Stuart Dryburgh

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Stuart Dryburgh (born March 30, 1952 in London , Great Britain ) is a British cameraman who works primarily in New Zealand and the USA. In 1994 he was nominated for an Oscar for his camera in Das Piano .

life and work

Growing up and training in New Zealand

Stuart Dryburgh was born in London but grew up in Wellington , New Zealand . At first he followed his father professionally and studied architecture. The thematically comparatively open course enabled him to work with video recordings in addition to insights into sociology and media studies.

After graduating, following his predominant interest in filmmaking, he worked in New Zealand film productions, initially as a 'girl for everything', later as a technician and lighting technician. Within the still young New Zealand film scene, this work was equivalent to an apprenticeship for him, here he also met later directors like Alison Maclean and Jane Campion . With recordings of commercials and pop videos he had his first successes as a cameraman and was able to make a name for himself. His work on the award-winning short film Kitchen Sink by Maclean then led to an initial collaboration with Campion, who had meanwhile been able to complete several of her own film projects.

Working with Jane Campion

As cameraman for Jane Campion, Stuart Dryburgh worked in three films from 1990 to 1996. The two first worked together on the film An Angel on My Blackboard, about the New Zealand writer Janet Frame . The New Zealand hit film Das Piano with Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel followed three years later . In 1996, their last collaboration to date came out, the film Portrait of a Lady with Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich . Dryburgh said of Campion: "Working with Jane is a unique privilege for a cameraman because she is a director who thinks very carefully about the visual aspects of the film."

For all three films, Campion and Dryburgh have developed their own overall visual design. They immerse the images in colder or warmer tones, depending on the location or situation. The film 'Das Piano' takes place partly on a beach and in a New Zealand jungle landscape. The beach is completely bathed in soft pastel tones, the sea and sky seem to blur into one another. The jungle, on the other hand, looks like an oppressive underwater world with the help of blue filters and cold light in the photos.

While Dryburgh and Campion use the color moods in Das Piano to characterize different locations in the film, in Portrait of a Lady they use these colors to define the time in which the film takes place. So at the beginning of the film, in the English summer, optimistic yellow and green tones predominate, which give way to a gloomy dark blue mood during the course of the film when the protagonist finds herself trapped in a bleak marriage. Dryburgh says: "I don't think that this approach is particularly mysterious or sophisticated in theory or in practice , rather it is almost outrageously simple - but it works."

More camera work

Since the mid-1990s, Dryburgh has been working on US productions as well as New Zealand. He was particularly pleased about the opportunity to work with John Sayles , one of his idols, on his film Lone Star in 1996 . Dryburgh is also responsible for the camera in larger productions such as Reine Nervensache , The Bride Who Doesn't Dare or Recipe to Fall in Love . Domestic productions in New Zealand such as When the Sea Disappeared are also still on his agenda.

Dryburgh also appreciates working on commercials, which he says gives him more freedom in choosing his feature-length assignments and allowing him to try out new techniques.

Dryburgh's style

Dryburgh himself says of his camera work that he was not aware that he had developed a certain handwriting in it. Instead, he tries to find an appropriate visual language for each film, also depending on how pronounced the director's visual ideas are. He also thinks that the work of other people involved, such as the outfitter, is sometimes so good "that you just have to take a photo."

In a review of the film Das Piano by the film scholar Thomas Koebner, it sounds a little more enthusiastic: "Dryburgh succeed in creating images of dreamlike conciseness that oscillate between real reproduction and symbolic meaning."

Nominations and Awards

The film Kitchen Sink by Alison Maclean, was at the Dryburgh cameraman, was nominated in 1989 for a Golden Palm.

His cinematography for Das Piano received an Oscar nomination in 1994. In addition to a few other nominations, he received an award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association , the Australian Film Institute and a Polish film festival for this film .

Among other things, his work in An Angel on My Table and When the Sea Disappeared received awards.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Peter Ettedgui: Film Arts: Camera . 1st edition. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-499-60661-5 , p. 144 ff .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Ettedgui, Peter: Filmkünste: Kamera, Reinbek 2000, pp. 144–153
  2. ^ Reclam Filmklassiker, Stuttgart, 1998, Volume 4, p. 388
personal data
SURNAME Dryburgh, Stuart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British cameraman
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH London