Michael Slovis

Showrunner Vince Gilligan aside, Michael Slovis is the man who did more than anyone to

make Breaking Bad beautiful. As a director (four episodes) and cinematographer (loads of

episodes), he took over the formidable mantle of multi-Oscar-nominated DP John Toll and

broadened the show's visual style in lockstep with Walter White's ever-growing narc empire.

Nine months later and he's back at home in Montclair, just up the road from Tony Soprano's

patch in east New Jersey, reflecting on the show's glorious finale. "I'm here trying to figure out

what I'm going to do for the rest of my working career!" he laughs. "Once you've done a show

like that the difficult question is whether you go back and do a pedestrian piece of work?

That's why I'm sort of taking this year to let things settle down."

The affable Slovis' MO is simple: is the cinematography in harmony with the story or a

distraction, an eye-candied sideshow? "Lots of cinematographers - and I don't fault them for

this, it's just how they are - love beautiful imagery," he points out, "but what I love is organic

storytelling." He illustrates the point with his favourite moment from Breaking Bad, a choice,

he says, that often confounds in its relative lack of visual fireworks. "It's Bryan Cranston

watching Krysten Ritter die in Aaron Paul's bed, when he could have saved her," he explains,

"and they say, 'But why? It's just a close-up of Bryan.' My response is that there was no better

place to put the camera - with the right performance, with the right angle, with the right

everything - and feel at one with the story."

When Empire called, Slovis shared his admiration for the great Gregg Toland on Citizen Kane,

and Caleb Deschanel's work in a film "that really made me think about cinematography".

THE SHOT

CITIZEN KANEYEAR: 1941 DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES CINEMATOGRAPHER: GREGG TOLAND

Gregg Toland emerged in a time when cinematography was considered a disposable skill by executives, and

cinematographers would be shunted from one show to another like they were making potato chips, and he

elevated it to an art form. All cinematographers owe him a huge amount. What was really incredible about his

Orson Welles partnership on Citizen Kane, the go-to visual stylising project I would beckon to, is that all that

stuff needed to be pre-visualised and conceived before they got on the set. To me, real cinematography is

never done on the set, it's always done ahead of time. It's in the pre-visualising and the conception phase

when the look, the textures, the visual language of a [production] is written. For those guys to have conceived

that movie and made all that stuff happen with matte paintings, with set breakaway pieces, with background

paintings, with blue screens... it's a miracle. I saw Citizen Kane in a movie theatre and it was still jaw-

droppingly beautiful. Every single frame holds up.

To me, the most expressive shot in Kane is that move down through the sign outside of the nightclub, through

the window in the rain, to Susan Alexander Kane sitting, and then the guy standing in silhouette around her.

But you can go on and on and on, because it's just a genuinely told, honest story. Do I see parallels between

Charles Foster Kane and Walter White? If you think about it, the two stories are absolutely paralleled. They're

both about facing the consequences of your actions.

A more recent example of equal brilliance - and one that transferred European sensibilities to American

cinematography - is Caleb Deschanel's work on The Black Stallion. Every single frame is drop-dead

gorgeous. Like The Deer Hunter, the first half of this movie is all visual storytelling; there is dialogue but you

could turn off the volume and still get the story, without any doubt. There are two sequences in the movie that

are beyond brilliant: the first, a boat is sinking, the young boy (Kelly Reno) and the horse are in the water, and

as the ship goes down, it's lit with the fire of this boat. You're at the edge of your seat, immersed in that event

with them. And that's followed by an entire sequence where this boy is learning to become friends with the

horse on a desert island. And it's a dance, a pas de deux on the beach, as beautiful as any ballet you could

see in a theatre in three dimensions. They take you through an entire range of emotions with absolutely no

dialogue at all. Just the snorting of a horse, and a boy, and a little music. And it's wonderful.

Roger Deakins

The great Roger Deakins CBE is the man who made Skyfall shimmer like no other Bond movie,

whose stellar work with the Coens began with Barton Fink ten Joel-and-Ethan movies ago, and

who currently has 11 - count 'em - Oscar nominations to his name.

Beloved of directors and all of his fellow cinematographers, it's safe to say he's high on the

Christmas card list for most of the actors he's lit, too. "Sometimes you get a cinematographer

who shoots something, and you walk into their light, and they're doing 50 per cent of my job,"

Jake Gyllenhaal recently told The Hollywood Reporter. "I walked into Roger Deakins' lighting

in two different movies, and I didn't feel I had to give a performance." The Academy has

agreed and included his work on Prisoners in this year's Oscars shortlist.

In short, Deakins is a giant of his field. He spoke to Empire from Sydney, 10,000 miles from his

native Torquay, where he was working on Angelina Jolie's wartime drama Unbroken.

THE SHOT

IVAN'S CHILDHOODYEAR: 1962 DIRECTOR: ANDREI TARKOVSKY CINEMATOGRAPHER: VADIM YUSOV

I don't know how to pick just one shot - I guess it depends on what mood you're in that day - but there's a shot

in Ivan's Childhood where the boy is crossing between the German and Russian lines that I absolutely love.

It's this incredible black and white landscape, illuminated by flares like a kind of ghostly hinterland, with this

downed fighter plane jutting out of the earth. I don't know what camera Vadim Yusov shot with in the water,

but I'm sure it was a lot heavier than the ones we use now. He also shot Solaris for Tarkovsky, which is also a

remarkable-looking film. Yusov died recently - I was sad not to have been able to meet him.Antonioni's films

always had beautiful cinematography - L'Eclisse, Red Desert, The Passenger. There's this beautiful sequence

in L'Avventura where Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti stop in an abandoned town and the camera tracks

down this deserted street.

I'm in Australia at the moment and have rewatched On The Beach (shot by Italian great Giuseppe Rotunno),

which is set here in the aftermath of a nuclear war. There's a shot where Gregory Peck, an American

submarine commander, surfaces off the coast of San Francisco to see what's left and it's just nothing.

Emptiness. It's simple but beautiful.

Ben Seresin

New Zealander Ben Seresin has shot for Tony Scott (Unstoppable), Michael Bay

(Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen) and Gore Verbinski (Pirates Of The Caribbean: At

World's End), which means he's probably filmed more explosions than we've had hot dinners.

More recently, he photographed World War Z for Marc Forster, a production he describes with

Kiwi understatement as "challenging", and Pain & Gain for Bay. Picking a single shot for this

piece is a task he likens to choosing his favourite food. "I have a million favourites, and all for

different reasons!"

THE SHOT

I AM CUBAYEAR: 1964 DIRECTOR: MIKHAIL KALATOZOV CINEMATOGRAPHER: SERGEI URUSEVSKY

What most interests me is the power of cinema and the opening shots of I Am Cuba have an authenticity and

beauty that's unique. In some ways, it's a pretty inaccessible film - it's 50 years old, culturally very different

and super-stylised, but the opening sequences show the power of filmmaking to transport you. There's no

acting, and when the acting does start it's pretty flawed, but you really feel like you're there. You can touch

and taste the atmospere. It's visceral.

The opening is a fairly straightforward helicopter shot over the treetops, using almost a fixed camera locked in

a three-quarter angle. Then the camera is mounted on a boat and it's a guy heading downriver, with the

camera rigged at foot-level. It's a very wide angle, almost fish-eyed but not distorted, and it's beautiful

considering how old the technology is. Then it's on a rooftop with a band playing, and the camera goes down

in a crane or lift and follows people into the swimming pool and underwater. The filmmakers spent days and

days building these complex, Heath Robinson contraptions to transport the camera, and apart from that

opening shot the camera is always very close to whatever it's shooting. I have no idea how they did it, but it's

very powerful. If a shot doesn't connect you with the story or move you in another way, it hasn't done its job.

Is Michael Bay a fan of I Am Cuba? No, he would 100 per cent not be a fan of I Am Cuba. He's a fantastically

talented guy and I've talked to him about films and references, but in the context of work they have to fit into

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

Laurie Rose

It's always a challenge," Laurie Rose says of his filmmaking partner-in-crime, Ben Wheatley's,

fast-and-furious MO. "He pushes me to do my best." The results, a four-film run of twistily

brilliant Brit flicks, kicked off with the week-long Down Terrace shoot in their native Brighton

("A bit mental," laughs Rose of a feature film that was virtually miracled into existence) and,

most recently, offered the stark, monochrome beauty of A Field In England.

