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Photo by Yousef Linjawi |
With dir George Hickenlooper [left] "The Man from Elysian Fields" [2000] |
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Photo by Yousef Linjawi |
With dir George Hickenlooper [left] "The Man from Elysian Fields" [2000] |
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Born: ?, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Education: University of Rochester [Film Studies; graduated in 1989]; Rochester Institute of Technology [Photography].
Career: Was introduced to the world of documentary film by his father, Henry Morgenthau III, who produced doc's for flagship PBS tv-station WGBH in Boston. He often tagged along on location shoots with his father to Africa, Europe and other places. His mother, Ruth Schachter Morgenthau [1931-2006], gave him an early introduction to global politics and rural development. She was a refugee from Nazi occupied Austria, who went on to become foreign policy advisor to three American presidents, a professor of International Politics at Brandeis University, and a forerunner in sustainable rural development.
Started working as researcher for Blackside Films in Boston, owned by doc filmmaker Henry Hampton. Became prod asst [on an independent feature in New York City], grip and best boy electrician [working with doph Robert Yeoman]. 'I was working in a bunch of different departments, learning by watching people. I was also shooting other people's short films on weekends, building a reel, including documentaries about music and music videos.'
Ph music videos for the Polygram, Sony and Warner labels with jazz artists Al Di Meola, Terrance Blanched, Joe Henderson ['Joe Henderson - So Near, So Far'], Betty Carter, a.o., and the interactive music video 'Blu Monster' [2000; a: Jimmy Tuckett; d: David van Eyssen]. Ph commercials dir by George Hickenlooper [for Loyola Marymount University], a.o. Appeared in the doc 'Cinematographer Style' [2005, Jon Fauer (JF); ph: JF, Jeff Laszlo, Brian Heller & David Morgan].
Awards: Fort Lauderdale FF 'Best Technical Achievement' [1995] for 'Joe & Joe'; ASC TV Award nom [2004] & 'Emmy' Award nom [2004-05] for 'The Five People You Meet in Heaven'; ASC TV Award nom [2008] for 'Life on Mars' [ep #1].
About 'Empire': 'With a mere 28-day shooting schedule, the film covered dozens of locations in the Bronx and Manhattan, as well as Puerto Rico and Miami. Though it stretched the thin budget even further, Morgenthau and Reyes were insistent on using the Super 35 format, which requires that the entire negative go through an expensive optical blow up before prints can be struck. "We felt it was an important part of telling the story," Morgenthau explains. "The wide screen aspect ratio worked very nicely with the landscapes of the Bronx. The buildings have fewer stories than those in downtown Manhattan. Also, the format just helped capture what was photogenic about the neighborhood. We shot in the neighborhood Franc grew up in and he wanted to capture that it was a place of warmth and family." [...] Meanwhile, downtown is presented in the film as a cold, impersonal, even threatening place. The 2.35:1 aspect ratio, says Morgenthau, gave this area a look and feel designed to make the viewer unconsciously uneasy. "With all the tall buildings reaching out of frame, it creates a claustrophobic sensation," he says.
Morgenthau lit the Bronx apartments using CTO-gelled HMIs coming through windows, sometimes bounced into bleached muslin to enhance a sense of softness and warmth to the quality of the illumination. "When this light would bounce off the warm-colored walls, it would create a particularly nice skin tone on the actors," he says. He lit the [Manhattan] loft through an enormous window that faced the street. He positioned a 50K Lightning Strikes! SoftSun outside the window as far from the building as he could manage. "I shot the downtown scenes without an 85 filter," he says. "In the timing I left a lot of the blue in there and even added in some green."
Morgenthau used a Moviecam Compact as his A-camera and an Arri 535B as a B-camera, both primarily with Cooke S4 lenses. Many scenes were covered by both cameras at once. "We had so much to shoot and so little time that I wanted Franc to have as much material as possible," he explains. "It was nice to be able to intercut two actors actually acting at the same time. It allowed the actors a chance to improvise."
[One] of Morgenthau's favorite tricks is to decrease shutter angle to add that slightly strobe-like, jerky feel to movement. "I think it's a great effect for a sense of heightened reality, specifically in scenes of violence," he says. "When you want the audience to feel that something is slightly off, but you don't really want them to know what it is, an altered shutter angle can be very effective. I like to use the smallest one I can get away with - something like 11.5 degrees. It's almost like stop motion. It's insanely staccato. And then, for a less pronounced effect, I'll use the 23.5." [From the Fujifilm website.]
