FREDERICK ELMES

#2: [Right] with dir Charlie Kaufman - "Synecdoche, New York" [2007]

#3: With dir Ang Lee [left] - "The Ice Storm" [1996]

FREDERICK ELMES ASC

Born: 4 November 1946, Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, USA. A.k.a. Fred Elmes.

Education: Rochester Institute of Technology [Fine Art Photography]; American Film Institute [AFI], Los Angeles [graduated in 1972]; Graduate Film Program at New York University's Department of Film and Television [NYU] [MA in 1975].

Career: At the AFI he started his collaboration with fellow student David Lynch on the film 'Eraserhead'. Ph student and educational films.

Ph numerous commercials dir by Paul Meijer, Michael Haussman, Walter Kehr, Anthony Atanasio, Barry Sonnenfeld, Ang Lee, David Lynch, Johan Renck (2010, 'The Tip'; for Armani), a.o.

Active member of the ASC since December 1993.

Conducted a workshop for Grad Film cinematography students at NYU in 2009.

Appeared in the doc's 'Jonathan Ross Presents for One Week Only: David Lynch' [1990, Andy Harries], 'Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography' [1991] & 'Mysteries of Love' [2002, Jeffrey Schwarz; ph: Eric Brubaker].

Awards: Independent Spirit Award nom [1987], BSFC Award [1987] & NSFC Award [1987] for 'Blue Velvet'; Independent Spirit Award [1991] for 'Wild at Heart'; Independent Spirit Award [1993] for 'Night on Earth'; Hawaii IFF 'Excellence in Cinematography Award' [1996]; 'Emmy' Award nom [1997] for 'In the Gloaming'; WorldFest Houston 'Gold Special Jury Award' [1997] for 'The Empty Mirror'; Camerimage Special Award 'Best Duo' [2000; shared with David Lynch].

Website: Fred Elmes

Fred Elmes: 'Shooting a feature film takes a lot out of you. It requires a lot of thought and a certain amount of physical endurance. It takes time to recharge. That's where it helps to shoot commercials. Commercials are short term commitments that enable me to be more selective about features. They are also fun to shoot. It's an opportunity to work with a lot of different directors who have fresh ideas. You can experiment more freely. […] I shot a Mazda commercial in Europe. A man is driving at night on a lonely dark road. You see only his close-up and his point of view of the road. He's nodding off. An animal dashes in front of the car. He swerves. He nods off again. The man awakens and swerves to avoid a truck. Is he going to crash? The tension builds. The car rolls to a stop and the front bumper taps against a phone pole. He backs up, drives forward and taps the pole harder. He backs up again, and the third time he rams into the pole. That activates an airbag in the car, which he uses as a pillow while he naps. The tagline is 'airbags save lives.' That's a good example of a one-minute story with a beginning, middle and ending. Commercials like that one are packed with visual information. You can compress the story and the audience will still follow the logic. These techniques, eventually, carry into features, but commercials and [music] videos are much more experimental. Sometimes it takes years for ideas you routinely use in commercials or videos to filter into features. I shot a Guinness Beer commercial in England, with Michael Haussman, an American director who lives there. We were creating a Salvador Dali world. We shot tests on our pre-lit stage and took them into telecine. We had a couple of hours of play-time to find the look. We tried some really complicated approaches, such as laying off one pass of the negative in black and white and another pass in color, a third with a bit of diffusion, and combining them in different ways. It pays to experiment before you shoot.' [From interview with Bob Fisher in 'International Photographer', 1996.]

