American Cinematographer - October 2008 - 94

Clubhouse News AMPAS Invites New Members The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently extended membership invitations to 105 artists and executives, including ASC members Jonathan W. Brown, Clark Mathis and Kramer Morgenthau. “These individuals are all incredibly talented and a credit to the world of filmmaking,” says Sid Ganis, president of AMPAS. “They exemplify the high standards of the Academy, and I welcome them to our ranks.” Feeney Feted by VES ASC associate member Ray Feeney picked up the 2008 Visual Effects Society (VES) Founders Award at the annual membership meeting in September. Feeney, the president and founder of RFX Inc. and a founding member of the VES, was chosen as this year’s recipient for his service to the craft of visual effects and the membership of the VES. Demos Joins Lowry Digital ASC associate member Gary Demos (below) has joined Lowry Digital as senior algorithm scientist. Demos was a leader in computer-generated images in the early 1970s and began working on the processing and compression of high-resolution images by the late ’80s. In 1988, he founded DemoGraFX, and since 2004, he has been working as an independent scientist. “Lowry is doing innovative work that is important to the future of digitalimaging science, which has been my life’s work,” says Demos. I New Member David Darby, ASC has joined the Society’s roster of active members. His fascination with photography began when he was 12. After graduating from Claremont High School in Claremont, Calif., he went on to the Fishback School of Freelance Photography in Sacramento, and then to the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. After a year at Rochester, Darby joined the motion-picture-production company at Eastman Kodak’s Rochester headquarters, where he began working as a negative cutter and eventually entered the camera department. In 1976, Darby wrote, shot, edited and cut the negative for a documentary about artist Albert Paley, which aired nationally on PBS and tied for first place in the 1977 International Craft Film Festival in New York. He subsequently spent a year as a director/cameraman at the PBS affiliate in Salt Lake City, Utah. Upon returning to Southern California, Darby segued into commercials, shooting spots for Mercedes-Benz, Coca-Cola, Duracell and Coors, among other companies. He also notched credits on the feature True Rights and the short Farsighted. Darby’s black-andwhite still photography has been exhibited at the Manuel Alvarez Bravo Center of Photography in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle. 94 October 2008 Woodstock Honors Wexler Haskell Wexler, ASC will receive the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award at the 9th Annual Woodstock Film Festival this month. “Haskell Wexler’s outstanding talent as a cinematographer, his unique voice as a director, and his unwavering passion as a social activist have been an inspiration and a guiding light to the Woodstock Film Festival audience and the film community at large,” says Meira Blaustein, the festival’s co-founder and executive director. The festival also will hand out the Haskell Wexler Award for Best Cinematography. The winner, chosen by Wexler, will receive $15,000 in rental equipment from Panavision New York.

American Cinematographer - October 2008

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