectives with it that no other camera system can deliver.

Have Cameras, Will Travel
Hurlbut cites the Canon 5D Mark II’s compact design as crucial to his current production, Act of Valor, which depicts Navy SEAL covert ops in fast-paced action close-ups. Hurlbut has been shooting the movie in various locations around the world for the past year. The compact size of the 5D Mark II enables his six-man crew to transport an eight-camera production package in the overhead bins of airliners and avoid the risks of checking it as baggage. Passing through customs is also simplified, given that still cameras typically entail fewer restrictions than motion-picture cameras. Once on location, his crew of six goes into what Hurlbut called “platoon module,” with everyone carrying equipment and multi-tasking production duties. This includes shooting with the 5D Mark II.

"Whether they’re grips, gaffers, or loaders, they’re all members of my elite team,” Hurlbut commented.

“They’re all co-collaborators and they’ve all used DSLRs. When I hand them a 5D Mark II camera they know what to do. It’s amazing the great footage they get.The compact size of the 5D Mark II also speeds production, allowing for many more set-ups per day than are possible with larger cameras. Hurlbut has his crew outfit their 5D Mark II cameras for different shooting configurations that he can switch to at a moment’s notice. These configurations are made possible with support rigs and accessories from such companies as Redrock Micro and Zacuto. Hurlbut has also designed his own custom base plates for mounting extra-large motion-picture lenses on the 5D Mark II.

A Fresh, New Style
Hurlbut believes that the Canon 5D Mark II is destined to benefit the entire production industry. “I have seen agency creatives get very excited by the 5D Mark II because its reduced cost and high film-like quality make storyboards that were once too expensive to shoot suddenly become affordable. Also, I think as more film studios begin to understand the power of the 5D Mark II platform they’ll change the way they think about making movies and episodic television.

“More than anything, what I love about the Canon 5D Mark II is that it’s part of a global revolution,” Hurlbut concluded. “The 5D Mark II is causing a paradigm shift in the production industry because it provides film-like quality combined with lightweight operation and amazing mobility. It’s also affordable, so it’s giving a lot of people a voice who’ve never had one before. I think the style of filmmaking that’s going to come out of the use of the 5D Mark II will be a whole fresh new style that hasn’t even been named yet.”

Labor Issues: Goi reelected by American Society of Cinematographers -- Michael Goi has been elected to a second one-year term as president of the American Society of Cinematographers.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Isaiah Powers, Jeremy Casper and Stuart Bury were just excited their Kansas City college offered an animation program. They never really expected they'd come to Hollywood to meet with their filmmaking idols, much less to do it as Student Academy Award winners.

But that's what happened to the Kansas City Art Institute graduates, who won a silver medal and a $3,000 grant Saturday for their six-minute, stop-motion film, "Dried Up."

They were among 13 students from across the country who were treated to a week full of meetings and fancy meals with some of the film industry's finest as guests of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and winners of the 37th annual Student Academy Awards.

"This opens up so many more opportunities," said Casper, 27, who graduated last year and is working as a freelance artist in Kansas City. "I feel like we have some weight to knock on some doors."

"It's almost like you're accredited," added Bury, 22, who has been making animated e-cards as an intern at Hallmark since he graduated last month.

The Student Academy Awards recognize films in documentary, narrative, animation and alternative categories with medals and grants.

Spike Lee, Robert Zemeckis, Pixar chief John Lasseter, "Up" director Pete Docter and "South Park" creator Trey Parker all won the honor at the start of their careers. Winners of Student Academy Awards have gone on to earn 40 Oscar nominations and seven statuettes, including the won Docter won for "Up" in March.

This year's winners came from as far as the United Kingdom and as close as the University of Southern California. All stayed at a Hollywood hotel and were shuttled to meetings at the Writers Guild, Directors Guild and the American Society of Cinematographers. They dined with the academy's governors and watched each other's work at its famous theater.

Casper said meeting successful filmmakers helped demystify the profession.

"They go through the same struggles that we do when we make a film. They're talking about the same things," he said. "(Now) we don't have to put them up on this untouchable pedestal."

Academy president Tom Sherak told the students the film community welcomes them.

"We're excited for the work you've done," he said. "We're excited for your futures. You are the next generation."

After three days of meetings, the students learned whether they'd won gold, silver or bronze medals, and the corresponding $5,000, $3,000 or $2,000 grants, at Saturday's ceremony. Directors Penelope Spheeris and Henry Selick, and actor Jeremy Renner presented the prizes.

"I would like to thank the academy – and I've always wanted to thank the academy," said Tanel Toom of the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England, as he accepted the honorary foreign film award for his 25-minute narrative film, "The Confession."

Ruth Fertig, who won the gold medal for her documentary, "Yizkor," said the award gave her faith to move forward as a filmmaker.

"I graduated feeling very uncertain as to whether I could continue to make my own films or whether I would go back to working on other people's films," she said. "What this does is make me feel very empowered in my own right as an independent documentary filmmaker, that I can, I should go on to find projects that I want to direct and produce and I should try to get them produced.

"This award makes that, I think, more possible."

Casper, Powers and Bury say they ultimately hope to make animated movies together. For now, though, they're excited about the next step.

