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    ASC honors 3 student filmmakers

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments2094 Views
    2016 ASC Student Award winners and nominees
    LOS ANGELES --

    The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) honored three student filmmakers this past weekend (10/15) at its annual student awards presentation, held at the organization’s clubhouse. The competition is designed to highlight the work of emerging talent, and inspire the next generation of filmmakers.
     
    The winners are:

    ASC Vilmos Zsigmond Student Heritage Award, Graduate Category
    Andrew Jeric from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts for Prisoner
     
    ASC Vilmos Zsigmond Student Heritage Award, Undergraduate Category
    Emmett Sutherland from the Art Center College of Design for Closer
     
    ASC Haskell Wexler Student Award, Documentary Category
    Colin F. Shepherd of the Rochester Institute of Technology for Into the Microscope
     
    A panel of prestigious ASC members judged the entries. Jeric, Sutherland and Shephard were selected from 18 nominees for demonstrating their exceptional abilities in cinematography in their submitted works.
     
    “It’s exciting to see the incredible level of artistry coming out of film schools,” said Kees van Oostrum, ASC president. “It was difficult to choose among the large pool of talent, but these students have achieved what our members saw to be a professional level of visual storytelling. We hope to encourage them to continue on their career path in filmmaking.”
     
    The ASC Student Heritage Awards are renamed annually in memory of an extraordinary ASC member. This year, the awards are dedicated to two cinematic legends: Zsigmond and Wexler.
     
    Zsigmond won an Academy Award® for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and earned additional nominations for The Deer Hunter (1979), The River (1985) and The Black Dahlia (2007). He also won an Emmy® for shooting the HBO movie Stalin (1993).
     
    Wexler began his career shooting documentaries and remained a passionate documentarian. He earned Academy Awards® for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and Bound for Glory (1976), and also received nominations for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (shared with Bill Butler, ASC), Matewan and Blaze. In 1969, Wexler wrote, directed and shot Medium Cool, which is studied by film students worldwide for its cinéma vérité style.
     
    The ASC Student Awards were inaugurated in 1999, with the Documentary category added in 2012. Past winners were Lisa Wiegand, ASC; Lukas Ettlin; Masanobu Takayanagi, ASC; Nelson Cragg; and Benji Bakshi, among many others who have become directors of photography or carved out careers in the filmmaking industry.

    Tags:ASCHaskell WexlerVilmos Zsigmond



    Ex-OpenAI engineer who raised legal concerns about the technology he helped build has died

    Saturday, December 21, 2024
    Suchir Balaji poses for a photo in Hawaii in 2018. Balaji was a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who died in November 2024. (Balaji Ramamurthy via AP)

    Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26.

    Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He was well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI's strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products.

    "We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said a statement from OpenAI.

    Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on Nov. 26 in what police said "appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation." The city's chief medical examiner's office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide.

    His parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy said they are still seeking answers, describing their son as a "happy, smart and brave young man" who loved to hike and recently returned from a trip with friends.

    Balaji grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and first arrived at the fledgling AI research lab for a 2018 summer internship while studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned a few years later to work at OpenAI, where one of his first projects, called WebGPT, helped pave the way for ChatGPT.

    "Suchir's contributions to this project were essential, and it wouldn't have succeeded without him," said OpenAI co-founder John Schulman in a social media post memorializing Balaji. Schulman, who recruited Balaji to his team, said what... Read More

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