Most recently he shot Nick Frost salsathon Cuban Fury. "I've never made a decision to be a

'cinematographer' as such," he told Film Doctor. "It's a peculiar word that I don't entirely

identify with and never call myself. It sounds way too grand for me.

THE SHOT

HUNGERYEAR: 2008 DIRECTOR: STEVE MCQUEEN CINEMATOGRAPHER: SEAN BOBBITT

No single shot defines cinema for me. That's the joy of it - the possibilities. On a technical level, I love and

appreciate the sense of achievement of the 'impossible' shot, that 'how-the-fuck-did-they-do-that?' moment

made possible by the evolution of technology - the 'toys' - combined with choreography and intense planning.

The car interior in Children Of Men or the flying shots in Hugo. But most of all, I love the simple shots that

anyone might achieve with a bold idea. Jaws' contra-zoom, dating back to Vertigo, is a mind-blowingly simple

optical effect that throws your world into disarray, creating a moment of epiphany, of fear. By contrast, I Am

Cuba defies these ideas. And to achieve those shots at that time? It's inspiring.

I'm fascinated by a performance that can be so strong it defies the received grammar of an edit, even cinema

itself. Does that make it theatre? Hunger's 20-minute prison dialogue between Michael Fassbender and Liam

Cunningham is a triumph. The performance carries the scene, it doesn't need an edit. It's really bloody bold.

We're in that room, but we're not taking part in the dialogue - it's their conversation. But I'm not sure this shot,

or any single shot, can really exist in a vacuum outside of the context of the story. You need to have a

relationship with what they're talking about, and perhaps to know a little of the characters and their

relationship to each other. If Hunger consisted of just that scene, it would be theatre. As one scene within the

whole story? That's cinema.

Sean Bobbitt

"It's fun to work with someone you get on with," 12 Years A Slave cinematographer Sean

Bobbitt enthuses of his decade-and-a-bit partnership with Steve McQueen. With five short films

and three features (Hunger, Shame and now their Oscar-nominated slavery drama) behind

them, the pair have become entwined as creative partners as well as friends.

If there's a creative hive mind at work, and 12 Years' dazzling visuals, inspired by Kara

Walker's contemporary cut-paper silhouettes and period photos, suggests there is, it's evolved

into something formidable. Evidence is also found in Hunger, where that famous 17-minute

sequence between Liam Cunningham and Michael Fassbender slotted into a startling depiction

of prison-as-hell, and the glare and neons of Shame's Gotham.

It was Bobbitt's work on Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland that brought him to the

artist/director's attention. "He was looking for someone to shoot his art installation work,"

remembers the 55 year-old Texan, "so he found out who my agent was and it went from there."

Their move into feature filmmaking was always on the cards, believes Bobbitt. "Steve is such a

film buff. He's seen every film ever made and analysed every shot." When Empire asked him to

do something similar, he turned to a film that was shunned on release back in the mid-1960s

but has since been recognised as a pioneering masterpiece.

THE SHOT

I AM CUBAYEAR: 1964 DIRECTOR: MIKHAIL KALATOZOV CINEMATOGRAPHER: SERGEI URUSEVSKY

There are a number of unique shots in I Am Cuba, but this one is remarkable. It starts tracking over a flag

draped over a stretcher being pulled down a street in a funeral for... I think he's a student who's been killed by

the government, and then the camera goes up about four storeys - still looking at the funeral procession - and

sideways into a cigar factory. Then it moves through the building, all the way through the cigar factory to the

far end where the workers are looking out of a window at the procession, and then moves across the street

where it stops, suspended over the procession and then it just carries on... and you know, this is 1964.

As a cinematographer, you look at these shots and think, "How did they possibly do that?" There are no

Technocranes or Skycams to use, it was just wires and pulleys. That simple. The operator had a body vest

with hooks and rigging attached to it and the camera sort of strapped on, and he was literally lifted by a series

of pulleys and wires.

It's a Russian film that was directed by Mikhail Kalatozov and shot by Sergei Urusevsky, but it went down so

badly when it was released. The Russians didn't like it. The Cubans didn't like it. I think it was just a chance

screening at a Telluride festival, years ago, that actually brought it back to life again. Scorsese has been a

great hero of the film and helped to get it revived, and I think some of his Steadicam stuff nods towards it, like

the shot through the restaurant in GoodFellas.

The shot tells the story so succinctly, it's just astounding. I've never forgotten it and I never will.

Dan Mindel

The man given the heady and high-pressured task of capturing J. J. Abrams' Star Wars on

celluloid, South African-born DP Dan Mindel is soon returning to England, his home of nearly

30 formative years growing up, to reunite with his Star Trek director for the foreseeable

future. Before he can start all that world-building, though, he has kids to pick up from school

in LA and, presumably, some packing to do.

Empire's call, hopefully not at the expense of collecting children, has Mindel casting his mind

back to formative cinema experiences as an English student in the late '70s. "[Back then] my

idea of America was shaped by the films I saw," he recalls of his London moviegoing life.

"There's a period of filmmaking from the late '70s to the late '80s when American filmmaking

was so strong. Spielberg hasn't done anything Earth-shattering for a while, neither has Ridley

(Scott) or (Martin) Scorsese. As a viewer, I'm dying to see smaller stories with less CGI told to

me by masters." With that in mind, he picked one of The Deer Hunter's tautest sequences to

talk about with us. Greedo, be warned: everyone shoots first here.

THE SHOT

THE DEER HUNTERYEAR: 1978 DIRECTOR: MICHAEL CIMINO CINEMATOGRAPHER: VILMOS ZSIGMOND

I was heavily influenced by movies I saw on TV as a kid. When I was old enough to go to the cinema and see

films in giant colour there were a couple of movies that jumped out at me. I remember seeing The Deer

Hunter as an 18-year-old at the Odeon on Kensington High Street and it changed my life and the way I looked

at film. My pick is the first Russian roulette sequence where the guys get pulled out of the water. It makes me

squirm every time I watch it, a perfect study in brutality. It does what all storytelling should do: resonate.

I haven't found a cinematographer I like as much Vilmos Zsigmond. His style is so natural and has so much

more gravity and grittiness than this slick, glossy photographic style, although there are guys like Bob

Richardson out there now who have amazing eyes. Vilmos's photography is totally real. I never felt like I was

watching a movie, and that's something I perpetually search for when I go to films. I'm waiting for the day

when I can show The Deer Hunter to my kids.

The visuals help us focus on the soldiers' plight in a way in that claustrophobic environment, as strength of

character becomes the means of survival. We don't know where they are... they're in a room, around a table.

A lot of its impact is lost on TV but in the cinema the close-ups are bigger and you can feel the air diminishing

around the frame.

I still think about the photography and the texture of it. When I frame shots, I think about how those frames

were made. Given that it was shot with low-tech equipment and unforgiving film stock, it's just brilliant - the

colour palette,

Donald McAlpine

Most recently behind the camera on Ender's Game, Aussie DP Donald McAlpine was a key

figure in the emergent Australian film industry of the 1970s. His work with Bruce Beresford

(Money Movers, Breaker Morant, The Club) and Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career) helped

a resurgent Aussiewood onto the world stage and got him noticed by Paul Mazursky, who hired

him for his adaptation of The Tempest. This led the New South Welshman into Hollywood

projects, including a pair of Jack Ryan actioners, Patriot Games and Clear And Present Danger,

with fellow Australian Phillip Noyce, and a pair of Baz Luhrmann movies, Romeo + Juliet and

Moulin Rouge.

He's also the man who shot Predator for John McTiernan ("That was great fun - McTiernan was

at his best then, but he became morose as he became successful"), and while he probably

doesn't have time to bleed, he had a few minutes to chat to Empire on a balmy Friday evening

in New South Wales.

THE SHOT

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

YEAR: 1962 DIRECTOR: DAVID LEAN CINEMATOGRAPHER: FREDDIE YOUNG

I find picking shots exceedingly difficult, because if they're well done, they're integrated into the film. But

Omar Sharif emerging from the desert mirage in Lawrence Of Arabia is great storytelling. It's an incredibly

simple shot. They probably just shot on a tripod and would have rolled every two or three minutes for about a

minute. Its simplicity is its strength.