"It's still a ton of work ahead, but this is definitely a good stepping stone," Powers said.

Added Casper: "We've got to go home and think about this for a while."

___

Online:

http://www.oscars.org

Cinematographer whose innovative work brought him five Oscar nominations

The American cinematographer William Fraker, who has died of cancer aged 86, worked on dozens of mainstream films – the good, the bad, but never the ugly. Fraker could not be praised or blamed for the direction, acting or script, but the look of a film was, on the whole, his responsibility. Although he saw himself as part of a team who tried to fulfil the director's vision, Fraker began to push the boundaries of cinematography in commercial cinema by using faster and wider lenses, restricting lighting sources and employing techniques such as flashing and deliberate overexposure.

According to Fraker: "The director is the captain of the ship, the cinematographer is the executive officer. You have to really learn who you're working with and what they think. It's like a marriage. As a cinematographer, you can immediately tell a terrific director if they let you do what they hire you for."

Fraker illustrated this idea with the following anecdote: "On Looking For Mr Goodbar, Richard Brooks said, 'Billy, in this scene we're gonna have four naked people on a bed. I don't wanna see any pubic hair, I don't wanna see any breasts. I don't wanna see any nudity, but I want everybody in the audience to think they've seen it all.' Then he walked away. He left me to do what he hired me to do. We ran the picture at the academy and a woman I knew came up to me and said, 'Billy, how could you do a picture like this? All that nudity!' We achieved our goal."

Born in Los Angeles of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, Fraker, whose maternal grandmother, father and uncle had all worked as still photographers within the studio system, resolved at an early age to be a cameraman. After serving as a coastguard during the second world war, he enrolled in the cinema department of the University of Southern California, studying under Slavko Vorkapic, a master of montage. "He told us 'Every time you walk into a restaurant, look at it to see how it's lit. Study the ambience of the place'," Fraker recalled. After graduating in 1950, he did some still photography and also shot 16mm films, inserts for commercials, and grab shots (photographs capturing the moment) for features.

He then served a long apprenticeship as camera loader and camera operator on television series including The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, sometimes working under the revered cinematographer Conrad Hall. Among the films on which Fraker assisted Hall was Richard Brooks's The Professionals (1965). This got him recommended to Warren Beatty, who offered Fraker the job of director of photography on Bonnie and Clyde (1967). However, Jack Warner, boss of Warner Bros, said: "Any cameraman that has not yet shot a picture is not going to shoot his first picture on my lot."

Fraker finally got a credit as director of photography on Curtis Harrington's Games (1967), an atmospheric thriller starring Simone Signoret and James Caan. The following year, he was cinematographer on two classics: Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby and Peter Yates's Bullitt. The former, shot almost entirely in the Dakota apartment building in New York, subtly evoked a claustrophobic, nightmarish ambience.

Bullitt was noted for its exteriors, especially its climactic car chase in San Francisco, involving a Mustang Fastback and a Dodge Charger, with Fraker and his camera strapped into one of the cars. "I met Peter Yates and we talked about a picture he'd done called Robbery, where the opening sequence has a car chase. I thought he did a terrific job and when I asked how fast they were going, he said they couldn't go over 60 to 65mph. That night we made the decision that on Bullitt, we weren't going to speed up the camera. We were going to shoot 24 frames and speed the cars up to 124mph. We were the first to mount cameras on the cars so they wouldn't shake."

Fraker brought a historically convincing western look to Joshua Logan's Paint Your Wagon (1969), and a period Hollywood sheen to Beatty and Buck Henry's Heaven Can Wait (1978), for which he received the second of his five Oscar nominations for cinematography – the others being for Looking for Mr Goodbar (1977), Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1980), John Badham's WarGames (1983) and Martin Ritt's Murphy's Romance (1985).

Fraker also directed three feature films, but the transition was not a big success. The best of them was his first, Monte Walsh (1970), starring Lee Marvin as a cowboy trying to come to terms with the end of the old west.

For the horror film A Reflection of Fear (1973), Fraker seemed to have given the renowned cinematographer László Kovács carte blanche, and it seemed little more than a series of elliptical, soft-focus camera montages. The critic Roger Ebert observed: "There is such density of atmospheric haze that half the film looks as if it had been photographed through a jellyfish." Fraker's career as a director ended with the disastrous The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981), also photographed by Kovács, much of it in soft focus.

Cinematographers are ignored by most film critics but appreciated by their peers, and Fraker received a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 2000.

He is survived by his wife, Denise. His son, William, died in 1992.

• William Fraker, cinematographer and film director, born 29 September 1923; died 31 May 2010

Austere, wintry, ethereal, nerve-wracking: all good adjectives to describe Michael Haneke's Oscar-nominated film The White Ribbon, which returns for a week-long encore presentation starting tomorrow at the Siskel Film Center.

Like many of Haneke's movies (and here's an excellent primer for the uninitiated), the setup is deceptively simple. Seemingly random acts of sabotage begin to plague a small German town in the years shortly before WWI. Who could be causing them? The sullen farm worker, who holds a grudge against the town's wealthiest landowner? The landowner's adulterous wife? The kindly but out-of-place schoolteacher? Unwrapping this mystery is like peeling an onion, albeit a gorgeous onion that rivets your attention even while making your eyes tear up. Christian Berger received last year's top honor at the American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Awards for his luminous work, capturing some of the most breathtaking images we've ever seen on the big screen. It complements an ascetic storytelling style so meticulously restrained that when the ratcheting tension finally bursts into violence during the movie's second half it takes your breath away.

