Underrated Cinematographers Poised to Make It Big in 2015

Most of the great directors use the same cinematographers over and over. Their filmographies become intertwined. Stanley Kubrick had John Alcott, Martin Scorsese had Michael Ballhaus, Woody Allen had Gordon Willis, the Coen Brothers have Roger Deakins, Alfonso Cuaron and Terrence Malick have Emmanuel Lubezki, and etc.

It makes sense, of course—getting someone to achieve the visuals that you want is perhaps the most important and technical aspect of making motion pictures. And while directors can come together to save celluloid film or learn how to use digital to better fit their needs, cinematographers are still the people that have to shoot the thing. This means that when there are technical advances, often times it’s the cinematographer who has to learn to adapt.

With digital cinema is making cameras more accessible, viewers are becoming more aware of certain tricks in an increasingly technical trade (like requiring possible built-in breaks in long-takes, such as the pan up to the helicopter in True Detective during McConaughey’s escape from a dingy apartment). But it also means that cinephiles are just as likely to be fans of a cinematographer as they are a director. With that idea in mind, we scoured the released calendar for 2015 to find 12 cinematographers who have not had the big director relationship cache yet, but are poised to make it big next year.

Notable movies: Dogtooth, Keep the Lights On, Attenberg

Bakatakis is responsible for the chilly, fly-on-the-wall lensing of the two films that started the Greek Weird Wave: Dogtooth and Attenberg. Apparently that film movement has already ended, but that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise—nihilism, incest, and nature documentaries don’t have the longest shelf lives.

From the ashes of that detached, deadpan ickiness comes The Lobster—the English-language debut from Yorgos Lanthimos (director of Dogtooth). It stars Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, and Lea Seydoux. With that cast and this plot log line (“A dystopian future where single people are arrested and sent to a creepy hotel where they have 45 days to find a mate or they will be transformed into an animal and released into the woods”), we are expecting a larger art-house audience and some crazy visuals.

Quick question: Can you choose which animal you’ll turn into? Because that doesn’t sound so bad. But I guess if the hotel of forced coupling has such guests as the next Bond squeeze (Seydoux), it might be worth attempting to match. And if Seydoux passes, we get to be a fox, right?

If there is indeed mating in The Lobster, prepare for some of the best sex scenes that you’ll ever see. Director Ira Sachs, for whom Bakatakis shot Keep the Lights On, said that the Greek cinematographer is currently, “[Shooting] sex better than anyone else working today … For Thimios, sex is just a part of life. The camera doesn’t have to shoot it any different than a dinner scene or a birthday party.”

Notable movies: The White Ribbon, The Piano Teacher, Caché

How can Berger, who was nominated for an Oscar for his stunning work with black-and-white in The White Ribbon and won an American Society of Cinematographers award, be underrated? He’s not a film fixture. In the span of 35 years, he’s only lensed nine films that were distributed outside of Austria.

Berger is a greatly respected teacher of the craft of cinematography (he’s an instructor at Filmacademy Vienna, where Michael Haneke, director of The White Ribbon, is also a faculty member). While many directors and camera operators were busy wringing their hands over the disappearance of film, Berger was busy inventing a lighting system (CRLS) that would better assist digital shooting by reflecting natural light.

In 2015, the teacher will become the star. Berger is currently shooting the Angelina Jolie-directed, Brad Pitt-starring (with Jolie, their first pairing since Mr. and Mrs. Smith), By the Sea—a 1970s-set rekindling of a romance in a seaside French hotel tale. Berger told Entertainment Weekly that he’d only be using natural light on the shoot. With the ‘70s color palette, French beaches, and the Jolie-Pitt pairing, you can wager that Berger will take another stateside awards trip soon.

Notable movies: The Hunt, Submarino

At the age of 36, and with only five feature films under her utility belt, Christensen is fast ascending. The Danish director of photography has worked on Thomas Vinterberg’s last three films (including last year’s The Hunt, starring Mads Mikkelsen, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars). Vinterberg’s upcoming film, Far From the Madding Crowd, will be the Dogme 95 co-founder’s first film in English when it hits screens in May 2015.