I've always very much admired Freddie Young. I had the chance to meet him a couple of times, and he was

really down-to-earth. He was what he was: a working cameraman. He had to do a job and he did it. I've spent

a great part of my career assessing what the bloody hell it is that I do and what I've concluded is that my job is

to interpret into a visual what the director has in his mind. It precludes having a personal style, because the

inference of that is contrary to the other theory because you can't have both. It's been interesting to see those

wonderful cameramen who were incredibly self-stylised vanish off the scene; they'll survive with one director,

but once he stops working they'll vanish. You've got to be a chameleon.

I'm almost anti-historical. I rarely watch old movies but I had reason to stick on the DVD about six months ago

and actually the film was pretty terrible. I'm exaggerating but it didn't live up to my memories of it, because I

remembered it as something fantastic and for whatever reason, fashion or slowness, it didn't work for me by

today's standards.

This was in the days of gentlemen filmmaking. They didn't go too hard (laughs) and the films show it. In my

career I've watched Hollywood go from the wonderful excesses there were when I first joined the club to the

commercial world it is now. You don't get a teamster picking you up in the morning, you get a rental car.

Haris Zambarloukos

When Empire catches up Haris Zambarloukos, he's at the end of a day of horsey business at

Pinewood Studios. Cinderella, a Disney romance with Lily James as Cinders and Helena

Bonham Carter as the fairy godmum, marks the Cypriot DP's fourth collaboration with Kenneth

Branagh - and a more painterly approach than their last. "We have very similar tastes, but we

try to start from scratch on every project. Jack Ryan has an urban, gritty look that homages

'70s thrillers, but we have to do Cinderella as if Walt Disney drew every frame. They're big

shoes to step into!"

The Nicosia-born Zambarloukos, whose first Branagh collaborations came capturing Sleuth's

sleight of hand and Thor's Asgardian gleam in 2011, also shot Venus and Enduring Love for

Roger Michell and has survived (our words, not his) Pierce Brosnan's Mamma Mia! warblings.

His pick comes from David Lean's seminal take on Charles Dickens' orphantasy.

THE SHOT

OLIVER TWISTYEAR: 1948 DIRECTOR: DAVID LEAN CINEMATOGRAPHER: GUY GREEN

For me, a film's set-up is its most interesting element, and the opening sequence of David Lean's Oliver Twist

sets up the story in the most beautiful way. The first six minutes are without words. I think the greatest

moments in cinema are usually told in the emotions of the actor that are wordless and enhanced by the

editing and the cinematography and the music. When all those forces come to play, you get that magical

feeling in your stomach. And what a great idea this scene is: a pregnant woman, Oliver's future mother,

caught in a thunderstorm in the middle of the night, dealing with the worst elements nature can throw at her.

Talk about pressing emotional buttons! If you didn't know the story, you'd go into it thinking, 'My god, that

woman's been through everything. I think that child is going to make it.'

It should have been impossible to create a storm at night in 1948. Obviously there was no VFX, and they

were doing shots looking up at the dark skyline with clouds passing through the frame. To this day, I have no

idea how they did it. Technically, it's absolutely remarkable, but you don't even notice that because you're so

enthralled by this sequence. You just breathe it in.

When it was shot at Pinewood, Michael Powell and Jack Cardiff were also shooting The Red Shoes - what a

great year for British cinema. Interestingly, Lean reshot this scene because the first opening was deemed too

romantic so they went back and did it in a darker, grimmer, edgier, contrastier way, and what a great idea that

was. It goes to show that even the great masters can have a second opinion about something

Marcel Zyskind

If you've noticed the rain-flecked nightscapes of Copenhagen in The Killing, the shakycam

vérité of people-smuggling docudrama In This World or the handheld intimacy of A Summer In

Genoa, you probably won't be surprised to hear they're all the work of one man: Marcel

Zyskind. The Danish DP's partnership with Michael Winterbottom, now totalling 11 feature and

documentary films, is hallmarked by digital camerawork, natural lighting and an immediacy

that catapults the viewer into the British director's dizzying worlds. "Michael tries to throw

things up in the air and see what happens," Zyskind has said of their work together, and that

in-the-moment magic has translated into a special alchemy on screen.

When Empire speaks to him, he's finished colour grading Hossein Amini's The Two Faces Of

January and is working on his house in Denmark. Still in his early thirties but already a 12-year

veteran of the craft, the cinematographer won his spurs as a focus puller on Lars von Trier's

Dancer In The Dark, before repeating the trick on Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, an

introduction that has helped guide his path ever since. "Michael has a particular way of

working, cut to the bone with a small crew, and it's one of the most difficult," he explains, "so I

feel like I can do anything now. A good cameraman can adapt."

THE SHOT

CHINATOWNYEAR: 1974 DIRECTOR: ROMAN POLANSKI CINEMATOGRAPHER: JOHN A. ALONZO

One film that came to mind straight away - and I watched it a lot last year before making (con-man thriller)

The Two Faces Of January - is Chinatown. It's the scene towards the end when Jack Nicholson's character,

Jake Gittes, is talking to John Huston - Noah Cross. He's found Hollis Mulwray's glasses and realised that

Huston's character is the crook behind his murder. Huston comes in, they're talking and he reveals that he

committed the crime, and it moves on to the climactic scene when Faye Dunaway is shot. It's very unfancy,

but it's set up so simply, which I like, and they're acting so well.You see Jack Nicholson's cigarette smoke drift

in from the left hand side, so you know he's there. When he steps into the frame they have this long

conversation and then the camera turns around to where Mulwray was murdered in the pond in the back

garden where Gittes found his broken glasses.

All of Roman Polanski's films have a great storytelling camera. There's also a shot in (Polanski's) Rosemary's

Baby where Mia Farrow is sitting sadly on the bed but the camera framed so she's half-covered by the

doorframe. William Fraker, the cinematographer, said: 'Shouldn't we move the camera, so you can see her

completely?', but Polanski wanted to manipulate the image a little bit. The Ghost is really nicely made as well.

The camera stays very close to McGregor's character, so you feel like you're with him. I like to get close to

actors when I'm working, although long lens films are interesting as well. Heat and The Insider were a good

reference for my work on The Killing.

Jo Willems

Belgian DP Jo Willems grew up just outside Antwerp. He left for the UK as an ambitious 21

year-old and shot music videos, before moving to the US where he began a fruitful partnership

with David Slade on 2005 thriller Hard Candy. "That was a great one to do as my first movie,"

he reflects. "It got a lot of cred and people still mention it all the time." He's currently in

Atlanta shooting Katniss's final battles in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay with one Ms J. S.

Lawrence. "Jennifer is a gem," he says. "She says what's on her mind and lets it flow."

Willems' choice of sequence is the opening scene in Rosetta, a 1999 drama from his fellow

Belgians the Dardenne brothers and their career-long cinematographer Alain Marcoen, a

fellow member of The Belgian Society of Cinematographers. "They inspire me, but I don't

strive to copy their style," Willems adds in a follow-up email. "I just try and bring their

naturalism and honesty to all the work I do." The film's first scene introduces Rosetta (Émilie

Dequenne), a teenager struggling with an alcoholic mum and the sudden loss of her job.

THE SHOT

ROSETTAYEAR: 1999 DIRECTOR: LUC AND JEAN-PIERRE DARDENNE CINEMATOGRAPHER: ALAIN

MARCOEN

Whenever I start a movie, I always revisit one of the Dardenne brothers' movies - even on The Hunger

Games, a movie I shot 90 per cent handheld, and Limitless, where Neil (Burger) and I talked about them

beforehand. Their style has been copied, but nobody has been able to keep it as honest and truthful as they

have. They've very unsentimental, grounded filmmakers and they've always inspired me - I know they

inspired Darren Aronofsky on The Wrestler, too.