The White Ribbon screens June 11-16

TheWrap

American Society of Cinematographers opens renovated clubhouse Hollywoodnews.com The goal was to include people who provided tools and services used by cinematographers to join the dialogue for advancing the art and craft of filmmaking.” ASC cuts ribbon on new clubhouseVariety Cinematographers' Clubhouse ReopensTheWrap all 3 news articles »

By Steve Pond 

The American Society of Cinematographers has its clubhouse back.

The ASC, which was founded in 1919 and likes to boast of its status as the oldest organization in the movie industry, had spent the last two years without the use of its historic clubhouse, a Mission-style house in Hollywood that had served as its headquarters and gathering place since 1937.

But after renovations that took twice as long as originally envisioned, the ASC opened the expanded and renovated structure in a ceremony attended by ASC members, city officials and entertainment-industry figures on Thursday....

Film News: Cinematographers celebrate renovated location -- A who's who of d.p.'s sat in the warm noonday sun Thursday as the American Society of Cinematographers cut the ribbon on completion of its renovated and expanded clubhouse in Hollywood.

While it's easy to get caught up in the passing of Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper, Hollywood lost another talent this week. THR reports that Oscar-nominated cinematographer William Fraker has lost his battle with cancer. He was 86 years old.

Fraker may not be a household name, but odds are you've seen something he helped shoot. He was nominated six times for an Academy Award for his work on the films Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Heaven Can Wait, 1941, WarGames and Murphy's Romance, as well as a visual effects mention for 1941. He also served as cinematographer on Bullitt (starring Steve McQueen) and Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby.

After serving in the Navy during World War II, Fraker returned home and enrolled in USC's film school. He would return to USC as a teacher in the last few years of his life, where students undoubtedly learned a great deal from someone who'd worked in the trenches of the industry for so long.

Former American Society of Cinematographers President Richard Crudo spoke of Fraker in glowing terms: "Billy Fraker was the epitome of a Hollywood cinematographer. He was immensely talented, handsome and charismatic, and he has a body of work that was the envy of us all. We are always going to miss him."

Fraker received the ASC's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and served as the group's president on three separate occasions.

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Los Angeles Times

William A. Fraker dies at 86; Hollywood cinematographer Los Angeles Times "He was an icon as far as cinematographers and filmmakers go,'' said Owen Roizman, past president of the American Society of Cinematographers. ... and more »

Masterclass to focus on Film Technology

Cinema India Expo has announced that Donald McAlpine, ASC, ACS will present a Masterclass during the upcoming Cinema India Expo 2010, June 3 – 5, at the Bombay Exhibition Centre. One of the most respected cinematographers working today, McAlpine is an Oscar nominated, multi-award winning Director of Photography whose credits include Moulin Rouge, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, and Romeo + Juliet among many others.

The Kodak Team in India is delighted to sponsor the Donald McAlpine Masterclass at the Cinema India Expo this year. “Bollywood’s love of the celluloid dream and the charisma of film is still defined in one word-Kodak. If it’s a highly emotional social drama or the perennial love story in the colours of Europe, the choice is Kodak and the professional cinematographer has this yearning desire to possess international technique, it is really a matter of satisfaction and fulfilment in sponsoring the Master Class of the renowned Donald McAlpine, ASC, at Cinema India 2010. Cinema India Expo deserves kudos for their efforts in arranging this unique talent and thanks to the American Society of Cinematographers in their altruism in providing this opportunity to Indian Cinematographers to develop their skills and expertise”, expresses Mehernoz Maloo of Kodak India.

From the onset, Kodak has been focused on presenting a top Director of Photography who had the talent and experience to explore the role of film in the evolving technological landscape and in the creative process. McAlpine, whose resume is widely varied, was a perfect choice for the Maser Class which will focus on the cinemtographer’s role in the creative and technical process and the collaborative role of the DoP.

Kodak continues to be at the forefront of motion picture technology, consistently striving to meet the needs of the filmmakers. Kodak offers a wide variety of products that span the entire motion picture value chain from image capture to post, through distribution/exhibition and archival applications. In post production, Kodak offers both film and digital products such as Eastman Color Intermediate film, sound film, digital image correction and enhancement tools (D-ICE) and color and image science software. Kodak also has print film solutions for distribution and display of content.

Donald McAlpine’s illustrious career as a cinematographer began in Australia, where he collaborated, and continues to collaborate with some of the great Australian filmmakers Early on, he worked closely with Bruce Beresford and Gillian Armstrong. McAlpine shot My Brilliant Career, for Armstrong and Breaker Morant, for Beresford, films that focused global attention on Australian filmmakers. McAlpine continued on his own brilliant career, filming a number of acclaimed and box office breaking features in Australia and the US. Major recognition soon followed. In 2002, he was nominated for an Academy Award for the visually stunning Moulin Rouge, directed by his long-time collaborator Baz Luhrmann. A member of the Australian Cinematographers Society and the American Society of Cinematographers, Donald McAlpine received the 2009 ASC International Achievement Award: a tribute that is presented to a cinematographer who has made significant and enduring contributions to the global art of filmmaking. He is the first Australian recipient of the ASC International Achievement Award. Other recognition has come from the BAFTA awards, the Satellite Awards, The Chicago International Film Festival, and the Australian Film Institute.

