
You always have good equipment and crews, plenty of location work, lots of real interiors as well as studio sets, and an ever-changing variety of subject matter. “I still shoot a lot of commercials,” he says. He soon built a good reputation in the commercial field and was assigned as director of photography to many national commercials filmed in Hollywood, New York and Chicago. “Sometimes things get done because you’re too dumb to know they can’t be done,” Daviau says. Some of these were unusual enough to attract considerable attention. In 1966, he bought a 16mm Beaulieu camera and launched himself as a freelance cameraman, shooting local television commercials and rock band promotional films for recording companies.
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Unable to find any kind of job in the movie studios, he worked in camera stores and film labs, learning all he could about equipment and what it takes to put good images on film. While in high school he learned something about lighting equipment by handling the lighting on several stage plays. “Incidentally, nobody who knew Steven back in ’67 is in the least bit surprised at his success.”īorn in New Orleans during World War II, Daviau has spent most of his life in Los Angeles. I still think Lang is one of the greatest cinematographers of all and I learned a great deal from watching him work.” Lang photograph some of One Eyed Jacks, and that was even more impressive. “I watched the last days of ‘live’ television and marveled at the skill of the cameramen who were able to get so much variety out of a continuing performance. “I was a fanatic about movies and early TV,” Daviau recalls. He never attended film school but learned how cinematographers work by “gate-crashing” at various studios and watching his idols in action. Such a film is E.T., which has proved to be the most talked about and widely seen theatrical venture of the past year.Īllen Daviau, whose work as E.T.’s director of photography has brought him out of near-obscurity and into the spotlight, is as nearly a self-made success as can be found in Hollywood. This is doubly true if the story deals with fantasy and yet must be presented in a convincing, realistic manner.

It is well known in the motion picture industry that any successful picture owes much of its achievement to its cinematographer. Some images are additional or alternate.Īllen Daviau, ASC details his collaboration with director Steven Spielberg and the art of adding life to his extra-terrestrial star in this 1982 sci-fi fantasy classic.

This article originally appeared in the Jan.
