Incredible Cinematographers - Know the Best Movies Before You See Them

updated: 12/27/15

Emmanuel Lubezki
The Revenant, The Tree of Life, Children of Men, The New World

Janusz Kaminski - IMDb
Minority Report, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Catch Me if You Can, Saving Private Ryan,
Schindler's List

Roger Deakins - IMDb
Skyfall, The Assassination of Jesse James, No Country for Old Men, 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?', The Shawshank Redemption

Wally Pfister - IMDb
Inception, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Memento


Things usually work out better than you plan. When you're shooting a film you're so close to it, it rarely lives up to your expectations while you're there. You always want it to be better, more perfect. When you see a cut, maybe two or three months later, you come to it fresh. It's generally much better than you thought it would be.

Someone said to me, early on in film school... if you can photograph the human face you can photograph anything, because that is the most difficult and most interesting thing to photograph. If you can light and photograph the human face to bring out what's within that human face you can do anything.

The prep period is especially important. Joel and Ethan Coen and I really enjoy it. By the time we're on the set, we're discussing not what we're doing that day but rather something we're doing later that may be a problem.

Andrew Lesnie - IMDb
The Hobbit Part 1 & 2
King Kong
Lord of the Rings Trilogy



"Sadly, some people think of good cinematography as a beautiful sunset or a spectacular vista. I believe we affect the audience in a much more subtle way. We're manipulating them emotionally with light, darkness, colors, contrast and composition. I know the Dogme 95 theories, but I believe actors respond to light. Just look at a Rembrandt or Caraveggio painting or any of the Dutch masters, and tell me light isn't important. The pictures have to be true to the narrative, but I like to test the boundaries and see how far I can go."

"Film has an enormous amount of exposure latitude and dynamic range, which gives us infinite creative ability in creating images. I can underexpose it by 3 stops and overexpose it by 5 stops within the same frame and see the entire spectrum on the screen. That's simply not possible in any digital format I've seen. Every digital camera is trying hard to emulate 35mm film, and there's a reason for that."
 
Robert Richardson - IMDb
Django Unchained
Hugo
Shutter Island
Inglourious Basterds
The Aviator
Snow Fall on Cedars
The Horse Whisperer
Casino
JFK
Born on the Fourth of July
Platoon

Danny Cohen - IMDb
Les Misérables
The King's Speech

Jeff Cronenweth - IMDb
Hitchcock
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Social Network
Fight Club

Matthew Libatique - IMDb
Black Swan
Iron Man 2
Iron Man
The Fountain
Everything is Illuminated
Requiem for a Dream



Caleb Deschanel - IMDb
Jack Reacher
Passion of the Christ
The Patriot
Fly Away Home

John Mathieson - IMDb