RIP - Influential “Star Wars” cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, a master of black and white, has died. He was 99. Taylor died Friday August 23, according to the British Society of Cinematographers. He once said he was “most happy” to be remembered as the man who set the look for “Star Wars” — not an easy task. Taylor solved the Death Star’s lighting difficulties by punching quartz lights through the set. “I wanted ‘Star Wars’ to have clarity because I don’t think space is out of focus,” he said. To film the Mersey River close-up in all its greasy splendor for "Ferry Across the Mersey," Gilbert Taylor was tied to a board swung over the side of the boat in Liverpool, Merseyside, England in 1965. Taylor’s wife, Dee, told the BBC News her husband died at their home on the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England. A founding member of the cinematographers’ society, Taylor entered the British film industry as a cameraman’s assistant in the 1920s, when he was still a teenager. He had dozens of credits to his name and worked with a range of directors, including George Lucas, Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski. He was the director of photography on several distinctive black-and-white classics, including Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” and Richard Lester’s Beatlemania chronicle “A Hard Day’s Night.” Taylor also worked on television series, including the “The Avengers.” Read more: nydailynews/entertainment/film-master-dies-article-1.1438828#ixzz2dMlpuTJt
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 13:41:08 +0000
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