It's hard to pick one sequence, but I've chosen a movie of theirs that won Cannes in 1999, Rosetta, and its

opening shot. It's always inspired because it's very naturalistic. When you first start your career as a DP it's all

about style and form and making things look as good as you can, but there's a real simplicity to this - it's very

pared-down filmmaking. The whole sequence is handheld, which is always kinetic and makes the operator

much more aware of what the actor is doing. You're not attached to a crane or a dolly, which makes it very

human.Their lens choice and proximity to the character of Rosetta - 80 per cent of the time you're within two

or three feet of her - makes you feel like you can touch her, like you're part of her world. Instead of constantly

cutting from one person to another, you almost sit on this girl's shoulder. They grab you by the collar of your

shirt and force you to go on Rosetta's journey. You can actually 'follow' her story and every movement she

makes. When doors close, the camera does not get access like most movies would do. Instead, the door

shuts in front of us.

The Dardenne brothers' films are honest; not sentimental but very emotional. There is nothing artificial or fake

about their work - they're raw and the performances are so real. They don't use music in their films, either, but

sound is very important. When you're lighting these sequences you have to do away with everything you don't

need. We did the same with The Hunger Games, which is bigger and more expensive, but it was always

about paring it down and discovering the human character. Their style is not from the school of hand-held

gritty indie movies, they have a strong visual idea behind their style, but it's all about naturalism.

Matthew Jensen

Chronicle and Filth DP Matthew Jensen is enjoying some well-earned downtime before for

getting back behind the camera. "That freedom is coming to an end quite soon," he says over

Skype. This year he'll finally see his most recent feature, an Irvine Welsh adaptation with a fag

in its mouth and a cocaine headache, on home soil in America. "I have no idea if it will play

well in the States," he says of its likely reception. "Trainspotting was huge here and that's the

only thing I can compare it to in terms of tone and trying to understand the Scottish accents."

Singled out by industry bible Variety for Filth's "zesty" visuals and his "bright, restless

lensing," Jensen is making a name for himself in film circles. Teeth cut on prestige TV shows

like CSI and True Blood, he helped Josh Trank find a fresh slant on the seemingly tired found-

footage genre with 2012's Chronicle. He shot that indie superhero film with the newly

launched Arri Alexa, joining Newton Thomas Sigel (Drive), Robert Richardson (Hugo) and

Manuel Alberto Claro (Melancholia) in adopting a lightweight digital camera that's since

become a key tool on blockbusters from Iron Man 3 to World War Z. Neither of those strapped

it to a skateboard or levitated it, mind you, two of the tricks Jensen and Trank used to expand

the movie's Camcording device into superhero realms.

THE SHOT

THE GODFATHER PART IIYEAR: 1974 DIRECTOR: FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA CINEMATOGRAPHER: GORDON WILLIS

Gordon Willis is the cinematographer who's had the biggest stylistic influence on me. I love all his '70s with

Woody Allen and Alan Pakula, but The Godfather: Part II is the one I always come back to. There are so

many things that I do that I view as second nature but I'll go back and revisit that film and I'll think, 'My god, it

came from there!' So much of my understanding of film language is from that movie.My sequence comes

when young Vito Corleone, played by Robert De Niro, is pursuing Don Fanucci through Little Italy. He's

walking along the rooftops and looking down at him while this big Catholic festival is going on. There's

something so extraordinary about the shot structure and those marvellous tracking shots along the rooftops.

You're looking from another set of rooftops up to De Niro across the street and he's prowling across the roofs

like a mountain lion over his prey. It's got this marvellous bronzy, warm patina to it, the skies glow and the

browns of the costumes and the tenement buildings are so rich.

It's intercut with his point of view looking down at Fanucci while the festival is going on, and there's all these

layers of symbolism, and then these layers of extraordinary detail in the wardrobe and production design and

extras.

Movies now just can't seem to accomplish that same sense of scope and scale, and we're so accustomed

now to digital extensions of sets and digital matte paintings that we accept things being creating in the

computer, but everything you see here is in front of the lens. I still can't believe the level of detail. The shops

stretch on for blocks and everything had to be painstakingly recreated. It gives you a very accurate sense of

period but it also immerses you in the early 1900s and makes you feel like you're there - and in a way that few

films have been able to replicate. Gordon Willis's lighting is dramatic and moody and yet so naturalistic. I have

no idea how they got the shots: these were the days before Steadicam and they're not using cranes, they're

simple tracking moves so they must have brought dollies and tracks up to the roofs. The camera is very

grounded and often at eye-level in Gordon Willis movies but it's just so elegant.

Do I prefer Part II to The Godfather? Well, you can't have number two without number one, but I rank it

higher. It's deeper, it's darker and it's richer.

Danny Cohen

"I've got a long list!" warns Danny Cohen when Empire asks for his pick from

cinematography's rich history. The This Is England and Les Misérables DP, an Oscar nominee

and member of the British Society of Cinematographers, is a day away from heading to France

to shoot Stephen Frears' Lance Armstrong movie and taking a breather from "sorting out all

the gear". He's chuffed to hear that his tongue-in-cheek grumble about having to pick just one

sequence has echoed Roger Deakins' thoughts. "Fucking hell, we're obviously like-minded!",

laughs the Londoner. "What you've asked is impossible though. I think it depends on your

mood; you like different films at different times."

In his decade-and-a-bit behind the camera Cohen has already amassed four Tom Hooper

collaborations - one of which, The King's Speech, carried him all the way to the Oscars - two

Shane Meadows films, Dead Man's Shoes and This Is England, and music promos for Arctic

Monkeys and Blur. He's also a keen cineaste, as that list soon reveals. Blade Runner, The

Leopard and Apocalypse Now all feature - "I've got tons and tons of films" - but he settles on a

moment in Michael Mann's The Insider, shot by Mann's long-standing DP Dante Spinotti.

THE SHOT

THE INSIDERYEAR: 1999 DIRECTOR: MICHAEL MANN CINEMATOGRAPHER: DANTE SPINOTTI

To me, an amazing shot is something that essentially encapsulates the whole film in one shot - a shot that

really tells a story. There's one in The Insider, when Russell Crowe is walking out of the hotel and the camera

is following just slightly behind him. There's a little speed ramp, a really simple trick which switches from

normal speed to slow motion without interfering with the image, so as he's walking, boom, it kind of goes into

slow-mo. In that moment the whole angst of what the Russell Crowe character is all about, and the kind of

conflict he's existing in, is laid bare. It's all about an existential crisis this one man is going through.I've never

met Dante Spinotti, but he's a top geezer. He's amazing. I've used speed ramping myself, but never as well

as this. I've been prepping the [Lance Armstrong] film and keep thinking, 'There's got to be one amazing shot

we can do.'

If I had a second pick it'd be from Michael Clayton. There's a shot - and again, to me, it says everything about

the film - and it's a really simple shot of George Clooney's character driving on the freeway. His sat nav stops

working, and he bangs the dashboard. And I don't know what but there's something about the way they

framed it, the texture of the shot and the quality of the light but there's something about it. If you blink, you'll

miss it, but it's an amazing shot. Like Dante Spinotti, Robert Elswit has done amazing films - these guys have

done hundreds of amazing films and they're all wrapped up in their work.

Barry Ackroyd

Oldham-raised DP Barry Ackroyd has enjoyed a long partnership with Ken Loach, scored an

Oscar nod for Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker and translated his skills to the small screen,

with HBO shows and prestige Stephen Poliakoff projects to his name. But since 2006 brought

him together with Paul Greengrass, the pair have formed a formidable creative alliance that's

yielded the skittish handheld work of United 93 and Green Zone, and most recently, a high-

seas drama, both epic and intimate, in Captain Phillips. "It's the opposite of The Hurt Locker,"

Ackroyd reflected on the film's heavyweight Oscars campaign. "There's a lot more hoo-ha this

time."

When Empire catches up with him, he's not long back from Gilles Paquet-Brenner's occult

mystery Dark Places. The film's shoot, in Louisiana's high summer, "wasn't the greatest"

climate-wise, but at least dry land offered simpler challenges after Greengrass's hijack thriller.

"We'd be coordinating between different ships and the lighting boats seven or eight miles into

the Atlantic," he remembers of Cap'n Phil's multiple set-ups. "There were camera positions

inside the lifeboat, the frigate, the helicopter... I was like, "Can we pull this off?"