But Christensen’s big coming out party will most likely be her first collaboration with director Anton Corbijn (Control, A Most Wanted Man) on Life. No, it isn’t a remake of the Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence prison comedy. Corbijn’s Life will follow a week in the life of photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson) who’s been assigned by Life magazine to shoot portraits of James Dean (Dane DeHaan). Corbijn, himself, is a famous portrait photographer, so it’s a great match with Christensen. They both favor lengthier takes where the whole frame can be absorbed, either in stillness, or by close zooms in-camera. The advice Christensen received from Vinterberg? “It doesn’t have to be realistic, but it has to be real.” Sounds like life, man.

Notable movies: Bridget Jones's Diary, The Piano, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Can an Oscar nominee with 26 feature film credits still be considered on the verge? When the nomination came 20 years ago (for Jane Campion’s The Piano), without many extra laurels in the next two decades (save some critical mentions for his lovely work on the largely forgotten Edward Norton-Naomi Watts colonial film, The Painted Veil), then consider Dryburgh grossly misused post-Piano.

Last year, Dryburgh delivered some fantastic fantasy work on Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty—full of rich colors and shot on choppy waters—but the film itself was pretty cheeseball. Next year and beyond, however, Dryburgh has some big projects on deck. Substituting the fantastical globetrotting of Mitty for gritty sleuth globetrotting, Dryburgh recently shot Michael Mann’s Blackhat. Mann’s last film, Public Enemies, left some camera-lovers wondering what the hell the filmmaker was hoping to achieve using HD digital video in a period piece, making it look almost like you were watching behind-the-scenes footage in certain scenes. And while it looks like Mann wanted to achieve the same effect in Blackhat, the modern setting with multiple locations and occasional security-cam graininess seems more suited for this film (Blackhat concerns a man who’s been released from prison, played by Chris Hemsworth, to aide American and Chinese authorities in a global search for a cyber criminal). Again, no one makes you feel the crisp stillness of nighttime quite like Michael Mann.

Dryburgh is also currently shooting the Alice in Wonderland sequel for Disney. So, while Mitty might’ve been a narrative misfire, it appears to have actually provided Dryburgh the chance to flex his color palette just enough to land some more promising gigs.

Notable movies: Nacho Libre, HBO's Enlightened, Deadwood and Looking

Speaking of Michael Mann and nighttime shots, in the trailer for Focus, there’s definitely some Miami Vice-level attention to reflections of darker metals, offset by gold watches and clinged-clothing curves. From the director duo that gave us a 150-minute rom-com, Crazy, Stupid Love, Focus is a grifter flick starring Miami’s chosen son, Will Smith and mega-babe having a mega-cast-in-everything moment, Margot Robbie, and about setting up a heist at the Super Bowl.

Those sleek reflections come from Grobet, who also filmed the entire upcoming second season of HBO’s Looking. Focus, which looks to be the most promising Will Smith film in years,is a change of pace for Grobet. Most of his recent cinematic work has been of the point-and-shoot variety (Enough Said, Music and Lyrics, and What to Expect When You’re Expecting). But Grobet’s earlier work, on Nacho Libre and Before Night Falls, was fluid, and decidedly very different—bright colors to contrast the desert in Libre and grainy desperation to, well, document the desperation of a poet with AIDS in Night Falls. Welcome back to the dolly-track, Grobet. And welcome back to the wrong side of the law, Fresh Prince.

Notable movies: About Time, Like Crazy, Cartoon Network's Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

Science fiction is always a great change of pace for an indie director to show that they can make the studio leap. Look what it did for Rian Johnson—from Brick to Looper to two of the next three Star Wars movies. Could Drake Dormeus, director of two of the most truthful (and thereby hurtful) romances of the past few years—Like Crazy and Breathe In—be the next to climb the indie ladder with Equals? A lot of that depends on his DP (Guleserian) expanding the director’s canvas. You don’t point and shoot a sci-fi film.

