To celebrate my first cover story in American Cinematographer – covering Neill Blomkamp's terrific race car movie Gran Turismo – here's a note to explain how I came to write for this awesome magazine.
After two decades writing for Cinefex, the Rolls-Royce of visual effects journalism, there didn’t seem to be many other comparable filmmaking magazines. Then, through a chance referral through a friend (thanks, Sheigh) I was introduced to the publishers of American Cinematographer (thanks, David).
The magazine of the American Society of Cinematographers was first printed in 1923. About fifty years later, while I was growing up in England, I bought copies at Forbidden Planet to read about how they filmed all my favorite films, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., and Empire of the Sun.
I landed my first freelance AC gig last summer, covering a funny, surprisingly touching, and beautifully shot hybrid stop-motion comedy, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. That was for the ASC website, not the ink-on-paper journal. But it earned me my first visit to the ASC’s Art Deco clubhouse in Hollywood, where I met the team, and got to ogle Greg Toland’s 1935-vintage Mitchell BNC 2 camera that he and Orson Welles used on Citizen Kane.
Earlier this year, I returned for other freelance gigs, including a series of interviews with three masters of visual effects, who collectively have won fifteen Oscars – John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, and Dennis Muren, ASCs. And then, to my surprise, AC editor-in-chief Stephen Pizzello announced that I was to be the ASC’s visual effects editor.
The new issue – September 2023, containing my story on Gran Turismo – is rolling out to newsstands, or available for purchase at the ASC website. Below is a link to a collection of other stories, most available online.
It is a trip to be part of Hollywood history, more than a hundred years in print.
My stories, 2022-present:
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