Home Featured Content

10 Of The Very Best Cinematographers Working Today

The paradox of the various departments of film production, whether it’s design, music, photography or others, is that when they’re executed with the highest level of skill they stand out, but they’re not really meant to. Most agree that a movie’s score, for instance, is operating at its best when it is affecting the audience’s response to and understanding of a particular scene or moment in a film but on a completely unconscious level. It’s only afterward, perhaps on repeat viewings, that we notice how beautifully composed the music was throughout, and in particular segments of the movie. If it stands out too much, it can be overbearing, and overly noticeable, and actually distract from the story that we’re supposed to be engaging in.

[h2]8) Robert Richardson[/h2]

Inglourious Basterds

Recommended Videos

Robert Richardson has been all over the place, and for far longer than I realized. I came to know him as the guy who really brought Quentin Tarantino’s movies to visual life, starting with Kill Bill but really coming to fruition in Inglourious Basterds. The look of Basterds was key to confirming its cinematic departure from Tarantino’s previous efforts, and it also is just a gorgeous, gorgeous film. His work on Django Unchained was also some of the best photographic work of last year.

What I didn’t know is that he was Oliver Stone’s cinematographer through that director’s golden period, from Salvador and Platoon up until U Turn (probably a good point to part ways). Since then, aside from Tarantino, his most frequent collaborator has been Martin Scorsese, both in his documentaries like Shine a Light and his recent gorgeous visual work on Shutter Island and Hugo. He has progressed from the gritty realism of his 1980s work with Oliver Stone to more cartoonish visuals with Quentin Tarantino to the dreamscapes of recent Scorsese stuff, showing he now has the photographic range of an A-list cinematographer.

Continue reading on the next page…