Okay, Equals is a futuristic romance (between Kristen Stewart and Nicholas Hoult). There are no hitmen or wormholes (we think), so maybe Star Wars isn’t next. But luckily Dormeus’ trusty cinematographer has experience with the ever-tricky sci-fi romance, by shooting the underrated About Time with an unseen flair for a quick, bouncy montage. Guleserian expertly conveyed the barriers of romance in Like Crazy (distance) and Breathe In (in the shadows). With Equals, we’re curious to see how he’ll lens a love story during a time when emotions have already been erased.

Notable movies: Silent Hill, Mimic, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Lausten has had an interesting career. The Danish cinematographer has been working for two decades with what we’d now call a horror video game aesthetic (dense fog, expansive darkness that’s only punctured by flashlights or overbearing fluorescents, and the feeling that a bloody hand is always about to come from the corner of the screen). His filmography has a few standouts (Brotherhood of the Wolf, Silent Hill) but it’s mostly littered with knockoffs of his earlier work on Nightwatch.

In 2015, Laustsen will have his most distinct film in a decade: Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak. In 1997, Laustsen lensed Del Toro’s English-language debut, Mimic, utilizing the cramped space and darkness of a subway tunnel for horror (the tunnel became more cramped because cockroach-type bugs the size of a train were rolling through the Manhattan subway). Crimson Peak will also use a specific space for horror: a rotting Victorian mansion built on top of a clay mine.

I was actually lucky enough to visit the Crimson Peak set and because the house was actually built in such a way that the camera can move through multiple levels organically—without green-screening—I have a feeling that this is going to be Del Toro’s most visually expressive American film yet. Between the clay, wallpaper, and costuming, Del Toro has a specific color palette that Laustsen will be capturing. Crimson Peak also promises to be a more visceral affair, as this will be Del Toro’s first R-rated American feature since he unleashed the vaginal-mouthed vampire bloodbath of Blade II, which, in the bowels of the Internet, led one film critic to say that it was proof that “Guillermo del Toro eats pussy better than any man alive.”

Notable movies: Eden, Kumiko The Treasure Hunter

Director Jeremy Saulnier was his own cinematographer on the low-budget, high-tension revenge thriller, Blue Ruin. The micro-indie earned fair comparisons to the Coen Brothers’ first feature, Blood Simple. For Saulnier’s follow-up, Green Room,he hired Porter to lens the carnage.

It makes perfect sense, as—speaking of the Coen Brothers—Porter’s most recent film, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, followed a young Japanese woman who traveled to Fargo, North Dakota to try to find the briefcase of money that Steve Buscemi’s character buries at the end of Fargo. Porter smartly didn’t attempt to mimic Roger Deakins’ filming of Fargo. Porter’s Fargo is a lonely, foreign white.

Green Room sounds immensely and ridiculously fun: Neo-Nazis hold a punk rock group hostage after witnessing a crime. The leader of the skinheads? Resident nice-guy Patrick Stewart, who is finally using his bald dome for evil.

Notable movies: Sightseers, Kill List, The ABCs of Death

As cult favorite director Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Sightseers) switches genres and color stocks from film to film, so does Rose, his cinematographer since his debut, Down Terrace. Their last collaboration was the bonkers black-and-white A Field in England,which followed a few 17th century British army deserters who convene in a field that has nothing to eat except psychedelic mushrooms. Rose filmed a stunning centerpiece drug trip that ‘shroom novices might complain lasted far longer than initially expected (motion-sickness sufferers beware!).

“We’ve gradually got a little more sophisticated, the scale of things getting steadily larger,” Rose said of his collaborations with Wheatley. So of course, from a vacant field in England, they next go to an apartment complex in England. High-Rise is an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel and is the first Wheatley film to have some bona-fide stars: Tom Hiddleston, Elisabeth Moss, and Jeremy Irons. It involves social classes. But before you worry that Wheatley’s doing British Masterpiece Theatre, this is class warfare in an apartment building; floor against floor, the rules of the jungle. And with a budget of at least ten times larger than their last film, we can’t wait to see what sort of carnage Wheatley and Rose are able to unleash.

