As awards season rapidly approaches its glitzy finale at the Oscars, Mark London Williams takes a look at the recent successes of DPs including Autumn Durald Arkapaw ASC and Adolpho Veloso ABC AIP in the Kodak Film Awards, Film Independent Spirit Awards and more.
We’re at the end of award season now – all that’s left is the Oscar precipice, and in this column – arriving as it does on Academy Eve – we’ll look at some of our own recent stops along the trail: The Independent Spirit Awards, the ACE Eddies, the Society of Camera Operators, and the ASC Awards.
And in between the ACE Eddies and the latter two, there was also the Kodak Film Awards, held once again at the ASC Clubhouse, a few days ahead of the ASC’s own awards, which were, in turn, at the Beverly Hilton.
There is a lot of criss-crossing of maps this time of year in LA.
The Kodak awards, meanwhile, are designed, naturally enough, to honour various DPs and innovators who’ve shot specifically on film – instead of ones and zeroes – and it was there that Amy Vincent ASC was one of the speakers, mentioning a programme supported by the venerable celluloid company that creates filmmaking workshops for incarcerated men. Vincent found herself overseeing one of those sessions, working with 25 prisoners who were learning how to tell stories – theirs, one way or another – visually. Like a West Coast version of the theatrical programme featured in last year’s film Sing Sing.
She talked about the specifics of movie film, running through the gears and gates of cameras, its physical measurement in frames per second, thus, she said, giving the medium its “special significance to the passage of time”, which becomes a key awareness to those who are literally “serving time” for years on end, or perhaps for the rest of their lives.
Her comment was brought to mind a few days later at the Society of Camera Operators’ gathering, where President Matthew Moriarty SOC opened the proceedings, by noting, among other things, that “somehow, despite everything, we’re all here,” in this “year,” he added, “where everyone is underfunded.”
This isn’t to conflate the challenges of people working – or not working – in Hollywood with the plight of prisoners (of any of their victims), but both seemed to echo a key subtext of the season, an awareness of the larger contexts and energies afoot – some of them literally incendiary, making, perhaps, the bubble-like nature of awards time a little more permeable than usual.
Even Sinners’ Autumn Durald Arkapaw ASC seemed to reflect this when speaking after receiving Kodak’s Lumiere award, which she said she shared with director Ryan Coogler, and “the whole Sinners team that’s here”. When talking about how to pursue one’s craft in such a generally fraught business, she said it was important to “choose thoughtful community to work with. Choose wisely.”
Many of those thoughtful communities have also produced work that speaks to that same permeability between our “entertainment” and the world around us, reflected by a number of the films honoured by guilds and academies this year, on both the narrative and documentary sides.
That’s the spirit
This was certainly evident at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, displaced this year from its usual tented perch on the beach in Santa Monica, and instead retreated inland to the Hollywood Palladium. And if the contemplated post-fire repairs by the Pacific Coast Highway meld into pre-Olympic construction, next year’s award season may find them still there.
The big winner on Indie afternoon was Train Dreams, which won for best feature, best director, for Clint Bentley (who also co-scripted the adaptation of the Denis Johnson novella with Greg Kwedar, for which they are also Oscar nominated), and for the deeply evocative cinematography of Adolpho Veloso ABC AIP.
Veloso is also an Oscar nominee, as is countryman Wagner Moura for his acting turn in The Secret Agent. Having Moura announce the cinematography award seemed to impart a sense of inevitability about whose name was in the envelope, please. But before announcing the winner, Moura said the DP’s art helps “shape how we remember” – not only films we’ve watched, but as The Secret Agent shows, the times in which those films are seen, and even – that permeability again – the history unfolding outside the movie theatres.
The Secret Agent was also an Indie Spirit winner for Best International Film, and as director Kleber Mendonça Filho took to the press tent later, he said, of the story set during during Brazil’s 1970s-era dictatorship, “remembering is a political act,” though even if you’re setting a film a half-century back, you still “also use the logic of what’s happening now.”
And for all the grimness of “now”, Brazil, at least, is enjoying quite a cinematic moment. Of his country’s success – at the Palladium that afternoon, and elsewhere – Veloso said, “I guess we’ll have carnival right here.” He also gave thanks to Netflix for its support of Train Dreams, saying that’s what made it possible for his family in Brazil’s countryside to see – and remember – it.
We asked him how shooting Train Dreams compared and contrasted with Jockey, his earlier collaboration with Bentley. He said they “looked back at things they didn’t like” about that earlier film, or at least, would have wanted to do differently, along with the things that worked, which helped them “evolve a language together” that became an even more effective shorthand – along with all the visual references they shared – for this project.
For his part, when Bentley was back in the press tent after the best picture win, he talked about working on the script with Kwedar, in adapting what had been considered “unfilmable” source material, and thanked not only his whole team, but adding none of how they approached that story could be “divorce(d) from the work of Adolpho”. He was also grateful to have been able to shoot “in the United States”, while allowing that it’s “very hard” right now to do, but “it felt important to film in that area” – the same Pacific Northwest where the story is set.