FILMS
1970	Street Scenes/Street Scenes 1970 [Fred Elmes, Oliver Stone, Don Lenzer, a.o.; (prod superv) Martin Scorsese] b&w-c; doc/75m; cph: Don Lenzer, Oliver Stone, Fred Hadley, Arnold Klein, a.o.
1972	Eraserhead [David Lynch] b&w; + sfx ph; cph: Herbert Cardwell (started the film); it took 4 years (1972-76) to make the film, which was mostly shot at night; released in 1977; co-prod AFI (USA)
1974	The Amputee [David Lynch] b&w; short/5m; cph: Herbert Cardwell
1976	Number One [Dyan Cannon] v-to-35mm/b&w; short/42m; + co-ed; prod AFI (USA)
1976	Young Lady Chatterley/Naked Young Lady [Alan Roberts] c; co-2uc; ph: Bob Brownell
1977	Breakfast in Bed [William Haugse] 16mm/c; short/56m
1978	The Flight of the Gossamer Condor [Jacqueline Phillips Shedd & Ben Shedd] c; doc/27m; co-addph; ph: J. Phillips Shedd & Boyd Estus
1978	Real Life [Albert Brooks] c; addph; ph: Eric Saarinen
1982	Valley Girl/Bad Boyz/Rebel Dreams [Martha Coolidge] c; 2uc: Don Cirillo
1982	Citizen: The Political Life of Allard K. Lowenstein [Julie Thompson] 16mm/c; doc/72m
1983	Dune [David Lynch] c; co-addph (+ 2ud); ph: Freddie Francis
1983	Red Dawn [John Milius] c; 2uc; ph: Ric Waite
1985	Real Genius [Martha Coolidge] cs/c; 2uc; ph: Vilmos Zsigmond
1985	Broken Rainbow [Victoria Mudd] c; doc/69m; cph: Baird Bryant, Joan Weidman, Michael Anderson, a.o.
1985	Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold [Gary Nelson] J-D-C Scope/c; ph Los Angeles; ph: Alex Phillips
1985	Blue Velvet [David Lynch] J-D-C Scope/c
1986	Heaven [Diane Keaton] c; doc/88m; cph: Joe Kelly; filmed January-October
1986	River's Edge [Tim Hunter] c
1986	Aria [seg #7 'Tristan und Isolde: Liebestod' dir by Franc Roddam] b&w-c; 10 seg + linking scenes; filmed July 1986-March 1987
1987	Permanent Record [Marisa Silver] c
1987	Moonwalker [anthology seg dir by Jerry Kramer] c; cph: Tom Ackerman, Bob Collins & Crescenzo Notarile; seg 'Smooth Criminal' ph by John Hora; filmed February 1987-May 1988
1989	Cold Dog Soup [Alan Metter] c
1989	Wild at Heart [David Lynch] p/c
1989	Hollywood Mavericks [Todd McCarthy & Michael Henry Wilson] 16mm/c; doc/90m; cph: John Bailey, Peter S. Rosen, Steve Baum, Mead Hunt, a.o.

[Left] - "Night on Earth"

1991	Night on Earth [Jim Jarmusch] c
1991	Duke Ellington - Reminiscing in Tempo [Robert Levi] b&w-c; doc/87m; cph: Brian Clery, Ed Marritz, Neil Reichline, R. Levi, a.o.; premiered on PBS-tv series 'American Experience'
1992	The Saint of Fort Washington [Tim Hunter] c
1992	Coffee and Cigarettes III/Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California [Jim Jarmusch] b&w; short/12m; ed into 'Coffee and Cigarettes' (see 2003)
1993	Trial by Jury [Heywood Gould] c
1994	Reckless [Norman René] c
1995	The Empty Mirror [Barry Hershey] b&w-c; 117m; 2uc: Tom Houghton; the director's cut (105m) is titled 'A. Hitler' and was released on DVD in 2011; see 2010
1996	The Ice Storm [Ang Lee] c; 2uc: Frank Prinzi
1997	The Object of My Affection [Nicholas Hytner] c; uncred addph; ph: Oliver Stapleton
1998	Ride with the Devil [Ang Lee] J-D-C Scope/c; 2uc: Michael Benson
1999	Chain of Fools [Traktor (= Pontus Löwenhielm & Patrick von Krusenstjerna)] Hawk Scope/c
2000	Chosen [Ang Lee] p/c; short/7m; promotional film for carmaker BMW; ep of 5-part internet film series 'The Hire'
2000	Storytelling [Todd Solondz] c; 2 seg ('Fiction' & 'Non-Fiction'); ph video seg: Dylan Verrechia
2001	Trapped/24 Hours [Luis Mandoki] c; cph: Piotr Sobocinski; 2uc: Eduardo Martínez Solares; replaced ph P. Sobocinski, who died on 26 March 2001 in Vancouver, Canada
2001	Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet [seg 'Int. Trailer Night' dir by Jim Jarmusch] b&w-c; 7 seg + links; other ph: Phedon Papamichael, Timo Salminen, Ángel Luis Fernández, Shu Yang, a.o.