Notable movies: Beginners, Hateship Loveship

Gus Van Sant has had one of the most diverse and invigorating relationships with a DP for the past dozen years. From the forever-memed “You’re the man now, dawg!” to the more elaborate tracking shots through the fields and hallways of a high school in Elephant,to the sun-kissed campaign offices of Milk, Harris Savides made every Van Sant film between 2000 and 2011 distinct. Savides tragically passed away in 2012.

Tuxen, another Dutch cinematographer on this list, filmed the profoundly moving Beginners. All about missed opportunities, Beginners was a film that had every right to be dour, but instead it was very hopeful and grateful. Much of that was due to Tuxen, whom director Mike Mills noted that his Scandinavian background helped shift the narrative of Beginners: “Coming from the darkness of Denmark, Kasper was wonderfully in love with the natural California sun, and he renewed my sensitivity to it.”

After filming an episode of Van Sant’s television program Boss, Tuxen will get to film another region entirely different from his native gray Denmark: the suicide forest of Japan. Van Sant’s Sea of Trees stars Matthew McConaughey as a man who takes a trip to Mt. Fuji to kill himself. The remote setting born from modern folklore (after the publishing of the romance novel “Kuroi Jukai,” an average of 50-100 suicides have occurred annually in the forest), coupled with the lush greens, the McConaissance and Van Sant’s penchant for long takes—like the signs that get travelers to the Aokigahara forest, this one has all the signs that Tuxen will need a tuxedo next award season. And if all goes well, perhaps a decade of work will follow with Van Sant, who’s known to vacillate from studio to experimental and keep his camera crew on their toes, and of course, in the spotlight.

Notable movies: Red Riding Hood, Australia, Shattered Glass

Needing a replacement for director/cinematographer Michael Fassbender (and then a replacement for his replacement, Jude Law) after one week of shooting the female-centric western, Jane Got a Gun, was a very tall order. Since the production of JGG takes place in the Internet age, this Natalie Portman revenge flick has all the buzz of being the biggest disaster of all time. But while replacing the director (Lynne Ramsay, We Need to Talk About Kevin), cinematographer (Darius Khondji, Seven), and male stars was certainly a tall order, the replacements—Gavin O’Conner, director of Warrior, Ewan McGregor, and cinematographer Mandy Walker—certainly aren’t slouches. And some great movies have come out of disaster shoots (see: Apocalypse Now, The Misfits, The Godfather and Fitzcarrald—although, none of those replaced the director).

Although it would’ve been exciting to see mega-cinematographer Khondji wrangle a western, Walker is an ideal fit. The native Australian knows how to film an open space as both a freeing and suffocating experience. If there’s anything that can steady a production that’s received tons of negative press, it’s good camera work. In addition to being called in to help save Jane, Walker, who has only had two stateside Hollywood productions (Beastly and Red Riding Hood), also has a prestige pic in 2015: Robert Redford as Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett as Mary Maples in Truth.

Notable movies: Ain't Them Bodies Saints, Pariah

Young has been putting in two–to-three solid compositions a year for the past few years (Middle of Nowhere and Pariah in 2012; Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Mother of George in 2013). By January 2015, he’ll have his three highest profile films coming out within ten days of each other. After the one-two-three punch of Selma (a Lincoln approach to a biopic of Martin Luther King, i.e. focusing on one specific period for the portrait—the march on Selma), Pawn Sacrifice (Bobby Fischer engages in a Cold War chess battle with Boris Spassky), and A Most Violent Year (a low-level crime drama set in 1981, statistically the most violent year in New York City), we’re pretty sure that Young’s dance card will fill up fast.

Other than three films being released between December 31, 2014 and January 9, 2015, what’s exciting about this period for Young is that all of these films are in a different decade. Young will be filming the ‘60s American south (Selma), ‘70s Iceland (Pawn Sacrifice), and ‘80s New York filth (A Most Violent Year). Each era and location has a specific color tone to explore.

Young has already proven adept at filming modern movies like they were from a lost era. They could’ve drop a “1920” title card in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and with all the brown hues and natural sunlight, we’d believe it; the only real giveaway are the vehicles. And Mother of George portrayed New York City unlike we’d seen it before, full of greens and oranges to recall the characters’ Nigerian homeland. We can’t wait to see what he’ll do with his trifecta of different eras and regions.