American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 62
Prestige Pioneer
Alan Caso, ASC's broad and innovative vision for episodic storytelling
earns him the Career Achievement in Television Award.
By Betsy A. McLane
*|*
HBO
undeniably bolstered its slogan "it's not TV, it's
HBO" when it picked up Six Feet Under, a
show from writer-producer Alan Ball that
neither felt nor looked like anything else on
television. To achieve what Ball referred to as an "anti-TV
language" with the show's imagery, he recruited cinematographer Alan Caso, ASC. In AC's November 2002 coverage of the
show, Caso described his approach to Six Feet Under as "a
combination of very painterly, motivated, natural lighting,
desaturated colors, and lots of depth. [And] let's not be afraid
of the wide shot - let's go really wide. Let's provide these
proscenia for the actors to play in and make bold statements
about the emptiness of someone's life by isolating him, creating
a conflict within the composition of the frame, or show his
misery by making him look small and insignificant in the
frame."
When Caso was approached by Ball, the cinematographer had just finished his latest project with frequent collabo-
62
February 2018
rator John Frankenheimer, the critically acclaimed feature
Reindeer Games. Indeed, Caso has accumulated a long and
diverse résumé that includes work for television screens and
movie theaters alike, and it's for that work - particularly his
influence on the evolution of TV imagery - as well as his
advocacy for the next generation of filmmakers, that the
accomplished cinematographer has been chosen to receive this
year's ASC Career Achievement in Television Award.
Caso was born in Marblehead, Mass., and grew up in
the small nearby town of Topsfield. It was his father, a former
U.S. Air Force photographer and professional lithographer,
who taught the young Caso to draw and paint, and instilled in
him the basics of light, composition and color. Caso attended
Massachusetts College of Art - his father's alma mater -
beginning his studies as a painting major. But a filmmaking
class in his sophomore year transformed his life - "so much so
that I was even pulling A's in my required core courses of
language, science and math," he recalls. He transferred to the
American Cinematographer
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2018
Contents
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - Sponsor
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 1
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 2
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - Contents
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 4
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 5
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 6
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 7
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American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 32a
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 32b
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American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 50
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 50a
American Cinematographer - February 2018 - 50b
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American Cinematographer - February 2018 - Cover3
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