The reigning Oscar recipient for cinematography, Claudio Miranda has rather quickly become one of the top names in his field. He apparently kicked around in various lighting departments until David Fincher made him the Director of Photography on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Miranda soared on this project, giving it a gorgeous golden, dreamlike look, and earning several award nominations, including an Oscar nomination, for his work. He went on to direct the photography in Joseph Kosinski’s two visually striking films, Tron: Legacy and Oblivion this year.
His greatest achievement to date, however, has to be his work with Ang Lee on Life of Pi, for which he won this past year’s Academy Award for Cinematography. This one was a runaway for the prize, by far the most captivating visual experience at the movies last year and a stunning advance in the use of 3D photography in particular. After Avatar it seemed as though no one knew what to do with 3D filmmaking, opting for lazy and lackluster post-production 3D and settling for pop-up book imagery in what had the potential for drawing us more into the world before us rather than reminding us we’re just watching. Life of Pi reminded us that 3D can be beautiful, whether it was the opening shots in the zoo that felt like we were taking a stroll through it, or the gorgeous underwater swimming shots, or the fact that Pi’s entire time at sea looked vividly surreal, which ended up making narrative and thematic sense. Needless to say, Miranda will be a name we’ll all be watching for in the years to come.
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