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FILMS |
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1994 |
Fiddlefest [: Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras and Her East Harlem Violin Program]/Small Wonders [Allan Miller] v-to-35mm/c; doc/77m; addph: Ofer Cohen, Don Lenzer, Claudia Raschke, a.o.; prod 1994-95 |
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1994 |
Joe & Joe [David Wall] s16-35bu/c |
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1994 |
Multiple Futures [... and Other Paranoid Fantasies] [Alyce Wittenstein] b&w-c; comp of 3 shorts: 'Betaville - A Post-Modern Nightmare' (1986; 30m; ph: Richard E. Brooks), 'No Such Thing As Gravity' (1989; 36m; ph: Paul Holahan & John Rossnel) & 'The Deflowering' (1994; ph: Kramer Morgenthau) |
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1994 |
Give a Damn Again [Adam Isidore] 16mm/b&w-c; doc/90m; cph: Maryse Alberti, Sarah Cawley, Jean de Segonzac, Robert Levi & David Goldsmith |
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1994 |
Synthetic Pleasures [Iara Lee] 16mm+Hi8-to-35bu/c; doc/83m; ph USA; cph USA: Marcus Hahn; ph Japan: Toshifumi Furusawa; addph: Sarah Cawley, Nick Hoffman, a.o.; filmed 1993-95 |
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1995 |
Varga Girl [Wolfgang Hastert] b&w; doc/55m |
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1995 |
Destination Unknown [Nestor Miranda] s16-35bu/c; 2uc: Ben Wolf |
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1995 |
Union [Jon Ari Yudis] 16mm/c; exp short/15m |
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1995 |
Victor [Freddy Vargas] b&w; short/20m |
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1996 |
Dogtown [George Hickenlooper] c; 2uc: Nicholas Rivera |
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1996 |
Riding with Betty [Nick D'Avolio] ? |
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1997 |
Monte Hellman: American Auteur [George Hickenlooper] c; doc/14m |
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1997 |
The Big Brass Ring [George Hickenlooper] c; short/6m; 5 pages of the feature-length script were filmed to attract attention to the project; see 1998 |
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1997 |
Mayor of the Sunset Strip [George Hickenlooper] c; doc/94m; cph: Igor Meglic, Chris Carter & G. Hickenlooper; addph: Zoran Hochstätter (L.A.), Sarah Cawley (N.Y.), a.o.; filmed 1997-2000; released in 2003 |
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1997 |
Welcome to Hollywood [Tony Markes & Adam Rifkin] c; fake doc/89m; cph: Howard Wexler, Nick Mendoza & Robert Bennett |
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1997 |
Bombay Boys [Kaizad Gustad] c; addph: Anoop Jotwani |
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1998 |
Wirey Spindell [Eric Schaeffer] c; 2uc: Joaquín Baca-Asay |
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1998 |
The Big Brass Ring [George Hickenlooper] c; ph St. Louis: John Huston; see 1997 |
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1998 |
Brainspotting [Colm Wood] 16mm/c; short/13m |
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1998 |
The Woman Chaser/Butterfly [Robinson Devor] b&w; addph: Aldo Aldonelli, Andrew Parke & Joseph F. Valentine |
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1999 |
Music Bridges... Over Troubled Waters [Marc Cadeux] b&w; mus doc/30m |
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1999 |
Pigeonholed [Michael Swanhaus] c |
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1999 |
Cowboys and Angels/Kissed by an Angel [Gregory C. Haynes] c |
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2000 |
Green Dragon [Timothy Linh Bui] c; 2uc: Jamie Maxtone-Graham |
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2000 |
Isaac Stern: Musical Encounters [Allan Miller] v/c; doc/30m; cph: Bob Richman & Osamu Goto; titled 'From Mao to Mozart - Then and Now' as ep of PBS-tv series 'Great Performances' |
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2000 |
Empire [Franc. Reyes] s35/c; Miami unit ph: Jim Denault; 2uc: Michael Barrow & Stephen Kazmierski |
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2000 |
The Man from Elysian Fields [George Hickenlooper] c; 2uc: Jamie Maxtone-Graham |
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2001 |
Dreaming of Julia/Cuban Blood/Cuba Libre [Juan Gerard González] b&w-c; 2uc: Jamie Maxtone-Graham |
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2002 |
Godsend/Adam [Nick Hamm] s35/c; New York ph: Tom Houghton |
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2003 |
Taking Lives [D.J. Caruso] s35/c; main title seq ph (dir by Garson Yu); ph: Amir Mokri |
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2003 |
