Russell Boyd

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Russell Boyd (born April 21, 1944 in Geelong , Victoria ) is an Australian cameraman . He has worked together for decades with the director Peter Weir , who has used him in many of his works since the mid-1970s. For his work on Weir's seafaring epic Master and Commander - Until the End of the World (2003) he was honored with the Oscar in the category Best Cinematography .

biography

Russell Boyd was born in 1944 in Manifold Heights, in the small town of Geelong near Melbourne . He came from a family of farmers and grew up in the Waurn Ponds district. His father sheared sheep and sold the wool at the market. With the medium of television Boyd came into contact through his father, who took him to the cinema on Saturdays, where series such as the American western format Hopalong Cassidy (1952-1954) with William Boyd were performed. Fascinated by photography as a teenager, after graduating from Geelong College, he went to Melbourne, where he found a job with the company Cinesound , which produced newsreels for the cinema. After a year he made black and white contributions himself and later switched to the Melbourne television station Channel 7 .

After several years in the news business, Boyd moved to Sydney where he worked for a documentary company. She shot 8mm films across the country on behalf of the Australian Immigration Service. He later switched to advertising, where he worked on a large number of television commercials. During this time he made the acquaintance of the three years younger film student Michael Thornhill and shot low-budget films with him on weekends . He borrowed the technical equipment from a large photo studio for which he worked. In 1974 Boyd was responsible for the pictures of Thornhill's first feature film Between Wars . The historical drama in which Corin Regrave took over the role of the Sydney psychiatrist Edward Trenbow , should bring him two years later an award from the Australian Cinematographers Society , which Boyd voted Australia's cameraman of the year 1976.

After Between Wars , Boyd focused on working as a cameraman in Australian film. As an autodidact who did not start out as a camerawoman with film as usual, he was inspired by numerous black and white films from the 1950s. These include Kon Ichikawa's drama Friends to the Last (1956), but also later classics of the Nouvelle Vague such as François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962). Through the contact with the assistant director of his second feature film, Boyd made the acquaintance of the director Peter Weir , who then hired him as cameraman for the film adaptation of Joan Lindsay's popular novel Picnic at Hanging Rock . The "romantic horror film" reports on a trip to a boarding school for girls on Valentine's Day in 1900, when three schoolgirls and a teacher disappeared without a trace in the Hanging Rock massif . Despite an extensive search, only one of the three girls is found after a week, but cannot give any explanations about the whereabouts of her friends and the teacher. "Those early films were groundbreaking and you felt like you were doing something important," Boyd said in a 2004 interview with The Weekend Australian . “They weren't for profit, they were made with a lot of heart, with dignity and perhaps helped to tear down the cultural provincial image that much of the rest of the world had about Australia. It was exhilarating to help tear this down. And of course we were young and idealistic too. "

Picnic on Valentine's Day , the German distribution title, was published in 1975, was popular with critics and audiences and was largely responsible for the international recognition of the new Australian cinema. Russell Boyd was also successful, whose camera work brought comparisons to well-known photographers such as David Hamilton . He won the American Saturn Award in 1979 for his soft backlit shots, which intensify the unreal events in the film. Two years earlier he had won the British Film Awards against such well-known professional colleagues as Haskell Wexler ( One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ) or Gordon Willis ( The Untouchables ). Weir relied on his cameraman for the following film projects The Last Flood (1977), Gallipoli (1981) and the Oscar- winning drama A Year in Hell , the Boyd Awards from the Australian Film Institute in his home countryand another award from the Australian Cinematographers Society. From the early 1980s, Boyd followed offers from Hollywood and worked with Bruce Beresford ( Comeback of Love , 1983), Norman Jewison ( Sergeant Waters - A Soldier's Story , 1984) and Gillian Armstrong ( Escape for Three , 1984), but stayed with audience hits like the mainstream comedies Crocodile Dundee - A Crocodile to Kiss (1986) and the sequel Crocodile Dundee II (1988) with Paul Hogan as the title character continue to be loyal to the domestic film industry.