Suffice to say they managed to do just that and now everyone wants to know how. Soon after

our call Ackroyd will be in LA for 24 hours to participate in The Hollywood Reporter's

cinematographer roundtable, a rare opportunity to share war stories with his fellow DPs. "I've

met Bruno [Delbonnel] at the Oscars and I know Sean Bobbitt very well. He's the only

American [there]", Ackroyd chuckles, "and he lives in Chertsey." Bobbitt's work on 12 Years A

Slave has caught his eye, while veteran DPs, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins are both

recipients of warm praise. "Roger and I go way back and even though we're opposites, I love

what he does," he enthuses. "That's the great thing about cinematography: when it's right for

the film, you know it's right."

THE SHOT

APOCALYPSE NOW

YEAR: 1979 DIRECTOR: FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA CINEMATOGRAPHER: VITTORIO STORARO

I like people who take risks with the material, like D. A. Pennebaker, whose documentaries dare to do

something different, and (The Killing Fields cinematographer) Chris Menges. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back,

and other early American documentaries from the early '60s onwards, were a big influence on my career.

There are shots without light and a freedom to everything. It felt like you could break all the rules and find an

energy in it not being perfect. I relish the imperfect. I like to see things unexposed or badly framed... well, not

badly framed but the audience should sense the struggle to capture the image. That's the essence of my work

on The Hurt Locker or United 93 or Captain Phillips: daring to keep the camera in the right place, daring to

capture this moment that shouldn't be possible.

Paul (Greengrass) and I both refer to The Battle Of Algiers - that genre of filmmaking which tried to show

what was really happening in the world, but with great, great images. But I'd have to fall back to Apocalypse

Now which is rich in these beautiful qualities, and captures the intimacy and the scale at the same time -

turning ugly things beautiful, and beautiful things ugly. The sequence that sticks in my mind is when they go

up the river at night. The fires are burning as they approach the tribe, and they're drawing closer and closer to

Kurtz. I thought about this shot a lot on Captain Phillips because if you shoot night on water you have to have

light, and in Apocalypse Now they generate light from all kinds of things: from fires and gunfire to light

festooning across burning bridges. In the back of my mind on Captain Phillips I was always thinking, "How

can I justify light here?", because ships at battle stations don't have their lights on. It was like that with Green

Zone, where we'd rule out any source of light in a scene but that would give rise to sequences that fit back

into my vision of Pennebaker's daring. It's exciting. We'd joke with each other: "Some people would say this

isn't possible."

I'd love to have shot Marlon Brando, too. There's that story of how he went days and days without

cooperating leaving Vittorio (Storaro, Apocalypse Now cinematographer) with a snap decision about how he

had to light him. We didn't have that with Tom Hanks!

Bruno Delbonnel

Vying with Roger Deakins (Prisoners), Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity), Philippe Le Sourd (The

Grandmaster) and Phedon Papamichael (Nebraska) for this year's Best Cinematography

Academy Award, Bruno Delbonnel's work on Inside Llewyn Davis adds a fourth Oscar

nomination to previous nods for Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, A Very Long

Engagement and Amélie. His first collaboration with Joel and Ethan Coen had the Frenchman

finding inspiration in unusual places. The LP cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and the

darker-hued paintings of New Yorker Mark Rothko both informed the frostbitten blues and

greys of wintry Greenwich Village circa 1961, adding a shiver of cold to the world of a jobbing

musician who, let's not forgot, doesn't even own a winter coat.

Only the fourth DP the Coens have hired - Barry Sonnenfeld, Lubezki and Roger Deakins are

the others - he's worked across movies of vastly varying scales, from a $250m Harry Potter

movie to the $11m Llewyn Davis, and style, largely staying true to the graininess of film over

digital along the way. Delbonnel, a late '70s grad from Paris's College of Cinematography, is

now three decades into that gilded career. Tim Burton, Alexander Sokurov and Jean-Pierre

Jeunet would all testify to his brilliance, although he prefers to downplay his style ("I'm known

for lighting up big, empty, black spaces," he told ICG magazine) in favour of a grander vision of

the medium and an evisceration of his pet peeve: shooting coverage. "There are maybe 20

amazing directors in the world, and the rest just do coverage," he says. "People who use

cinema as a language are the masters, and I'm fortunate to have worked with some of them."

As for his peers, one of his fellow nominees stands out. "Roger Deakins is a magician," he "It's

not only about the way he lights, it's the way he thinks. When you see The Assassination Of

Jesse James, there are a couple of shots which are just mindblowing, because it's not only the

way he uses light, it's the way he tells the story with light and composition and the actors."

Anthony Dod Mantle

Chatting with Anthony Dod Mantle can be as breathless an experience as being immersed in

the harem-scarem worlds he's captured on 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire. Perpetual

motion is the name of the game as the Oscar-winning DP shifts from topic to topic with a speed

and celerity that belies the fact that he's been "shooting round the clock" on Ron Howard's In

The Heart Of The Sea. He touches on Orson Welles and the subjective camera of Kieslowski, his

traumatic experiences shooting documentaries in Bosnia, shooting Rush with Howard, and the

formative influences that guided him from a successful career as a photographer and into

filmmaking with 1992's Die Terroristen!, an agitprop drama swiftly banned in Germany.

"When I've relayed my thoughts [on cinematography] to students down the years, I've always

reverted to Tarkovsky or early Polanski or, in common with Danny (Boyle), early Nic Roeg," Dod

Mantle reflects with typical modesty. "I sound like an old fart!" Those luminaries, he explains,

coincided with a late twenties epiphany and a gradual shift from the still to the moving image

that led to an alliance with Danish filmmakers Thomas Vinterberg (Festen) and Lars Von Trier

(Dogville and Antichrist) and that similarly fruitful partnership with Boyle.

Marrying up Slumdog's India-in-widescreen panoramas with handheld haring about in

Mumbai's slums cost him 11kg in bodyweight but earned him a well-deserved Oscar for his

troubles. A long-time resident of Copenhagen, he's currently back on British soil shooting that

Moby Dick movie, In The Heart Of The Sea. Dod Mantle's pick comes at the end of Elem

Klimov's great war-as-horror film Come And See. Twelve year-old Belarusian Florya (Aleksey

Kravchenko), aged beyond his years, is confronted with a photograph of Adolf Hitler as a baby.

THE SHOT

COME AND SEEYEAR: 1985 DIRECTOR: ELEM KLIMOV CINEMATOGRAPHER: ALEKSEI RODIONOV

I could show you endless scenes or shots, but I have to focus on the final scene of Elem Klimov's Come And

See. You can pull out scenes all the way through the film - this extraordinary journey Florya makes through

this horrendous world. From this unbelievably disturbing scene where tracer bullets fly across the screen, just

like we've seen in Iraq or Syria, to the bodies piled up against a shed that reminded me of being in

Srebrenica. It's so true to life. But for all the hate and fear and anxiety that foments in anyone who dares see

this film, by the time you get to the final scene and that fucking picture of this horrible man and all he

represents, the impact is still staggering. The boy points the rifle at the baby but can't bring himself to pull the

trigger.

Films work on you in a very primitive way. When they start to touch on incredible victimisation and you find

yourself feeling for a character, the director has you in the palm of his hand and can do incredibly primitive

things that are warranted in the narrative. They can [encourage the audience's desire for] colossal acts of

vengeance. In this scene that doesn't quite happen and it leaves you with this tremendous void.

The whole film is an accumulative experience. It's deeply disturbing but it's got all the paradoxes, like

Tarkovsky's work. I could also pick Walkabout or Don't Look Now here - I could even pick Wall-E - but

Klimov's ending is so powerful. It's the way it throws you back to the whole film and to everything you've tried

to absorb or refused to absorb because you've found it so repugnant.

Claudio Miranda

One of the few good things to emerge from long-forgotten Matthew McConaughey rom-com

Failure To Launch was its cinematographer, a newbie lenser by the name of Claudio Miranda.

That first DP gig came after earning his spurs as gaffer on The Game and Fight Club. There

were many arduous multiple set-ups demanded by David Fincher but the director's patronage

and the tutelage of its DP, the late, great Harris Savides, proved invaluable. "Harris was a

huge influence on me," Miranda reflects. "He taught me that you can fuck it up a little bit, that

you don't have to be perfect all the time. I kind of grew up through the ranks, so I've always

been inspired by the people I've worked for."