Havoc [Barbara Kopple (replaced Peter Horton)] c; 2uc: Phil Parmet |
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2004 |
Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family [Susan Kaplan] HD-to-35mm/c; doc/95m; co-addph; ph: Sarah Cawley; shot over an 8-year period |
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2004 |
Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue [Murray Lerner] 16mm+HD/c; doc/87m; cph: Hewy Adebonojo, Nicolas Doob & Bob Elfstrom; perf Miles Davis filmed in August 1970 at the Isle of Wight Festival + recent interviews |
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2005 |
Full of It/Big Liar on Campus [Christian Charles] c |
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2005 |
Factory Girl [George Hickenlooper] announced as doph, but film was ph by Michael Grady |
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2005 |
The Handyman [George Hickenlooper] in development; status unknown |
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2005 |
Diary [George Hickenlooper] in development; status unknown |
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2006 |
Fracture [Gregory Hoblit] s35/c |
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2006 |
Feast of Love [Robert Benton] s35/c |
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2007 |
The Express [Gary Fleder] s35+16mm-to-35mm scope/b&w-c; 2uc: Bob Scott; road unit ph + d: Aaron Schneider |
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2008 |
The Factory [Morgan O'Neill] c; 2uc: Igor Meglic |
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TELEVISION |
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199? |
America's Most Wanted [: America Fights Back] [various] series, 1988-present; other ph: Chris Chomyn, Peter Mullett, Mark Kohl, Claudia Raschke, a.o. |
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199? |
Comedy Central Presents [various] series |
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1997 |
Busby Berkeley: Going Through the Roof [David Thompson] doc/55m |
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1998 |
The Art of Influence [Deborah Dickson & Roberto Guerra] doc/b&w-c/87m; cph: Russell Lee Fine, Wolfgang Held, a.o. |
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1999 |
Dashiell Hammett: Detective, Writer [Joshua Waletzky] doc/b&w-c/56m; ep PBS-tv 'American Masters'-series |
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2000 |
The Orgasm Special: A Real Sex Xtra [Patti Kaplan & Helena Solberg] doc special/60m; cph: Dyanna Taylor, Maryse Alberti, a.o.; ep HBO-tv series 'Real Sex' |
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2001 |
Untitled Paul Simms Pilot [Timothy Van Patten] pilot; status unknown |
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2002 |
Shirtless: Hollywood's Sexiest Men [Elizabeth Meeker] doc/b&w-c/46m |
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2004 |
Blind Justice [pilot dir by Gary Fleder] 13-part series, 2005; other ph: Rick Bota & Jeff Jur |
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2004 |
The Five People You Meet in Heaven [Lloyd Kramer] tvm; 2uc: Brian Pearson; uwph: Braden Haggerty |
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2004 |
The Seinfeld Story [Morgan Sackett] special/60m; cph: Bill Berner & Gil Hubbs |
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2005 |
Over There [pilot dir by Chris Gerolmo] 13-part series; other ph: Rick Bota & Bill Roe |
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2005 |
The Evidence [pilot dir by Gary Fleder] 8-part series, 2006; other ph: David Geddes (+ cph pilot) |
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2005 |
Saved [ep #1 'A Day in the Life' dir by Darnell Martin] 13-part series, 2006; other ph: Barry Donlevy |
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2008 |
Life on Mars [ep #1 'Out Here in the Fields' dir by Gary Fleder] series, 2008-present + unaired pilot 'Hit and Run' (2007; d: Thomas Schlamme; ph: ?); other ph: Michael Goi |
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MISCELLANEOUS |
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1991 |
Tui shou/Pushing Hands [Ang Lee] boom op; ph: Jong Lin |
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1992 |
Rain Without Thunder [Gary Bennett] co-add grip; ph: Karl Kases |
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1992 |
Risk [Deirdre Fishel] co-grip; ph: Peter Pearce |
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1993 |
Inside Out [Stephane Zerbib] co-swing grip/electric; ph: Leighton Edmondson |
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TELEVISION AS DIRECTOR |
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2005 |
Over There [ep #11 'Orphans'] ph: Rick Bota; see Television |