Operation: Operators
He also talked about the privilege of being able to work at all, let alone make movies, “when the world is on fire”, comporting with some of the aforementioned mood at SOC’s “Operator of the Year” honours held on the eve of the ASC Awards, but not at any of their previous venues, such as the Directors’ Guild. The SOC said on its website that “in recognition of the challenges faced by both our members and our sponsors due to the prolonged and devastating slowdown in US production, the 2026 SOC Awards will be held virtually. Our traditional black-tie event with lavish tributes to Lifetime Achievers in all categories will resume when the American industry has recovered to the extent that our sponsors can once again afford to support us, and our members can once again afford tickets.”
There was still a gathering, however – in a small studio area at venerable crane-crafthouse Chapman/Leonard in North Hollywood, with flatbed trucks for stages, dollies converted to cocktail tables and more, making the abbreviated show one of the most memorable on the circuit. Envelopes were opened and the proceedings were streamed to two other gatherings, at soundstages in Atlanta, and to ARRI Brooklyn.
Operator of the Year in Film notched up another victory for One Battle After Another, this for camera and steadicam operator Colin Anderson SOC, and on the TV side, Mark Goellnicht SOC ACO for The Studio’s much-lauded meta-meditation about single takes, “The Oner”.
Both generously thanked their crews – focus pullers, B-camera operators, grips, and more – along with their DPs, with Anderson calling One Battle “a generational movie”, as well as noting it was “a minor miracle” that his first AC got those revived VistaVision bodies ready in time for the 99-day shoot – and the all additional punishment they were about to take on it.
Goellnicht said that “The Oner”’s single take “definitely took a few goes”, and thanked DP Adam Newport-Berra, who last fall won an Emmy for the same episode – as well as directors and series co-creators Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen. He’d come a long way, he recounted, since using cardboard cutout cameras in his backyard in Perth, but thanked all the supporters he’s had since, including parents, and a drama teacher who mercifully steered him in the direction of his craft-side talents.
Best in the west
And then the next day, Sunday, the ASC Awards concluded the pre-Oscar weekend, where we ran into no less than Sir Roger and James Deakins during cocktail hour. Deakins mentioned he’d been reading up not just on AI, but quantum AI, and – also taking in that sense of the present moment – allowed that “we definitely live in interesting times”. And that wasn’t even the last of the AI chats during drinks, where one gear manufacturing CEO of our acquaintance allowed that while they were using it internally for more efficiency, they were still wrangling with how to deploy it publicly, while not impeding, or replacing, users’ creativity.
Those fine lines are likely to get increasingly blurred in the years ahead, as it becomes harder to know what a “true” image is, or what that might even mean in an age of digits. Though the importance of the kinds of imagery made by people at the ASC or Indie Spirits or the SOC was a recurring theme throughout the ASC’s own show, starting with the evening’s host, Reno 911! actor Kerri Kenney-Silver (herself married to DP Steven V. Silver ASC), who opened by saying “the more chaotic our world is, the more chaotic our industry is… the more inspiring your images.”
Those sentiments were echoed by evening’s end, as Guillermo del Toro was presented a Board of Governors’ award, and in addressing the present moment said “we need the eloquence of images,” particularly as it becomes more apparent, he continued, that “there are only two forces in the world – love and fear.”
Love, at least, was the force on display between those bookends, coming in profuse thanks to spouses, families, peers, and crew members, without whom, it was repeatedly stated, none of the recipients would be standing on that evening’s particular dais.
Additional honours included a Career Achievement in Television for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Emmy winner M. David Mullen ASC, who presenter Rachel Brosnahan – Mrs. Maisel herself – noted was often called “the professor” on set by producer/creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, due to his copious knowledge of film history, photographic techniques and gear, and his general openness to serve as what might be considered an “academic advisor” for younger DPs getting in touch with him.
Frequent Wes Anderson collaborator Robert D. Yeoman ASC was given the Lifetime Achievement Award, and spoke of a journey coming up through low budget work (including early Gus Van Sant films), and then working second unit for John Toll ASC on Francis Ford Coppola’s legal thriller The Rainmaker, which “taught me how to light large sets” – including, of course, the ones he lit for his own Oscar-nominated work in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Somewhere along that journey, Yeoman had mentioned that as much as he loves cinematography, his other career aspiration had been to play second base for the Chicago Cubs.
And so, Toll himself came out and presented him with a padded second base from Wrigley Field! Which, who knows, may come to occupy equal display space in the Yeoman home along with that night’s award.
We’d also be remiss not to mention that the society gave out only its third-ever Award of Distinction to colleague Stephen Pizzello, who doesn’t technically have the letters “ASC” after his name, but practically should, as the editor of American Cinematographer. He’s been with the publication 35 years, shortly after getting out of college in Boston, saying “this movie geek landed the job of a lifetime” – one, he mentioned, that “literally is my family”, having met his wife Delphine there, and subsequently raising three sons together. That family, he added “was my first ASC Award”.
