American Cinematographer - May 2014 - 66

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ASC Shines at Sci-Tech Awards

Above: Richard
Edlund, ASC,
chairman of the
Academy Sci-Tech
Awards Committee,
and Academy
President Cheryl
Boone Isaacs
congratulate the
honorees. Right:
Filmmaker
Christopher Nolan
presents an
Academy Award of
Merit honoring the
hard work and
dedication of filmlaboratory personnel
over the past
century.

Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third
Kind. That was the beginning of a
40-year friendship. He is one of the
most gracious, kind and forthright
creative gurus that I know in the movie
industry."
Anderson is a cinematographer,
visual-effects supervisor and leading
expert on a number of specialized imaging technologies, many of which he
helped to develop, including modern
3-D, motion control, large format, high
frame rate and high dynamic range. He
was the staff director of photography at
66

May 2014

Walt Disney Studios, and he has led
visual-effects facilities at Disney and
Universal studios. He was instrumental
in the creation of the theme-park attractions King Kong 360 3-D, Terminator 2
3-D: Battle Across Time (AC Aug. '96)
and Captain Eo (AC Dec. '87). He has
also supervised Imax 3-D productions,
including Cirque du Soleil: Journey of
Man (AC Sept. '00) and Wild Ocean (AC
June '08), and contributed visual effects
to an array of projects, including the
features U2 3D and Tron (AC Aug. '82)
and television's original Battlestar
American Cinematographer

Galactica and Cosmos (AC Oct. '80).
Anderson has been an ASC
member since 1999, and he was a
founding member of the Society's
Technology Committee. His professional memberships include SMPTE,
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts &
Sciences, the Visual Effects Society and
the Television Academy of Arts &
Sciences.
Speaking to AC after the ceremony, Anderson said, "This is a special
Oscar, and I am very proud and
honored to receive it. I was blindsided
when I got the news! I think Joseph
Walker [ASC], the first recipient [in
1981], and I are the only lighting
cameramen who have ever received the
Gordon E. Sawyer Award.
"An award is easy to understand
when it's for a movie or a single technology, but this is for a 50-year arc, a
lifetime of saying, 'Yes, we can,' and
then taking it from there," he added.
"No one wants to call it a lifetimeachievement award, but in a way, I
accept it as just that. For 50 years, I have
had a chance to do just about everything
a cinematographer can do, and with
each project, I've tried to do it a little bit
better. I am very lucky: I get to create
images, and I get to create fantasy, and I
have done it with real cameras as well as
virtual ones. Knowing that every project
I've made was unique, and that it exists
because I was able to contribute to it in
some way - that's the joy. It's hard to
forget I'm just a kid from Wisconsin
who dreamed of making movies!"
Tad Marburg, this year's John A.
Bonner Medal of Commendation
honoree, is the vice president of operations for the Digital Cinema
Distribution Coalition. He was previously a vice president of technical operations for Warner Bros. For almost a
decade, he has been an executive
consultant to film labs, international
media companies and major studios. He
is the former chairman of the Academy
Sci-Tech Council's public programs
and education subcommittees, and in
that capacity he produced more than 50
programs.

American Cinematographer - May 2014

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