Cinematographers praise 'Slumdog'
D.p.s sound off on year's most compelling work
By ROBERT KOEHLER
Posted: Tue., Feb. 10, 2009, 2:57pm PT
Unanimous praise was heaped on 'Slumdog Millionaire.'
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Cinematographers praise 'Slumdog'
D.p.s sound off on year's most compelling work
02/10/2009
Few if any groups in the film business are as famously collegial as
cinematographers: It's not for nothing that the American Society of
Cinematographers' Hollywood headquarters is dubbed "The Clubhouse."
So what do some of the high achievers in this small, tight circle --
some of them Oscar nominees and winners -- think of their peers'
work in 2008? What images remained in their minds days, weeks,
months after viewing?
If a highly unscientific survey of a handful of cinematographers is
any indication, one trend continues to hold stubborn traction:
It's "Slumdog Millionaire's" world, and the rest of us are just
living in it.
Anthony Dod Mantle, the British-born d.p. whose intensely colored,
half-digital, half-film work on "Slumdog" has become the cherry on
top of a career as the cameraman of choice for the Dogma 95 group of
Danish directors (Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, among
others), is easily the most mentioned name, along with a notably
large representation of other European-based peers.
Work on studio films lagged far behind in the mentions; as Oscar-
winning "There Will Be Blood" cinematographer Robert Elswit puts
it, "There wasn't much work out of Hollywood this year that grabbed
anybody."
Along with Elswit, opinions are sampled from his fellow Oscar
nominees from 2007: Roger Deakins ("No Country for Old Men," "The
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and with a
new nom, shared with Chris Menges, for "The Reader"), Janusz
Kaminski ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly") and Seamus McGarvey
("Atonement") as well as two-time Oscar nominee and Camerimage
lifetime achievement award winner Stephen Goldblatt.
The international span of this group of five is reflected in a
remarkably global range of choices, which in turn reflects that
world-class cinematography is now being practiced worldwide.
Mantle's "Slumdog" was "the biggest technical achievement of the
year," says Deakins, "because even though part of the film was shot
on a 2K digital camera and part on 35mm, my eye could never detect
the difference. Even though there's a stark difference in the visual
information and resolution between the two, with 35 still much
greater than 2K, it was quite a feat to maintain a consistent
quality of image throughout."
Adds Kaminski: "I like cinematography that feels alive, and
Anthony's work felt that way for me. The shooting got the sense of
the Mumbai streets, the reality of the gameshow, the nostalgia of
the romance."
Goldblatt agrees, noting that "Slumdog" was "a very adventurous mix
of media, fun and beautiful and very courageous. I've worked in
India as a photographer and know how tough it is there, so I was
quite impressed with the results."
McGarvey "loved how Anthony thought about how the various formats he
shot in would serve each milieu in the story, so that the images
never patronized the characters. It was such a ride."
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