And lest we forget the competitive categories, there was another, run-capping win for Newport-Berra and “The Oner”’s single take. Accepting the award, he added some alarming specificity to Goellnicht’s mention of a “number of goes”, saying there’d been twenty-two “failed takes” — including “actors sailing past their markers” and wondering “who’s gonna mutiny first”. But he also thanked “all the oners who came before us” – looking at you, Soy Cuba, Touch of Evil, and Goodfellas – and he was entirely in synch with Goellnicht in thanking “all the amazing crew”.
There was a surprise tie in the One Hour Series category, between Christophe Nuyens SBC for Andor’s “I Have Friends Everywhere” episode and Alex Disenhof ASC for the more recent “Crossings” segment of HBO’s Task. Meanwhile, the oft-lauded Rodrigo Prieto ASC AMC, who’s been repeatedly nominated for work like Barbie, and films from his recurring partnerships (or “marriages,” as del Toro called the director/DP relationship) to Martin Scorsese, won in the music video category for shooting Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia”.
Best documentary went to 2000 Meters from Andriivka from writer/director Mstyslav Chernov, about the attempts of a Ukrainian platoon to liberate a village from Russian occupation. Although the doc was also BAFTA-nominated, and won a WGA award that same ASC weekend, it won’t be winning an Oscar, as it isn’t nominated there. Which shows the wide latitude in that field – and perhaps a necessary, if not terrifying, breadth of subjects in an age such as this.
The current favourite for Oscar night is Netflix’s The Perfect Neighbor, about a white woman who used Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law to rationalise the murder of the young mother who was her neighbour – and who also happened to be black. It was BAFTA-nominated, and its editor Viridiana Lieberman has won both a Critics’ Choice and ACE Eddie award, in part for the very reasons it wouldn’t have wound up on an ASC list. Namely, it was not primarily “shot”, “filmed” or anything else, but instead assembled from the body cam footage worn by policemen, not only on the night of the murder, but every other time they were previously called by that same, gun-wielding neighbour.
We caught up with Lieberman, post-ACE Eddies, to ask how she pieced together a narrative from footage that was never designed for that purpose, and she wrote that “committing to composing a film primarily from evidence was both a challenge I felt fired up to take on and also a responsibility I didn’t take lightly. It also required surrendering to the materials in such a strict way that for the first time in my editing journey, there were no comps. It was completely instinct-based. […] We wanted this film to be undeniable by truly presenting only the facts. To compose these materials (police bodycams, dashcams, Ring cams, canvassing interviews, 911 calls… etc.) into an emotional and tension-filled narrative,” she said director Geeta Gandbhir told her “to keep the film rooted with the neighbourhood and that it all felt like a horror film to her.”
Lieberman mentioned sifting through two years’ worth of calls – and six hours’ worth on the night of the murder — to find “a structure that could honour the truth of who this community was before and the tensions that simmered to a boil leading to this heartbreaking tragedy.
“The bodycam footage played like a multicam because there were usually at least two police officers on the scene for each call. This allowed us to condense time by being in different places, while staying true to the facts of what was happening simultaneously through intercutting […] We have some shot footage for our transitional bridges of the neighbourhood, captured from specific angles – some that are detail-orientated, some unsettling, some voyeuristic… – [to] allow the audience to listen to the police canvassing interviews that share what the bodycams don’t capture.
“The Perfect Neighbor is the first film [where] I stayed present and met the moment in deeply emotional ways […] I cried a lot while editing this film … [but] it reminded me of the importance of what we do. I’m very proud of this film and the way it’s been received has spoken so much to […] trusting your instincts, trusting the audience [and] trusting the process.”
The ACE Eddies themselves were once again held at UCLA’s Royce Hall, a week ahead of the ASC Awards, where Sinners and One Battle After Another took the evening’s top live feature prizes (Kpop Demon Hunters won on the animation side) for editors Michael P. Shawver and Andy Jurgensen, respectively, since the latter film fell into the comedy category – which clearly includes dark humour.
But the two award heavyweights went head-to-head at the ASC, as they will on Oscar night, and there the evening’s theatrical feature award went to Michael Bauman for One Battle After Another, further cementing odds to repeat the win on Oscar night.
Bauman thanked all the colleagues he was nominated with, adding that “all of us learned from Darius Khondji [ASC AFC]” (also nominated, of course, for Marty Supreme). And as Anderson did at the SOC gathering, Bauman also gave a shoutout to dolly grip John “Johnny Mango” Mang, along with producer Sara Murphy, and all his crew, in this almost eerily of-its-moment collaboration with writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson. All of it culminating in a film that is “so much,” as Bauman said, “about the love of a parent for a child.”
Which is one of those main elemental forces – as posited by del Toro – that one wants to lean into, in times such as these.
More about those times, Oscar wrap-up and all, when we see you back here in early, early spring.
@Tricksterink / [email protected]