When it comes to new offers, Boyd takes a selective approach, chooses the projects on the basis of the directors and familiarizes himself with the previous works of less well-known filmmakers. He also attaches great importance to the script and working with well-known colleagues whom he also values ​​personally. From the beginning of the 1990s, the Australian devoted himself increasingly to work in the USA, where the sports comedies White Boys Don't Bring It (1992) and Tin Cup (1996), the adventure film Forever Young (1992) with Mel Gibson or Eddie-Murphy -Vehicle Dr. Dolittle (1998). Boyd reduced his workload to just one or two films a year and in 2003, after a break of more than twenty years, worked again with Peter Weir on the drama Master and Commander - To the End of the World . The seafaring epic, inspired by motifs from two novels by Patrick O'Brian , focuses on the captain of an English warship (played by Russell Crowe ) who is chasing an enemy ship of the Napoleonic troops. The "Symphony of Fear, Sweat and Gunpowder Vapor" received critical acclaim as the most naturalistic seafaring film of all time and was nominated in ten categories at the 2004 Academy Awards. Russell Boyd also received an Oscar nomination, who was nominated for the first time in the Best Camera category against the favored Americans John Schwartzman ( Seabiscuit - With the Will to Success ) and John Seale ( On the Way to Cold Mountain ). After Robert Krasker ( The Third Man ), Dean Semler ( Dances With Wolves ), John Seale ( The English Patient ) and Andrew Lesnie ( The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring ), he was the fifth Australian cameraman to receive the award was considered. In his fifth collaboration with Weir, he was inspired by contemporary oil paintings, among other things, and for the most part captured the scenes below deck with natural candlelight.

Boyd has been married since 1969. In 2004 he became a member of the American Society of Cinematographers for his excellent references and has since been allowed to use the abbreviation ASC in his name. As early as 1975 the cameraman, who never wanted to switch to directing himself, was accepted into the ranks of the Australian Cinematographers Society.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Oscar

  • 2004 : Best Camera for Master and Commander - To the End of the World

British Academy Film Award

  • 1977: Best camera for a picnic on Valentine's Day
  • 2004: Nominated in the Best Camera category for Master and Commander - To the End of the World

Australian Film Institute Award

  • 1977: Best camera for Break of Day
  • 1978: Best camera for The Last Flood
  • 1980: Nominated in the Best Camera category for The Chain Reaction
  • 1981: Best camera for Gallipoli
  • 1983: Nominated in the Best Camera category for A Year in Hell
  • 1986: Nominated in the Best Camera category for Burke & Wills
  • 1988: Raymond Longford Prize
  • 1990: nominated in the category Best Camera for Bloody Trail

Further

American Society of Cinematographers

  • 2004: Nominated in the Best Camera category for Master and Commander - To the End of the World

Australian Cinematographers Society

  • 1976: Camera Man of the Year for Between Wars
  • 1982: Camera Man of the Year for Gallipoli
  • 1998: Induction into the ACS Hall of Fame

British Society of Cinematographers

  • 1976: Prize for a picnic on Valentine's Day

Camerimage

  • 2003: Special prize together with Peter Weir and nominated for the Golden Frog for Master and Commander - Until the End of the World

Chicago Film Critics Association Awards

  • 2004: Nominated in the Best Camera category for Master and Commander - To the End of the World

Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards

  • 2002: Special award and nominated in the category Best Camera for Serenades

National Society of Film Critics Award

  • 2004: Best Camera for Master and Commander - To the End of the World

Phoenix Film Critics Society Award

  • 2004: Nominated in the Best Camera category for Master and Commander - To the End of the World

Satellite Awards

  • 2004: Nominated in the Best Camera category for Master and Commander - To the End of the World

Saturn Award

  • 1979: Best camera for a picnic on Valentine's Day

literature

  • Tavernetti, Susan: Russell Boyd . In: Vinson, James (Ed.): Writers and production artists. Chicago [u. a.]: St. James Press, 1993 (The international dictionary of films and filmmakers; 4), ISBN 1-558-62040-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c cf. Potter, Elise: Our Oscar winner the toast of Waurn Ponds . In: Geelong Advertiser, March 2, 2004, p. 1
  2. ↑ cf. Tight camera angles . In: Geelong Advertiser, February 20, 2004, p. 2
  3. ↑ a b c cf. Barber, Lynden: Master of the camera . In: The Weekend Australian, March 6, 2004, p. B22
  4. ↑ a b c cf. Portrait and interview (Engl.) At kodak.com ( Memento of 8 July 2006 at the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ a b c cf. Picnic on Valentine's Day . In: film service 14/1977
  6. ↑ cf. Picnic on Valentine's Day . In: The large TV feature film film lexicon (CD-ROM). Directmedia Publ., 2006. - ISBN 978-3-89853-036-1
  7. ↑ cf. Rahayel, Oliver: Master and Commander - To the end of the world . In: film-dienst 24/2003
  8. ↑ cf. Zander, Peter: Symphony of fear and sweat . In: Die Welt , November 27, 2003, edition 277/2003, p. 29
  9. ↑ cf. Easter's Aust Winners List . AAP Newsfeed, March 1, 2004, International News
  10. ↑ cf. Profile in the Internet Movie Database (English; accessed November 1, 2008)
personal data
SURNAME Boyd, Russell
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian cameraman
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Geelong , Victoria