McAlpine has compiled an eclectic range of some 50 narrative credits over the course of his 35 year career, including: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972), Don's Party (1976), The Earthling (1980), King David (1985), Predator (1987), Patriot Games (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Clear and Present Danger (1994), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Moulin Rouge! (2001), Anger Management (2003), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), and many other noteworthy titles.

Focused on cinematographers and DoP’s, the Masterclass presents an excellent opportunity to interact with McAlpine. The Masterclass will serve as a vital forum for the exchange of information and ideas as well establishing a bridge between Hollywood and Bollywood. All cinematographers and DoP’s are encouraged to register and attend.

Cinema India will celebrate ten glorious years at this year’s event. For a decade, Cinema India has focused on movie production, digital cinema and movies on media: cinema production to distribution and exhibition. Cinema India 2010 has a special focus on Digital Cinematography and 3D Projection segment including 3D Cinema Delivery and Distribution.

Take this unique opportunity to interact with an Oscar nominated DoP. Register by sending your information to: register@cinemaindiaexpo.com or by calling Priyanka Bose on (022) 26606150 to register as a delegate. Entry is free to all delegates. The ASC Masterclass is scheduled from 3-5h June 2010, from

•Day 1: 03.45pm to 05.30pm
•Day 2: 03.45pm to 05.30pm
•Day 3: 03.00pm to 04.30pm
at the Mezzanine International Lounge, Hall No. 1, Bombay Exhibition Centre, Mumbai.

http://groups.google.com/group/cinemalovers?hl=en

The International Cinematographers Guild has reelected Steven Poster for a second term, three-year term as president of the union. Poster, a veteran cinematographer and past president of the American Society of Cinematographers, ran unopposed for the position. The guild, known...

Caution Note: This is really a lengthy article. If you are a slow reader I divided the article in few chapters for your convenience for interval readings. If you are a web worm you will not be disappointed for one sitting. If you are the actual characters that I am narrating, if you think your egos are hurt, well, you know me well.

CHAPTER-1

In the year 1999 I was associated with one of the most prestigious big-ticket Indo-US films ever to be shot in India. I consider myself lucky to work with the best of the lot and heavy weight technicians from Hollywood. Before moving in to the main story I would like to introduce the greatly professional Crew & Cast of the film to you. It’s my humble tribute to these highly skilled men and women.

Key Technicians

Douchan Gersi, Director

Profile: A Slovak -born, Belgium -raised, Los Angeles -based documentary filmmaker and author, producer/star of Explore, a PBS mini-series. He is the author of numerous books including Faces in the Smoke: An Eyewitness Experience of Voodoo, Shamanism, Psychic Healing, and Other Amazing Human Powers and Explorer.

Richard H. Kline, Director of photography

Profile: King kong, Startrek: The motion Picture, Double Impact and Etc.

Awards: Two times Oscar nominated, Life time achievement award from American Society of Cinematographers, USA.

Giles Masters, Production designer

Profile: The Ghost and the Darkness, Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Da Vinci Code etc;

Awards: Nominated for Excellence in Production Design Award for The Da Vinci Code in Art Directors Guild.

A.R. Rahman, Composer, Music Director

Do we need introduction?

Yannick Derrian, Stunt Director

Profile: The man in The Iron Mask, House on the Haunted Hill, Femme Fatale, Taxi-2, Taxi-3, Transporter Etc.

Paul Vik Marshall, Sound mixer and designer

Profile: Worked with Michael Jackson for long time and one of the busiest sound-mixers in Hollywood.

Daniel J. Lester, Costume Designer

Profile: Judgment Night, Get Away, Minority Report, Flight of the Phoenix, The Island Etc.

Awards: Nominated for Emmy in Outstanding Achievement in Costuming for a Miniseries or a Special category.

Df/x (Disney Digital Visual Effects)

Its DISNEY guys!!

Thota Tharani, Art Director

Man who achieved the recognition and respect to Art direction in Indian cinema. Hired to work under Giles Masters, Just a rank below the Production Designer.

Ramesh K, Producer

INDUS INC, Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

Many consider him a manipulator, gambler but I rate him as also a Dream chaser.

Suresh Krissna, 2nd Unit Director, Director. Indian version

Most of you people know him, if not search for BASHA (Rajinikanth) film over net.

Lead Casting

Chiranjeevi       — ABU

Most of you know him.

Jason Connery  — FALEEL

Son of the Legend Sir Sean Connery.

Richard kiel — NAZEER

Never heard of him? If so, please help your self. Go, check The Spy who loved Me and Moonraker DVDs. He is the world famous 7″2 tall silver teeth hulk.

Amy Webber    —  ANIYA

I have no clue from where she was picked up by the production company. None of the crew members liked her.

Sasha Barres     — RESHMA

Femme fatale, of course a highly talented actor.