The Santiago-born, LA-raised cinematographer is midway through the shoot of Tomorrowland

when Empire reaches him and happily shares his philosophy. "I like to be invisible as possible,"

he says when asked how he approaches a project like Brad Bird's upcoming sci-fi. "If they're

noticing me, it's like, 'Oh my god, there's a big shaft of light beaming at the actor. Wow, it's

obvious.' I'd rather people not notice I'm there." So are cinematographers happy in the

shadows? "Yes," he laughs. "People ask me to direct sometimes and I go, 'Er...'."

He paid tribute to the work of American cinematographer Robert Richardson on a mystery

romance with timeless visuals.

THE SHOT

SNOW FALLING ON CEDARSYEAR: 1999 DIRECTOR: SCOTT HICKS CINEMATOGRAPHER: ROBERT RICHARDSON

When I saw it I thought the whole opening sequence of Snow Falling On Cedars, the ship sequence, was

absolutely stunning. All you can see when it starts is this light bouncing back and forward in the frame - it's a

completely overcast fog sequence - but as the camera keeps moving forwards towards this shrouded object,

it slowly reveals itself. It's a man fixing a lantern to the top of a sailboat. When the camera moves in for a

close-up on him, surrounding him, I was just thinking, 'Holy Jesus, that's stunning.'

How does it differ from Rob's normal style? Well, he's normally more pounding of light. He hits bars and he's

sometimes very obvious, and this one is just amazingly graceful and subtle. It was a new side [to him] I hadn't

seen before. Then again, hopefully we don't all have a style where people can go, 'Hey, it's that guy!',

because I feel like Benjamin Button and Life Of Pi are very different-looking movies, although I like soft light at

times. But this scene is so different from Bob's (Richardson) normal work, which I find pretty amazing.

Roger Deakins always influences me too. I love The Man Who Wasn't There. I look at that movie and... well,

not many people thought about it, but I thought it was really beautiful. I walked out stunned. He has the same

philosophy as me, which is sometimes just not to be overly there. That's what I fall for and those are the kind

of movies I love: The Man Who Wasn't There, The Shawshank Redemption and Snow Falling On Cedars,

that one opening.

John Schwartzman

Half-brother of Jason Schwartzman and nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, John Schwartzman

has a branch of the Coppola family tree to himself. His own entrée to filmmaking was an

unorthodox one. His uncle and a family friend by the name of George Lucas promised letters of

recommendation to USC film school should he best them in a late-night game of Risk. "I came

out of the Ukraine at 2.30am and took them down," Schwartzman laughs. "With those kind of

recommendations you tend to get in."

When Empire catches up with the gregarious Californian he's in a wintry Belfast getting

Dracula Untold in the can. He reflects happily on his work in sunnier climes on Disney's Saving

Mr. Banks. "When you backlight golden grass it can look like a beautiful beer commercial," he

explains of the film's Australian locations - really the rural outskirts of LA - "so the trick was

just not to make it too romantic." Mr. Banks was an $11 million departure from the kind of

massive budget event movies Schwartzman has specialised in; closer in spirit to his Oscar-

nominated work on Seabiscuit than Michael Bay collaborations Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and

The Rock - or 2012's Spidey reboot. "We'd spend the entire budget of Saving Mr. Banks in two

weeks on The Amazing Spider-Man," he points out.

Schwartzman's own pick of cinematography predates Travers and Disney's meeting by a

couple of decades. Orson Welles' Citizen Kane is never far from the minds of DPs. Here he

explains why.

THE SHOT

CITIZEN KANEYEAR: 1941 DIRECTOR: ORSON WELLES CINEMATOGRAPHER: GREGG TOLAND

"Citizen Kane is the one movie I take with me whenever I travel. I watch it before any movie that I do - it's my

bible. Everything you need to know about cinematography and directing is in this picture. They made it in

1941 and look how inventive it is: Gregg Toland is such a master. You can see Blade Runner in Citizen Kane;

you can see every work Vittorio Storaro has done; and you'll be looking at a scene and go, "Oh my god, that's

where Gordon Willis got the idea for the lighting in Klute!"They're in the projection room about 12 minutes in,

the newsreel has ended and you're thinking, 'Am I ahead of the movie? Am I behind it?' Then you see the film

projector, shafts of light and a bunch of journalists sparking up cigarettes which give their face a little bit of

lighting. It's incredibly edgy - this is way before film noir - and then it shifts to the reporter and a big crane shot

that goes down to the El Rancho restaurant, where Charles Foster Kane's second wife is drunk, in one

continuous crane shot with a dissolve. And then we go to the most spectacular shot: from this very intimate

interior with the guy on the phone bribing the maître d' to the pull-out of a statue. All of a sudden there's a sign

reading 'Walter Parks Thatcher' and a librarian sitting below it. You're a very small person in this giant set, a

door opens and these two huge shafts of light illuminate a table. You look at it and you go, "Okay, that's The

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

This movie was the first to use wide-angle lenses and deep focus and forced perspective to create a sense of

those huge sets. I love what Michael Powell and Jack Cardiff did with colour, and the great Freddie Young's

work in the '50s and '60s, but when I watch Citizen Kane without the sound on, just studying the cutting and

the rhythm and the shots, it's as close to perfect as it gets. Every cinematographer probably watches it at

least once every couple of years.

Jeff Cronenweth

It's day 43 of Gone Girl's 90-day shoot and Jeff Cronenweth is, understandably, a tricky man to

pin down. Working with David Fincher, a multi-take perfectionist, is keeping him busy on

location in the Midwest. Six-days-a-week busy. "The hours are long, but it's a great book and

hopefully we can do it right," Cronenweth tells Empire when we reach him during some rare

downtime.

It's Cronenweth's sixth movie with Fincher, not including his work on Madonna's Fincher-shot

promo 'Oh Father'. "I'd shot second unit on The Game and Se7en," the University of Southern

California grad recalls of his big break, "and I went for what I thought was an interview for

second unit when he asked me to do Fight Club. Everyone asks if Fight Club was fun to shoot

and I say, 'It should have been, but I was scared to death!'." Cronenweth's partnership with

Fincher, which has garnered him an Oscar nod for The Social Network, has him rhapsodising.

"David has a clear vision of what he wants a movie to be, what he wants it to look like, and how

he's going to put it together. He's probably the most collaborative director I've worked with.

Our aesthetics are really similar, so that makes it easy."

Cronenweth's choice of sequence has personal resonance too. Blade Runner was shot by his

father, Jordan, and, as a 19 year-old college kid, he spent time witnessing his dad and Ridley

Scott at work on the film's Burbank night shoots. "It was the biggest movie in town at the

time," he remembers, "and I had the choice of working on it as a loader or going to work at a

commercial house. I went with the latter, which was the right choice for me at the time,

maturity-wise. Of course, I've always wished I'd done Blade Runner..."

THE SHOT

BLADE RUNNERYEAR: 1985 DIRECTOR: RIDLEY SCOTT CINEMATOGRAPHER: JORDAN CRONENWETH

I'm picking this scene from Blade Runner because it's so close to me, but also because it amazes me as a

cinematographer to this day. You can take any of the shots in this sequence and you'd know it was from

Blade Runner. This was a space movie and detective film that was presented in a classic noir way and shot

anamorphically. The sets were massive, the lighting set-ups were huge and the film stock wasn't that fast, so

to get the level of subtlety and sophistication is just phenomenal to me. I've probably seen it 30 or 40 times.

This is the scene at the Tyrell Corporation headquarters when Deckard - Harrison Ford - is testing Sean

Young, Rachael, to see if she's a Replicant. It's beautifully delicate and emotional. Rachael is confused about

what's going on, Deckard is figuring it out and Tyrell (Joe Turkel) finds the whole interview amusing. It starts

off in this cavernous room, a practical set that was 80 or 100 feet long, and the light slowly changes, turning

this beautiful but harsh sunlight into a subtle cascading off what appears to be water behind Tyrell. Then you

get into the close-ups and the coverage of Harrison and Sean. Sean is absolutely stunning, with this beautiful

1950s hair all woven into itself, smoking a cigarette. She's extremely backlit and almost, but not quite, in

silhouette and the twinkle never leaves her eyes. It's magical, the way it engages the audience's emotions

visually and captures the weight of the scene.