[Left] with dir Ang Lee [2nd from the right] and actress Jennifer Connelly

"Hulk" - photo by Peter Sorel

2002	Hulk [Ang Lee] c; aph: Hans Bjerno; vfx ph: Eric Swenson & Martin Rosenberg
2003	Coffee and Cigarettes [Jim Jarmusch] b&w; 96m; cph: Tom DiCillo (1986), Robby Müller (1989) & Ellen Kuras; ed from 3 'Coffee and Cigarettes'-films (1986, 1989 & 1992) and other shorts
2003	Kinsey [Bill Condon] J-D-C Scope/c

[Right] with dir Jim Jarmusch - "Broken Flowers"

2004	Broken Flowers [Jim Jarmusch] 16mm+35mm-to-35mm/c
2005	The Namesake [Mira Nair] c; 2uc: Jay Jay Odedra
2006	A Dog Year [George LaVoo] c; addph: Clay Westervelt
2007	Synecdoche, New York [Charlie Kaufman] s35/c; 2uc: David M. Dunlap
2007	Brothers [Jim Sheridan] s35 (+ D-Cinema)/c; 2uc: Michael Lohmann & Philip C. Pfeiffer; aph: Doug Holgate; remake of 'Brødre' (2003, Susanne Bier; ph: Morten Søborg); filmed 2007-08
2008	Bride Wars [Gary Winick] c; 2uc: David M. Dunlap
*2010*	Transfer at Aachen [Paul Warner] pre-production; scheduled to start shooting in August; later in 2014
2010	A. Hitler [Barry Hershey] b&w-c; 105m; director's cut of 'The Empty Mirror'; see 1995
2011	A Late Quartet [Yaron Zilberman] HD (ARRI ALEXA/Hawk Scope)-to-Hawk Scope (+ D-Cinema)/c
2012	Horns [Alexandre Aja] HD (ARRI ALEXA Plus/Hawk Scope & Studio/Hawk Scope)-to-D-Cinema/c; aph: Hans Bjerno; uwph: Peter Zuccarini
2015	Wilson [Craig Johnson] HD (ARRI ALEXA Studio)/c
2016	Going Places [John Turturro] c

TELEVISION & INTERNET
1986	Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8 [Jeremy Paul Kagan] tvm
1988	Les Français vu par/The French as Seen by... [seg (22m) 'The Cowboy and the Frenchman' dir by David Lynch] 5-part series
1988	Roughhouse/House and Home [Martha Coolidge] pilot/30m; for CBS-tv series 'Summer Playhouse'
1988	The Louie Anderson Show [Anthony Eaton] stand-up comedy perf/60m
1988	The Closed Set [Mollie Miller] tvm/60m; ep 6-part PBS-tv series 'Tales from the Hollywood Hills'
1989	The Judds: Across the Heartland [Bud Schaetzle] mus special/60m; ph concert seq; ph doc seq: Candy Gonzalez; for CBS-tv
1993	Laurel Canyon [Tim Hunter] pilot; for NBC-tv
1996	In the Gloaming [Christopher Reeve] tvm/67m
1997	The Wedding [Charles Burnett] 2-part tvm
2013	Olive Kitteridge [Lisa Cholodenko] 4-part miniseries/s35-to-HD; ph title seq: Alex Pollini; uwph: Peter Zuccarini; for HBO-tv
2014	The Night Of/Criminal Justice [(2nd) pilot (ep #1) dir by Steven Zaillian] 8-part series, 2016; other ph: Igor Martinovic; the 1st pilot (2012; with actor James Gandolfini) was shelved and reshot in 2014 with actor John Turturro; see Robert Elswit
2015	Paterson [Jim Jarmusch] HD (ARRI ALEXA Studio & Mini)-to-D-Cinema/c; 2uc: Lukasz Jogalla; for Amazon Studios

FILMS AS CAMERA ASSISTANT/OPERATOR
1972	Invasion of the Blood Farmers [Ed Adlum] c.asst; ph: Frederick Douglass
1974	A Woman Under the Influence [John Cassavetes] co-c.asst (left prod early on); ph (in charge of lighting): Mitchell Breit; film was started by ph Caleb Deschanel (cred as addph)
1975	The Killing of a Chinese Bookie [John Cassavetes] co-c.op; ph (lighting superv): Mitchell Breit
1976	Opening Night [John Cassavetes] co-c.op; ph: Al Ruban
1977	A Secret Space [Roberta Hodes] c.asst; ph: Fred Aronow
1978	A Force of One [Paul Aaron] co-c.op; ph: Roger Shearman
1980	Modern Romance [Albert Brooks] c.op; ph: Eric Saarinen
1981	Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan [Nicholas Meyer] co-c.op; ph: Gayne Rescher