ROBERT RICHARDSON   ASC

Born: 27 August 1955, Hyannis, Massachusetts, USA, as Robert Bridge Richardson.

Education: University of Vermont, Burlington [Oceanography, but opted out after 2 years]; Film Department of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; American Film Institute [AFI], Los Angeles [apprenticed with Sven Nykvist & Nestor Almendros; studied with George Folsey; graduated in 1979].

Career: Richardson discovered that a master's degree in fine arts didn't open doors in Hollywood. He spent 7 years mainly shooting doc's [for BBC-tv, PBS-tv, Disney Channel, a.o.] with occasional insert and 2u work. His breakthrough came in the wake of filming 'Crossfire in El Salvador', a doc about the civil war in El Salvador. In 1985, Oliver Stone hired Ramon Mendez, the soundman on 'Crossfire in El Salvador', as a technical consultant when he was preparing to shoot 'Salvador'. Mendez introduced Richardson to Stone. It was the beginning of their collaboration.

Ph commercials dir by Martin Scorsese [for American Express], Erich Joiner, a.o.

Directed commercials. Scheduled to make his debut as feature film director with 'White Jazz' [1998; a sequel to 'L.A. Confidential' (1996); status unknown].

Member of the ASC since August 1992.

Appeared in the doc 'Spotlight on Location: Snow Falling on Cedars' [2000, Laurent Bouzereau; ph: Chris Meagher, a.o.].

Awards: Independent Spirit Award nom [1986] for 'Salvador'; Independent Spirit Award [1987], 'Oscar' AA nom [1987] & BAFTA Film Award nom [1988] for 'Platoon'; Independent Spirit Award nom [1989] for 'Talk Radio'; 'Oscar' AA nom [1990] & ASC Award nom [1990] for 'Born on the Fourth of July'; 'Oscar' AA [1992] & ASC Award nom [1992] for 'JFK'; ASC Award nom [1993] for 'A Few Good Men'; ASC Award nom [1994] for 'Heaven & Earth'; Camerimage 'Golden Frog' nom [1994] for 'Natural Born Killers'; ASC Award nom [1998], BSC Award nom [1998] & CFCA Award nom [1999] for 'The Horse Whisperer'; ASC Award nom [1999], 'Oscar' AA nom [2000], CFCA Award [2000] & Golden Satellite Award nom [2000] for 'Snow Falling on Cedars'; 'Oscar' AA [2004], CFCA Award [2004], BAFTA Film Award nom [2004], ASC Film Award nom [2004] & Golden Satellite Award nom [2005] for 'The Aviator'; ASC Film Award nom [2006] for 'The Good Shepherd'; BAFTA Film Award nom [2009], ASC Film Award nom [2009] & 'Oscar' AA nom [2009] for 'Inglorious Bastards'; ASC Film Award nom [2011] for 'Hugo'.

About 'Kill Bill': 'When Richardson came onboard 10 weeks before the first day of photography, Tarantino already had a vision for a visual style etched in his mind. Richardson had his say during pre-production, regarding the choice of locations and to a lesser extent the color palette. Tarantino wasn't enthusiastic about shooting makeup, hair or costume tests. He agreed to allocate part of one day for Richardson to experiment with lighting [actress Uma] Thurman. The rest came down to Richardson's eye and instincts at the moment of photography. […] Tarantino always visualized 'Kill Bill' as a wide screen [2.4:1 aspect ratio] movie. Richardson prefers shooting in anamorphic format, because of the degradation of image quality inherent to the optical extraction required by the Super 35 format. A problem was that Tarantino had written specific 'zoom' lens shots into the script. Richardson felt that the anamorphic zoom lenses available from Panavision didn't provide a fast enough T-stop to properly execute those shots. That drove the decision to use a digital intermediate process. That approach enabled Richardson to shoot with spherical lenses in Super 35 format and 'squeeze' the images into a 2.4:1 aspect ratio during digital mastering. Basically, the edited cut of the negative is scanned and converted to digital files. The images are timed for shot-to-shot and scene-to-scene continuity in a digital suite, and then recorded out to an intermediate film used as a master for release printing. […] Tarantino would show up everyday with shot lists written with red ink on white paper. He used frequent rehearsals as opportunities to block the action and accommodate suggestions from the actors. Dialogue scenes were mainly shot with one camera, and action sequences with two to provide coverage from different angles. Cameras were usually traveling on a Steadicam, crane or on tracks, anticipating the words and the action with a blend of subjective and objective point-of-view shots. "We did a series of rather complicated Steadicam/crane shots that Quentin devised out of the evil side of his mind," Richardson recalls. "One such shot required [camera and Steadicam operator] Larry McConkey to do an eight-minute tracking shot where he had to move nimbly between a mounted and cabled pedestal that lifted him 30 feet into the air, and then deposited him back on the ground where he once again had to adjust to a walking mode ending up on a crane that lifted him above a crowd." [From article by Bob Fisher on the 'International Cinematographers Guild' website.]