Then it cuts back to Harrison. We don't know if he's a good guy or a bad guy, so the light's half on him and

half off. If you had to pick a moment from the scene, it's Sean exhaling cigarette smoke as she contemplates

a question, and the smoke almost dissolves out around her into a silhouette. I always thought of Lauren

Bacall when I saw that. It's stunning.

Jess Hall

Jess Hall has been "Wally Pfistering". An Englishman with Jamaican ancestry and degrees from

London's esteemed Central Saint Martins and New York University, he recently shot Pfister's

first feature film, cerebral sci-fi Transcendence. "Wally sought me on the basis of my work on

Creation, and he also loved Brideshead Revisited," explains Hall of the honour of playing DP to

the esteemed DP-turned-director. "I don't love every cinematographer's work but I've always

liked his work and thought it was quite similar to what I'd like to do, given the opportunity. We

have quite similar aesthetics."

Hall can trace his career all the way back to a boyhood trip to see the Sistine Chapel. "I was

incredibly moved by the beauty of the images", he's explained, "but also kind of curious about

how they could have been executed". Skipping forward 30-odd years and he's added Hot Fuzz,

Stander and Son Of Rambow to that CV, as well as Ruben Fleischer's 30 Minutes Or Less

which saw him riffing on Roger Deakins' Fargo lighting. He's been based in Los Angeles for the

past two years, and it's at his home in the notorious cellphone blackspot that is Santa Monica

that Empire catches up with him.

THE SHOT

SAVING PRIVATE RYANYEAR: 1998 DIRECTOR: STEVEN SPIELBERG CINEMATOGRAPHER: JANUSZ KAMINSKI

I haven't chosen this because it's the most influential scene I've seen or because it's particularly inspired me,

but because I remember the gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach when I saw it at the cinema. It was the

closest thing I'd seen to being in a battle. I'm a great lover of photojournalism - in fact, I kind of wanted to be a

photojournalist - and the shot that runs behind them when they hit the beach is so Robert Capa. His influence

is evident in the photography. It plays into another film I love, The Battle Of Algiers, one of the films that

inspired me to want to be a cinematographer.

Although I'm not a big Spielberg fan in some respects, I do think it's a significant sequence and quite

masterful. It puts you subjectively into a battle sequence in a way that nothing else I've seen has. It has that

great opening, which starts on the close-up of the hand and you tilt up to find your protagonist and from there

you go into quite a subjective vision of battle. What Janusz Kaminski did with the violent shutter and the

bleach bypass adds an extraordinary quality to the sequence. And then there's the brilliant handheld camera

work of (camera operator Mitch Dubin, who I sought out to work with on the strength of that scene and who's

become a collaborator. It was shot before the advent of lightweight cameras too.

If you see a wide shot, it's from a bunker. Everything is from ground level, or lower, because everyone's

crouching down, and all the views are partial, obscured by things people are hiding behind. Right the end in

goes into an overhead shot which reminds me of that powerful aftermath shot from Gone With The Wind, and

there's lovely symmetry in the way the sequence opens and closes on Tom Hanks' shaking hand.

This was a war of industrial weight and of equipment that was much more basic than we see in modern wars

and you really feel that in the sequence, as well as the absurdity of it. When Captain Miller finally gets on the

beach, you go into a close-up of him and then you see from his point of view this series of horrific and absurd

moments: men on fire; a guy looking for his arm; people praying. It captures the insanity of war. You're so in

the midst of it.

John Toll

A pre-eminent Hollywood lenser for more than two decades, John Toll began his career with a

part-time college job at a documentary film company. "I was always a kid with a camera," he

recalls, "and I was especially interested in film photography, but I was never sure how I would

pursue that, so I was really fortunate. I started as a PA and got a spot as a camera assistant on

these 16mm classic documentaries, before working my way to camera operator and then

director of photography."

He's one of only three cinematographers to win back-to-back Academy Awards in 1996 when

he followed his Legends Of The Fall success with an Oscar for Braveheart. A magician of the

great outdoors, he's travelled the globe shooting big historical epics from British Columbia

(Legends Of The Fall) and New Zealand (The Last Samurai) to County Meath, Ireland

(Braveheart) and tropical Queensland (The Thin Red Line). The latter paired him with Terrence

Malick. "Our introduction came over quite a few sessions on the phone", Toll remembers,

"before we met in person. He's a shy person but he's also incredibly gregarious." The pair

travelled to the Solomon Islands to scout it as a possible location for the shoot. "It's not a

tourist destination," he laughs. "It's not like going on vacation in Hawaii, put it that way."

The Ohioan has stowed his passport over the past 24 months to shoot Iron Man 3 in California

and North Carolina, and work with Lana and Andy Wachowski on Jupiter Ascending in Illinois

("A mix of science-fiction and contemporary Chicago," is how he describes it). When Empire

caught up with him he was back at home in sunny Carpinteria, California, "working on TV

commercials and catching up on odds and ends".

THE SHOT

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTERYEAR: 1955 DIRECTOR: CHARLES LAUGHTON CINEMATOGRAPHER: STANLEY CORTEZ

Stanley Cortez's The Night Of The Hunter is unique. It's a mystery-thriller that mixes European influences with

traditional Hollywood filmmaking in a way that's film noirish but very Hollywood-looking. You can see how

influenced it is by German Expressionism, with these very graphic, stark, contrasty scenes. Within it, there's

some unbelievably terrific images that have a way of staying with you. There are several sequences that just

stand out as being unique. There's the shot of the car in the lake and Robert Mitchum's character on a horse

silhouetted against the horizon. There's also a shot of Lillian Gish, who plays the old lady who adopts the kids,

sitting in a chair on the porch and Mitchum is visible through the screen, semi-silhouetted outside, and

another woman walks in with a lamp. The lamp illuminates the screen and he disappears, and when the lamp

goes out he's not there anymore. It's Hollywood trickery done in a way that you really appreciate.

The Night Of The Hunter is a film that's been reappreciated because it's so visually stylised but it's also got so

much of that era of filmmaking in it: it's a little corny, a little overdone, and Robert Mitchum is so over-the-top,

it's completely engrossing, You can't take your eyes off of him. I wasn't old enough to catch its original release

but somehow I caught in a theatre in the early '60s, I've no idea how, before I got involved in filmmaking. But I

could definitely recognise the photographic aspects of it.

Stanley was more recognised for this and The Magnificent Ambersons than any of his other work. Like most

cinematographers, he adapted his style for each project and each director. I don't think you can attribute a

particular style to Stanley, but sometimes an individual movie can become a hallmark of a cinematographer's

career.

Phedon Papamichael

From a 15 year-old with a Super 8, to a 17 year-old with a Nikon, to a spell as a

photojournalist, to Cool Runnings' cinematographer and now a 51 year-old with an Oscar

nomination to his name, Phedon Papamichael's early passion for the image, both moving and

still, has flourished in a way that will surely encourage dark-room devotees everywhere to

dream big.

For Empire's celebration, the Greek-born DP has picked a sequence from a film shot a few

hundred miles across the Ionian Sea from his native land. Jean-Luc Godard's poignant lament

to the slow death of a marriage, Le Mépris (Contempt) charts the tumult of a screenwriter

(Michel Piccoli), his wife (Brigitte Bardot) and a Hollywood mogul (Jack Palance) as a sun-

baked dance above the Gulf of Salerno on the island of Capri. It's a film that's shot through

with allusions to Greek mythology, boasting a Georges Delerue score filled with cues that will

be familiar to Scorsese fans and breathtaking beauty, thanks to the craft of New Wave lenser

Raoul Coutard.

That combination inspired Papamichael. "I used to take pictures of skies and walls and

textures, but rarely of people," recalls the naturalised American cinematographer of those

snap-happy Nikon days. "Here was someone doing something similar to what I was doing with

my still photos, but telling a story with it." Lately he's been acclaimed for his work on

Alexander Payne films The Descendants and Nebraska, and shot George Clooney's art caper

The Monuments Men. "I like to see what happens at the actual location when I see them block

it and rehearse it," he explains of his method, elaborating on that creative alchemy with Payne.

"Alexander is a very precise filmmaker, but we let the actor inhabit the frame. We don't just

cover the actor on every sense. Close-ups are for a reason." But can he remember that Cool

Runnings slogan? "Feel the rhythm, fee… uh, do you know it?"

