Англиялық оператор Дэвид Уоткин: Өмір және шығармашылық жолы

English cinematographer

David Watkin BSC (23 March 1925 – 19 February 2008) was an English cinematographer, an innovator who was among the first directors of photography to experiment heavily with the usage of bounce light as a soft light source. He worked with such film directors as Richard Lester, Peter Brook, Tony Richardson, Mike Nichols, Ken Russell, Franco Zeffirelli, Sidney Lumet and Sydney Pollack. In 1985, Watkin won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Out of Africa. He received lifetime achievement awards in 2004 from the British Society of Cinematographers and the cinematographic centric Camerimage Film Festival in Łódź, Poland. In Chariots of Fire, he "helped create one of the most memorable images of 1980s cinema: the opening sequence in which a huddle of young male athletes pounds along the water's edge on a beach" to the film's theme music by Vangelis.

Watkin was born in Margate, Kent, England, the fourth and youngest son of a Roman Catholic solicitor father and homemaker mother, and grew up within a well to do upper middle class household. He gained an early enthusiasm for European classical music, which was left to be satisfied only as a passive listener when his father rejected his request for a piano and lessons; Watkin always contended that he would rather have been a professional musician than a cinematographer. After a brief period in the Army during World War II, Watkin started work at the Southern Railway Film Unit in 1948 as a camera assistant. After the unit was absorbed into British Transport Films in 1950, he eventually climbed the ranks up to director of photography at BTF before going off to work freelance in commercials around 1960. Before working in feature films "as a fully fledged cinematographer", he shot the title sequence of the James Bond film, Goldfinger (1964) for Robert Brownjohn.

David Watkin led a relatively quiet life in his adopted home town of Brighton, East Sussex, when he wasn't working on a "picture". He was highly regarded as a cultured and intellectual man, with an outrageously irreverent sense of humour, and a great love of classical music and literature. He had a personal library of mostly First Edition 18th Century literature. He was openly gay.

David Watkin died, aged 82, at his home in Sussex Mews, Brighton on 19 February 2008, having been diagnosed with prostate cancer just six months previously.

His autobiographies, Why Is There Only One Word for Thesaurus?, first published in 1998 and the second volume, Was Clara Schumann a Fag Hag?, published in 2008, by Scrutineer Publishing, were both designed by his good friend the artist and designer Rachael Adams.

+ List of awards and nominationsCeremonyCategoryYearFilmResultAcademy AwardsBest Cinematography1986Out of AfricaBritish Academy Film AwardsBest British Cinematography1966Help!, The Knack and How to Get It1968MademoiselleBest Cinematography1969The Charge of the Light Brigade1971Catch 221975The Three Musketeers1982Chariots of Fire1987Out of AfricaBritish Academy Television AwardsBest Film Cameraman1978Jesus of Nazareth (shared with Armando Nannuzzi)

Year Title Director Notes1966 One Eyed Jacks Are WildFranklin J. Schaffner1977 Jesus of NazarethFranco ZeffirelliFirst collaboration with Franco Zeffirelli1989 Murder by MoonlightMichael Lindsay HoggFirst collaboration with Michael Lindsay Hogg