Well, It’s “The Return of the Thief of Baghdad” or “ABU” – Bagdad Gajadonga in Telugu version. It was the remake of the old classic “The Thief of Bagdad” of 1940. Interestingly the hero of the old Hollywood classic is also an Indian named SABU DASTAGIR from Mysore.

The film was launched in a grand gala in Chennai in the month of August 1999. It was the hottest topic of the Indian film Industry. Few months earlier Kamal Hasan had launched his dream project “Maruda Nayagan”. But the film got halted for Kamal only knows reasons and vanished in thin air. Keeping the bad experience of Kamal in view entire production team and Chiarnjeevi’s lobby were very cautious and not willing to take any chances. All in all it was a challenge to all of us. I was picked up by the production company to assist international version director Douchan Gersy. I was the old member of the producer’s team. Earlier I worked on an Italian film “Branchie” with his Indus Inc. aka Golden communications. It was more like reunion.

While a part of the core team went on location scouting across all over India rest of us were working on planning, coordinating and Pre-production, day and night in Chennai, Hyderabad, Los Angeles simultaneously. The shooting days were scheduled for 61 starting from Oct 1st week to 24th of December. The entire foreign crew wanted to go back to their respective countries for millennium celebrations and wanted to check what goes with the much hyped and worrisome 2K bug.

Cast, crew, equipment started coming in from all parts of the world.  I was deputed to coordinate with the Costume Dept, Art Dept and also to take care of the casting the rest of the non lead actors, hundreds of bit players, extras. That was really a heavy task if you look at the scale of the project. I was all excited. We had set up a very big work shop in Annapoorna Studios, (owned by Nagarjuna) Hyderabad. Dan Lester was given two Indian assistants and not less than eighty skilled craftsmen to design, purchase, stitch, trial and ship the costumes, weapons and armors to the location.

The principal shoot of the film was only a week away. On the other hand acquiring the raw material was the mammoth operation. (FYI Hyderabad supplies costumes, set properties to Hollywood regularly.  Most of the suppliers unaware of it) Making the not so educated Indian craftsmen to understand the work standard of Hollywood was even tougher ask. Dan was a real perfectionist. He was very short tempered, when ever he looses his temper he used to show his frustration by breaking anything available at his arms length, shouting. His acts used to commit the terrified craftsmen to do more mistakes. At such times my job used to get really tough pacifying Dan and toiling up the craftsmen. For me the only concern was “Holy Cow! Shoot is only two days away and nothing is ready”. At last I could able to get 1st set of costumes, weapons, armors and hand props for first three days of shoot. We tried them on principal actors a day before. Awesome stuff. All are happy. So was I. The “D” day has arrived.

One fine day in October we started our film shoot formally in Ramoji Film City. In less than a week the massive 300 member unit moved to Aurangabad for a 10 days schedule in Ajantha, Ellora caves. I stayed back with Dan for rest of the stuff to take with me to Aurangabad. If Dan doesn’t deliver goods on time the shoot stops. But none in the team including producer got enough courage to push Dan. Instead everybody started motivating me. I became the punch bag. Since I was out of set for first three days of the shoot, my job of coordinating with the Art Dept was handed over to another assistant director.

I was really disappointed to miss the first three days of shoot. I consoled my self as my job in Hyderabad is more important than running around on the sets. One fine day finally Dan gave me clearance. My stuff was ready and almost everything was packed up. I and my ambassador car were on stand by to hit the road any moment. That moment came only up on Dan’s return from Mumbai who went for half a day to purchase some stuff and to recheck the 1500 pairs of costumes for the extras at a supplier. Later I came to know that he personally checked all the extras costumes whether they are in the scheme with the film or not. Kudos! Then, he checked every packed costume, armors, swords etc and made some last minute refinements, finally nodded to let go. It was 12:00 AM. We hit the road at and by 4:00 AM we entered the forest in Adilabad Dist. From here the road was very dangerous and you won’t see much vehicular movements. After entering deep forests we were greeted by flat tyre and a stupid and bold leopard that refuses to get out of the road and a hundred KM wrong route mistakenly taken by the driver. Anyhow we landed in Aurangabad by 11:30 AM. My destination in Aurangabad was Hotel Ambassador Ajantha. I am supposed to join my core team, take a nap if possible, get ready and go to location. But the story took a different twist here.

CHAPTER-2

As I entered the city limits I saw a group of fanatic mob riding the bikes and shouting slogans forcibly closing the shops etc. I thought there must be a strike or something like that. When I entered the city up market area I saw huge crowd gathered and shouting slogans, burning tyres, pelting stones on police. Then I was stopped by police, up on enquiring my details they advised me not to expose my self and go back to Hyderabad. I had no clue of what they were saying. Then I parked the car in a narrow lane joined the police. They told me that there was a major clash between Muslims and film unit. Muslims are angry because somebody tore the holy Koran and sprayed it in the film location yesterday. I was completely confused. What was the need for some one to insult the Holy Koran in the first place? Who had done it? I thanked the Police and proceeded to the hotel. I saw some hundreds of angry Muslims shouting, stone pelting and burning the effigies in front of the hotel. There were only a handful of cops. It was almost on the verge of turning violent. My car was security cleared by the hotel staff and I rushed in to the lobby. There was this entire foreign crew with fearful faces blabbering in several groups. I saw producer in a serious discussion with some new foreigners. I never saw them before. I met our Unit Production Manager and enquired about the happenings. He just asked “Dude, it’s a bad scenario, get ready and start working”. I checked in to my room freshen up by 10th minute I was downstairs. Before I could ask something UPM said ‘its just messed up over here’, he gave me a list of hotels and asked me to go to these hotels, warn all our unit men to not to venture out, I understood the magnitude of the situation and left the hotel still with out a clue of what happened with the Koran.

