Videblography

1. The Shining: John Alcott Stanley Kubrick is not known for being a reasonable and mild-mannered man. Coupled with his visual work, his ability to maintain a relationship with Kubrick for four different films makes John Alcott basically a superhuman. Alcott shot   The Shining , Barry Lyndon (for which he won an Oscar) , A Clockwork Orange, and the famed "Dawn of Man" sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (which means he probably also helped Kubrick fake the moon landing but that's neither here nor there) as well as many commercial works. Born to English film executive Arthur Alcott, John Alcott grew up on sets and gained an incredible knowledge on film stock and lighting techniques. In the prime of his career, Alcott preferred natural and practical lighting and would often wet down roads when shooting at night to achieve a reflective light rather than lighting the set entirely artificially. After he completed The Shining, his last work with Kubrick, Alcott went on to DP se...

1. Kubrick's The Shining  is my current favorite movie. I haven't read the Steven King novel cover to cover, but I know solely from small changes in plot an addition to the meticulously framed shots in the film that this is one of the rare cases where the movie is better than the book. For example, the book features hedge animals outside the hotel, while the movie has changed these into a hedge maze. This echoes the labyrinthine design of the hotel and positions Jack the caretaker as a minotaur trapped in that maze. The way Jack Nicholson is blocked in the film as his character descends into madness is very similar to the look of an angry bull: chin down but eyes glaring upward. 2. Anything by Wes Anderson  makes the top of my list. My favorite film would be Grand Budapest Hotel , but I love the use of color in all of his films. You could watch any of these films on mute and still enjoy it, since the set design, costumes, and lighting of scenes set a pa...