John Seale, ASC, ACS, Michael D. O’Shea, ASC, and Douglas Kirkland will be honored by their peers during the 25th American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Outstanding Achievement Awards celebration at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles on February 13, 2011.
“John Seale, Michael O’Shea and Douglas Kirkland have earned the admiration of our members for their significant contributions to the artistry of image making, be it motion pictures or still photography,” said Michael Goi, ASC president.
Seale will receive the ASC International Award, which is presented annually to a foreign cinematographer in recognition of extraordinary achievements in films produced for the global cinema.
O’Shea will receive the ASC Career Achievement in Television Award.
And Kirkland will receive the ASC Presidents Award, which is presented to individuals who have made significant contributions to the art form.
“John, Michael, and Douglas still have their best years ahead of them,” said ASC Awards Committee chairman Richard Crudo, “but they have earned and deserve this recognition. They are role models for the next generation.”
Seale was born and raised in Australia, where he was a cowboy in the Outback before launching his career as a news film and documentary cameraman. Seale has earned more than 40 feature film cinematography credits since 1976. He won an Oscar® for The English Patient (1996) and received additional nominations for Witness (1985), Rain Man (1988) and Cold Mountain (2003). His other memorable films include Children of a Lesser God, The Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, Gorilla’s in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Poseidon and the upcoming movie The Tourist. Seale was inducted into the Australian Cinematographers Society Hall of Fame in 1997.
O’Shea was born and raised in Los Angeles, where he began his career working on the Warner Bros. lot while he was a college student. O’Shea has compiled an impressive array of cinematography credits for episodic series, television movies and miniseries. He won an Emmy® for CSI: Miami in 2003 and other nominations for the episodic series Doogie Howser, M.D. in 1992 and Relativity in 1997, and for the television movies To Love, Honor and Deceive in 1997 and The ’60s in 1999.
Kirkland was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. During the 1960s and ’70s, he was a staff photographer for Look and Life magazines which featured his portraits of Jack Nicholson, Marilyn Monroe, Morgan Freeman, Marlene Dietrich, Brigitte Bardot, Judy Garland, Sophia Loren, Charlie Chaplin and many other iconic movie stars. Kirkland was also a still photographer during the production of more than 100 motion pictures, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Out of Africa, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Moulin Rouge. His pictures have been featured in newspapers, magazines and books around the world. Portraits that Kirkland has taken of more than 200 cinematographers have also been featured in industry publications.
The ASC is a non-profit association dedicated to advancing the art of filmmaking. Since its charter in 1919, the ASC has been committed to educating aspiring filmmakers and others about the art and craft of cinematography.
Craig Henighan Sounds Off On “Deadpool & Wolverine”
Hollywood lore has it that character actor Edmund Gwenn--while on his deathbed--quipped, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
The second part of that darkly witty utterance remains all too true today as Craig Henighan--a Best Achievement in Sound Mixing Oscar nominee in 2019 for Roma--can attest in that he had to grapple with the sonic of being comic for this year’s box office hit, Deadpool & Wolverine (20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios).
The degree of inherent difficulty was ramped up even further because Deadpool & Wolverine had to seamlessly bring together high action-adventure exploits with moments and dialogue that tickled the funny bone. There’s a mesh of humorous banter--a staple of the franchise--along with major spectacle replete with explosions, fights, an impactful score and off-the-wall musical numbers.
Henighan explained that among the prime challenges for him from a sound perspective was having to make sure every joke landed within the construct of a superhero film. The tendency for a tentpole movie of this variety, he noted, is to gravitate towards big, loud audio spanning music, dialogue and sound effects. But the unique comedic element of Deadpool & Wolverine necessitated that re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor Henighan strike a delicate balance. “You need to get out of the way for the comedy,” he related. The jokes in a superhero film become “a real dance” as Henighan had to establish a rhythm that did justice to both the comedy and the action as the narrative moves back and forth between them--and sometimes the funny and the high energy, high decibel superhero dynamic unfold simultaneously in a scene or sequence. The “sonic fabric” has to... Read More