As I started going to the hotels what I was coming to know about the Koran was even more confusing. Every person was giving his own version or what was whispered in his ears. Plenty of rumors were in the air. After the complete trip to the hotels I could able to reconstruct in my mind as what actually is happened. This is how things have happened.

There is a scene in the film where Abu goes in search of the princess Aniya who is supposedly been abducted by a powerful and cunning villain. The villain is so cunning that no one in the world knows where he lives. Then our hero gets a clue about him when he bumps in to an old forbidden cave. There he finds an old book with Arabic script and clues. That is the thing. Production designer Giles Masters wanted a real Arabic book with ancient look. Order passed on to the team that is taking care of purchasing. Since the lower rung did not know the purpose of the book they bought Koran which is easy to grab from the stands or at least easy to ask for. None foresighted that small miscommunication is about to alter the route of the Indian Film Industry or at least delay the wedding between Hollywood and Bollywood for a couple of decades more. Then, the holy Koran ended up in a small guy’s hand in the Art Dept. It was tore and dipped in the black tea to achieve the old look, sunned on the hotel stair case. Then one of the art assistants, who is a Muslim, witnessed the plight of the Koran. Neither did he stop the crew members from insulting it nor told them that’s holy Koran, instead he simply went back to his hotel room in disguise.(later he tells that it must be a part of the script to have torn Koran, so he didn’t say anything)  In the evening he went to a mosque for prayers and ignited the trigger at fellow Muslims. By dawn few news hungry dailies made issue of the thing. By morning hundreds of mob gathered in no time, all the sub sequent issues started to happen. By noon producer came to a conclusion to stop the 2:00 PM scheduled shoot. He succeeded in convincing the gray beards of the community showing the script and explaining about how the mistake of insulting Koran has happened. They were convinced and agreed for the truce. The deal was to apologize in the presence of the media to the Muslim community and donate some money to a mosque. That was the agreement. In most of the cases you plan some thing and God thinks otherwise, and this case was no exception. There is a local influential Muslim leader came in to the picture, hijacked the situation, took a big agitation in front of police head quarters and demanded to book  non-bailable cases on the producer’s team. The leader’s men started rampaging in the streets beating the unit members, for that matter every foreigner they spotted on the road. It took a real ugly turn. On the other hand the entire equipment and caravans from the location started moving to a safe zone that is almost 75 KM’s away from Aurangabad city. Although producer called for a press meet in the hotel, police started to dance to the tunes of the fanatic mob. By 5:00PM the press meet started in the presence of the Police. There was the apology from the producer and the director later publicly donated the funds to the Mosque privately funded the Police. All hand shakes and hugs. Everybody left the hotel in gratification. By 9:00PM police came back to the hotel with an arrest warrant and took the Producer and the director with them. What a jolt.

CHAPTER -3

Police were dot on their duty to pacify the mob. Hero left to Hyderabad mid-night. Meanwhile the new foreign guys whom I saw yesterday are also checked-out the hotel and next morning they were en-route to LA. They are the financiers from LA.

Producer’s camp office in the hotel became orphan by overnight. None of the production members know what to do next. On producer’s call, by afternoon production wrapped up the Aurangabad schedule and was on the way to Udaipur, Rajasthan, where as per normal schedule we were to move after the Aurangabad schedule.

We were ordered to go ahead with the second unit shoot until the director joins us in a week’s time, hopefully once he attains the bail bond. Hell of a lot of work pounced up on us, because of preponing the schedule. While all of us busy arranging things, the dark side of film drama comes alive.

Remaining the foreign crew is very upset over the happenings. Rather say terrified. They are afraid to even interact leave alone command. They have stopped mingling with the Indian crew. Their morale is dipped. The cracking healthy atmosphere once was there is gone on the sets and off the sets. Meanwhile some of the key Indian technicians who felt choked working under the Hollywood crew slowly  started to play their own game. They started taking advantage of the situation. They wanted to show the world that they are at par with Hollywood. What a mockery!  Alas! That’s the beginning of the end of the film.

In case if you have never worked with American film crew- then you don’t know what is uncompromised professionalism is. They are utterly serious and arrogant while working, with military precision. If you are an under performer you will be  suppressed and crushed by their way of working. You may end up walking out of the project, voluntarily. It’s their work culture designed by the film INDUSTRY. Where as we don’t have any industry status to our film making business. It is still been  under transition from number of decades. I can say nothing greater than working with them, if you are open for learning the perfections of the art and craft.