THE SHOT

LE MÉPRISYEAR: 1963 DIRECTOR: JEAN-LUC GODARD CINEMATOGRAPHER: RAOUL COUTARD

This is my favourite Godard film. It's a movie that first made me aware of the cinematographer's job. I grew up

watching films and always had a fascination with it, but this was the first time I realised that there was

somebody else besides the director behind the camera. This sequence was shot at (modernist clifftop villa)

Casa Malaparte, and I was lucky enough to go there two years ago. You can't really get to it as a regular

tourist, because there's no road access, but I took a boat. It's completely overgrown with trees now, but in the

film it just stands as this incredible edifice on a rock.There's one shot in particular that stood out for me. It's a

little sequence on the roof of that house in Malaparte. It starts with a wide shot with Michel Piccoli looking for

Bardot and then cuts to a very graphic shot on the flat top roof as she's pacing and you have the blue horizon

line of the Mediterranean in the background. She waves to him, then she walks off and Godard holds this

composition without a cut until he re-enters the frame, doing a reverse pan. He's looking for her, leans over

the edge and sees she's sitting in the window now with Jack Palance. They kiss in the window. She's trying to

make him jealous. She has contempt for him because he's not jealous. It's like Odysseus returning to

Penelope. This CinemaScope colour phase wasn't typical for Godard but these wide, anamorphic frames are

so graphic. They're not traditional compositions from that era. Coutard was the first name I wrote down when I

discovered what a cinematographer does. I thought, "Okay, that's what I want to do."

Nancy Schreiber

"I've just been doing pick-ups for a small movie by a director from The Good Wife," Nancy

Schreiber tells Empire down the Skype wires from LA. "Our youngest cast member is 67 years

old!" In her time as a Hollywood DP, the Detroit native has worked with the young, old, and, in

the case of 1992's Visions Of Light, the truly venerable. Schreiber worked as one of the

cinematographers on a documentary about the art itself, capturing some of the masters of the

craft on camera. No pressure, then? "I didn't have time to get nervous about all my heroes,"

she laughs. "We had tube cameras – heavy and hot – and I'd almost be asleep because the

cameras were so hot." Alongside the likes of Greg Toland and Sven Nykvist, Schreiber vividly

recalls her encounters with Vittorio Storaro ("Unbelievable") and Michael Chapman ("He had

these big glasses on and kept looking up into my lights. I'd be, like, 'Oh my god!').

Schreiber, who has DPed films as diverse as Ryan Reynolds thriller The Nines and Neil

Labute's pitch black comedy Your Friends And Neighbors, came up not as a camera assistant

but as a gaffer, the head electrician. At the time, she explains, that was "the New York way" to

make your way into the craft. "Thankfully I [also] had to learn the camera but I didn't really

pursue it, because lighting seemed more relevant. Somehow I didn't blow up New York

because we didn't have generators back in the day and we had to tie into the power grid. It

was the Wild Wild East back then!"

Now an established ASC and Academy member, the cinematographer plucks her choice of shot

from a '60s crime classic. "I've picked Point Blank", she explains, "because a week ago I filmed

Angie Dickinson for a series on women in film. She is so beautiful still, so together and so

sharp. I hadn't seen Point Blank for many years, I had to go away and see it again."

THE SHOT

POINT BLANKYEAR: 1967 DIRECTOR: JOHN BOORMAN CINEMATOGRAPHER: PHILIP H. LATHROP

It wasn't only the photography on Point Break that affected me when I first saw it, it was the sound. It all goes

together. The sequence I've picked is Lee Marvin walking though the airport when he's left San Francisco to

go look for his wife, who's cheated on him in Los Angeles. You see this very dramatic image: it's a tracking

shot at a low angle, with these great fluorescent lights and a very austere background, and there's nothing

there except Lee Marvin and great architecture. The film cuts several times to him and each time it comes

back to this tracking shot of Lee walking down this corridor. Then it cuts to his wife (Sharon Acker) and it's

very innocent. She's putting on her make-up, she's under a hairdryer, picking out her wardrobe, and it's

almost like she's waiting for him, which, of course, she can't be because she thinks he's dead. And do you

know what? He might be! This whole movie could be what's going through his head before he dies. What's a

dream and what's a reality? It's really confusing in this movie. I heard that at the time MGM didn't know what

the film was about, but somehow they let it through.outside and the same footsteps are still going on. He runs

into the bedroom and shoots the bed, thinking that's where his former best friend and now lover of his wife is.

The whole montage has built up to this very graphic shooting of a bed scene; it's very sexual. I just remember

the tonal quality from the corridor where Lee is walking to the place his wife is living, it's all in tones of grey,

monochromatic. As the film build later on, more colour comes in, especially when the Angie Dickinson

character arrives.

I'm calling Point Blank 'neo-noir', but it's shot mostly in the day. You see these great anamorphic images: very

spare, dramatic framing and great angles. I read somewhere that most of the film was shot on a 40mm

Panavision lens, anamorphic, which had just been built right before Lathrop and Boorman shot this movie.

You think of Mad Men and its production design, which is so self-conscious, and then you look at Point

Blank , which was made during the same era, and John Boorman and (cinematographer) Philip Lathrop made

Los Angeles look like this very lonely, bleak place. It's very minimal.

Reed Morano

Still in her mid-thirties, Reed Morano has already consolidated her rep as a up-and-coming

cinematographer with a CV laden with indie gold. Emerging from the talent factory that is

NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, she worked her way up on the ladder as camera assistant and

grip before breaking through with 2008's Frozen River, a crime yarn that also yielded an Oscar

nod for Melissa Leo. Despite biting cold (her HD camera iced up at one point) and a zero-thrills

budget, she lent the acclaimed drama a naturalist look that caught the eye of critics and fellow

filmmakers alike.

Since then Morano has brought her eye to bear on Rob Reiner's And So It Goes, Beat-era

character drama Kill Your Darlings and this year's Sundance hit The Skeleton Twins among

others, and added her name to the American Society of Cinematographers's still-small band of

female members. She's also formed a one-woman logistics department on Shut Up & Play The

Hits, managing a multi-camera set-up that farewelled LCD Soundsystem with a stellar-looking

concert doc, and is currently at work on Meadowland, her directorial debut. Morano cites

Gordon Willis as an inspiration for her work - "I like to go as dark as I can," she tells Empire,

"and to take risks. Watching a lot of his work gave me the courage to do that" - but it's the

work of Wim Wenders' long-standing DP, Dutchman Robby Müller, that she picks for Empire's

continuing celebration of cinematography.

THE SHOT

PARIS, TEXASYEAR: 1984 DIRECTOR: WIM WENDERS CINEMATOGRAPHER: ROBBY MÜLLER

I first saw Paris, Texas when I was about 19 and at college. I went to NYU and we used to watch a lot of Wim

Wenders films. I had an older boyfriend in film school at the time and he was really like well-versed in film and

made me watch La Jetée and Le Mépris and all the movies I love now. I think I was so blinded by love that I

would just watch anything. (laughs)

What I like most about it is the use of mixed lighting. It's the mixture of very strong fluorescent colour light with

tungsten light in a framed shot, or, say magic hour light mixed like florescent light. It definitely affects the

mood, adding a sense of eerieness. As a DP you're making a strong statement [using it]. It reminds me of the

work of (American stills photographer) Philip-Lorca diCorcia. I don't know if his work inspired Paris, Texas but

he was taking these photos around the same timeframe that it was made. Maybe one inspired the other? Who

knows.

The first shot I noticed – and it isn't a particularly tricky one – is of the main character, Walt Henderson (Dean

Stockwell), at a gas station on his way to seek out his brother Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) in a different part

of Texas. There's very strong neon in the gas station and behind him is the most amazing sunset you can

ever imagine in the background. It's a strong statement – a very beautiful shot. He's about to go to a weird

place: to find his brother who's been missing for four years. They haven't seen each other for four years and

he's been taking care of his brother's child. His brother is very strange. He doesn't talk for a while and you

never really learn in the movie why he went away, so it's a little eerie in that sense and I think that's why they

made this choice. Personally I like to use mixed colour temperatures. If you do it to an extreme, it's not very

naturalistic, but it's kind of cool, and if you use a slightly subtler version it can be very beautiful. It's natural

because in real life we have mixed up colour temperatures, they just blend a little bit better.