British cinematographer Roger Pratt has died, aged 77.
Greatest recognized for his work as director of images on movies together with a number of Harry Potter films and Tim Burton’s Batman, Pratt handed away in December 2024, as confirmed by way of a press release made by the British Society Of Cinematographers (BSC). The assertion didn’t specify the date, location or reason for Pratt’s loss of life.
Pratt was born in 1947 in Leicester, and studied at Durham College from 1966. He then went on to attend the celebrated London Movie College, and obtained an Oscar nomination for his work on the 1999 movie The Finish Of The Affair, a romantic drama starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore. He was additionally given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the BSC in 2023.
The cinematographer first met frequent collaborator Terry Gilliam on the set of Monty Python And The Holy Grail, the place Pratt was working as a clapper loader. The BSC’s assertion included a quote from Gilliam about them working collectively.
Gilliam mentioned: “We had been filming the Bridge of Demise sequence and wanted a dramatic shot wanting up on the bridge with the mountains within the distance. I caught the digicam on the sting of the cliff, however the lens wasn’t broad sufficient. We had been a good distance from the highway, the sunshine was going. It was horrible.”
He continued: “This man mentioned, ‘Simply give me a second’ and in a couple of minutes, whereas we had been nonetheless faffing round, he had run all the way in which down the mountain, forded the river, run up the opposite aspect, into the digicam truck, grabbed the suitable lens and right here it was. We caught it on the digicam and acquired the shot. That was the second I fell in love with Roger.”
Different notable titles in Pratt’s filmography embody 1995’s 12 Monkeys, 1991’s The Fisher King, 1994’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 2000’s Chocolat and 2010’s The Karate Child.
Most will know his work from the look he created for Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989, which the BSC assertion mentioned “would launch lots of the superhero franchises we’ve got at this time.”