Back to the story: In another four days director and producer are out of the jail. Shooting resumed. Quarrels started. The Indian crew who were feeling choked started to raise their voices. Number of revolts increased everyday. It was more like redux of Indian freedom struggle.  Film started to suffer heavily.  Film location started to stink with partiality, politics.

Slowly Indian crew started winning the battle of sidelining the foreign crew. It was Yannick Derrian, the stunt guy who was kicked out first. An Indian stunt guy who was supposed to be his coordinator replaces. Than Giles Masters, Then Amy webber the list went on till the Director himself became a dummy and a mere spectator on the sets. Film suffered. The cascading effects of miscommunication were at their best. People were executing the death warrant signed by the miscommunication flawlessly.

This show went on for another 60 days, shifting location after location, state after state like nomads with more than three hundred crew and cast, nearly hundred horses and camels and trucks of equipment. Poor producer was after every production house in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and LA for offering acquisition and JV, but none turned up. Later I came to know that the financiers from LA were with cash to deliver to the producer on that fateful day, but turned their back after that unfortunate incident. He was caught between the devil and the deep sea. If he stops the shoot no finance would be available and resuming the filming would be almost impossible. If he continues the shoot, he had to compromise, act according to the demands and commands of the Indian crew. But he took the risk by continuing  shooting utter compromisingly, with borrowed installment loans, advances from the buyers to run the show  hoping to get bulk finance before the contracts of foreign crew lapse.  And the end result? Five minutes of awesome teaser, reputation as “costly experiment went wrong”.

Money, effort, enthusiasm, prestige and pride, on the whole – film, were vaporized in the deserts as a result of a small miscommunication. Thus “A small miscommunication and its cascading effects”.

Such incidents are always highlighted in various guilds in Hollywood as case study. I am sure that there was great amount of badmouth about Indian Film Industry in general or particular about few people after this episode.

Me, thenceforth on all other Indo-Overseas projects I had  involved, made sure miscommunication and ego out of my set and sight to reasonable extent, though it used to be  tougher than making the film.

Who is the loser here? Producer? Cast and crew?  Not really. Producer is still making films and happy. Crew is winning Oscar after Oscar. It’s The Indian Film Industry that lost the golden opportunity! Imagine if that film is completed as per the plan, it could have opened the gates for many more Indo-Hollywood projects in multiple genres to knock-down the monotony in order to entertain more than a billion Indian audience and rest of the world. I am talking about mainstream, aesthetically and technically superior world films, with heavy weight technicians, not the indie films and “B” grade, easy to think and make films that exploit the only darker side of the Indian poverty, society and culture in a way representing India in bad light. These films have already created an area for them in the world market. This area should be mopped up immediately for new beginning to move on to a new level.

Well, those were the days one could find large gap between Hollywood style and Indian style of film making. Nowadays, I guess the professionalism is pretty much improved by new breed of film makers over here mending the old think tank. I wish so.

Luckily the Indian economy is booming and Hollywood is here to make films i.e. Warner, Fox, Disney etc. If these guys calculations are correct we may shortly get to see world standard films with Indian and Hollywood cast and crew together in Holly-Bolly fusion films. But it looks unlikely with the films they are making, I wish they make films than deals.

Nowadays Chollywood is way ahead of us in invading world market via Hollywood. Wondering what is Chollywood? Want more info about it? To read an article I came across recently open the link below.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LD01Ad01.html

See ya soon.

This year's Oscars aren't for another week, but this past weekend was a big one for awards. We've already posted on the Visual Effects Society awards that were largely handed out to Avatar and Up. But France's big awards ceremony, the Cesars, went down over the weekend, with Jacques Audiard's widely acclaimed A Prophet scoring nine wins. And the American Society of Cinematographers handed out a slightly surprising best of '09 while the Cinema Audio Society honored sound mixing achievements in '09. A Prophet took almost all the top awards at France's Cesar awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Breakthrough Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing and Best Art Direction. At this point I can't figure whether it or Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon seems more likely to win the best foreign language Oscar -- the two are relatively equal in respect and acclaim -- ...

• "Avatar" took six honors at the Visual Effects Society Awards this past weekend -- The Hollywood Reporter

• Christian Berger won the Annual American Society of Cinematographers award for "Best Cinematography" for "The White Ribbon" -- Indie Wire

• Sacha Baron Cohen, Tina Fey among other funny folks tapped to present at this year's Academy Awards -- Variety

• Jay Leno has been beaten up in recent months, but his prospects for late night success still look good -- The Wrap

• AFTRA board approves plan to bargain jointly with SAG -- Deadline Hollywood

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here's an oddity this awards season: A top movie honor not going to "The Hurt Locker" or "Avatar."This bit of news comes courtesy of the American Society of Cinematographers, which gave its feature film prize to "The White Ribbon" and cinematographer Christian Berger. The black-and-white German film, directed by Michael Haneke, is an Oscar nominee for cinematography and for best foreign-language…

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German drama The White Ribbon has taken top honours from the American Society of Cinematographers.

