Elmhurst native wins cinematography Oscar
Elmhurst-born Wally Pfister won the cinematography Oscar Sunday night for “Inception.”
“This is a great honor,” Pfister said. “None of what I did could have been possible without the incredible vision of my master, Christopher Nolan.”
Nolan didn't earn an Oscar nomination for “Inception” but is still up for the adapted screenwriting award.
“He's a brilliant filmmaker,” Pfister said of Nolan.
Pfister is the only cinematographer that “Dark Knight” director Nolan has worked with since 2000's “Memento.”
The American Society of Cinematographers honored Pfister with its prestigious Outstanding Achievement Award earlier this month. The ASC also gave a lifetime achievement award to “True Grit” cinematographer Roger Deakins, Pfister's chief competition for the Oscar.
“Part of me will feel terrible if I get it (the Academy Award), because Roger has been nominated nine times,” Pfister said last week. “I'm not looking forward to that part if it, if that happens.”
“Inception” employs a Rubik's Cube plot. It begins with reality, then delves into three levels of dream worlds, each with a story that unfolds at the same time as the stories in the other dream worlds.
Pfister designed his camera work so that it helps viewers keep the different levels of reality straight.
Pfister shot the first dream level — with the van driving through the streets of L.A. in the rain — in grainy blue colors. He shot the second dream level — the hotel hallway where Joseph Gordon-Levitt battles baddies in zero gravity — in warm reds, yellows and oranges. He shot the third dream level — an assault on a mountaintop fortress in Calgary — in stark whites.
Pfister probably won extra respect from his fellow shooters when he and director Nolan stood their ground against Warner Bros.' insistence that “Inception” be retro-processed as a 3-D film.
The greatest innovation in “Inception” is Nolan's concept that dreams feel utterly real while you're in them. So, he and Pfister created their dream worlds in stark realism.
To project a sense of documentarylike reality in “Inception,” Pfister fell back on his early experience as a news crew cameraman in New York City — where his family moved when he was still very young — and Washington D.C.
“Inception” was no small project for the filmmakers.
Nolan shot it in six countries, and Pfister shot every scene himself.
Pfister, who shot “The Dark Knight” in Chicago, is working on “The Dark Knight Rises” in London. Significant portions of it are being photographed in IMAX format.
Pfister, the son of parents who worked for CBS News in Chicago, is friends with two other film-shooting Chicagoans: Palatine High School grad Mauro Fiore, who won the Oscar last year for James Cameron's “Avatar,” and Janusz Kaminski, who won Oscars for Steven Spielberg's “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler's List.”