Here's an oddity this awards season: A top movie honor not going to "The Hurt Locker" or "Avatar."This bit of news comes courtesy of the American Society of Cinematographers, which gave its feature film prize to "The White Ribbon" and cinematographer Christian Berger. The black-and-white German film, directed by Michael Haneke, is an Oscar nominee for cinematography and for best foreign-language film."The White Ribbon" beat out "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker," as well as "Inglourious Basterds" and "Nine," to win the feature film prize at the ASC's 24th annual awards Saturday night (Feb. 27).In the TV series category, Eagle Egilsson won for the "Venice Kings" episode of TNT's "Dark Blue." Other nominees were "FlashForward" ("The Gift"), "Ugly Betty" ("There's No Place Like Mode"), "CSI" ("Family Affair") and "Smallville" ("Savior"). Alar Kivilo won the TV movie/miniseries honor for HBO's "Taking Chance," topping fellow nominees "Jesse Stone: Thin Ice" and "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler."Five-time Oscar...

Alt Film Guide (blog)

American Society of Cinematographers Awards: THE WHITE RIBBON We Are Movie Geeks ... the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Board of Governors Award for making significant contributions to advancing the art of filmmaking. ... 24th Annual Cinematographers AwardsDeadline.com 'White Ribbon' ties up ASC honorsVariety 'White Ribbon' earns top prize from American Society of CinematographersGaea Times (blog) all 141 news articles »

Austrian cinematographer Christian Berger, who shot the German film The White Ribbon, won the top trophy from the American Society of Cinematographers.

The German drama "The White Ribbon" has taken top honors from the American Society of Cinematographers.

The German drama "The White Ribbon" has taken top honors from the American Society of Cinematographers.
from ABC 7 News

The German drama "The White Ribbon" has taken top honors from the American Society of Cinematographers.

The German drama "The White Ribbon" has taken top honors from the American Society of Cinematographers.

‘White Ribbon’ earns top cinematography prize LOS ANGELES ? The German drama “The White Ribbon” has taken top honors from the American Society of Cinematographers. The group’s feature-film award Saturday night went to cinematographer Christian Berger for “The White Ribbon,” director Michael Haneke’s study of a small German town beset by mysterious violence on the eve of ... Read more »»».

The German drama "The White Ribbon" has taken top honors from the American Society of Cinematographers.

more images Caleb Deschanel attend the ‘24th Annual American Society of Cinematographers Awards’ held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel Los Angeles, USA. .... Read the original article  : here.

Christian Berger won the best cinematography prize for "The White Ribbon" at the 24th Annual American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Outstanding Achievement Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday night. In winning the ASC's feature film award for Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon," Berger beat fellow nominees Barry Ackroyd for "The Hurt Locker," Dion Beebe for "Nine," Mauro Fiore for "Avatar" and Robert Richardson for "Inglourious Basterds." Berger is also nominated for ...

Film News: 'Dark Blue,' 'Taking Chance' win on TV side -- Austria's Christian Berger won top honors for lensing b&w; "The White Ribbon" in the feature film category at the 24th Annual American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Awards celebration.

ASC Awards: 'Avatar' raises the question of what constitutes lensing -- When "Avatar" d.p. Mauro Fiore was nominated by both the Academy and the American Society of Cinematographers, it not only raised a few eyebrows but brought into sharp focus the big question now looming over such awards.

London, Feb 24 - American actor-director Morgan Freeman will be felicitated by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) for his ...

LONDON - Morgan Freeman is set to receive a top honour from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) for his contribution to cinema. The 72-year-old actor will be presented with the Board of Governors Award for “significant contributions to advancing the .... Source article  : Cinematographer honour for Morgan Freeman.

more images more images LONDON - American actor-director Morgan Freeman will be felicitated by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) for his outstanding contribution to the films. The veteran actor will receive the Board of Governors Award for “significant contributions to advancing the art of filmmaking” at a ceremony in Los Angeles Saturday, reports dailystar.co.uk. “Morgan Freeman is ... Read more : Freeman to be feted for advancing art of filmmaking.

more images more images MORGAN FREEMAN is set to follow in the footsteps of stars including STEVEN SPIELBERG and MARTIN SCORSESE after landing a coveted prize from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). The veteran actor will be handed the Board of Governors Award for “significant contributions to advancing the art of filmmaking” at a ceremony in .... Source article on Gaea Times at  : Freeman Lands Cinematographers Honour.

Morgan Freeman is set to follow in the footsteps of stars including Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese after landing a coveted prize from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).

TheaterMania.com

ASC to honor Morgan Freeman Hollywood Reporter Revelations also co-produced the ASC's 2009 Camera Assessment Series, designed to give cinematographers and filmmakers information about motion picture ... Cinematographers honor FreemanVariety Morgan Freeman to Be Honored with American Society of Cinematographers' Board ...TheaterMania.com all 3 news articles »

Variety is reporting Morgan Freeman will be awarded the Board of Governors Award from the American Society of Cinematographers. The award will be given at the 2010 ASC Awards for Outstanding Cinematography Award Ceremony on February 27th.

Morgan Freeman will receive the Board of Governors Award from the American Society of Cinematographers, according to a report in Variety. The actor will receive the honor at the group's 24th Annual ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards ceremony, to be held on February 27 at the...

ASC Awards: Actor to receive Board of Governors Award -- The American Society of Cinematographers has tapped Morgan Freeman as the recipient of its Board of Governors Award.