Bradford Young
-
Lens Flair
Bradford Young and Neil Fanthom first forayed into edgier glass during their collaboration on Solo: A Star Wars Story. Fanthom, Arri’s director of technology at the time, worked with Young, the acclaimed cinematographer of Arrival, Selma and A Most Violent Year, to develop a set of Arri Prime DNA lenses personally tailored to his needs. The DNAs are essentially rehoused vintage glass meant to cover the Alexa 65 sensor, fine-tuned and developed from the ground up for the specific needs of a cinematographer on a particular film. While testing the lenses for Solo, Fanthom called in Young to look at […]
by A.E. Hunt on Jun 19, 2019 -
Our Family
There’s a wealth of taboo subjects in our industry, but family life especially manages to stay pretty deep in the shadows, even more so than the rare public discourses on sexism, racism and ageism. It’s a topic most filmmakers don’t venture into for a variety of reasons, but maybe most of all because the success rate of keeping a family together in this industry is scarily low. Sometimes it seems like families and filmmaking are at direct odds with each other. Coming up on two years of this column, I thought maybe it was time to get other DPs to […]
by Sean Porter on Sep 14, 2017 -
Trailer Watch: Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival
A Filmmaker cover in Winter 2014 for one of our favorite and underrated films of the last few years, Enemy, Denis Villeneuve has become that rare powerhouse director who inflects a cinematically exciting signature style across diverse material. Currently shooting the sequel to Blade Runner, the director follows up his moody drug-war drama Sicario with a science-fiction tale of alien visitation. Most excitingly for us at Filmmaker, this most visually compelling of directors has hooked up with one of our favorite DPs, Bradford Young, who appeared on our 25 New Faces list back in 2009. For now, check out the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 16, 2016 -
Buying a Burning Building: J.C. Chandor on A Most Violent Year
As a moviegoer, there are few things I find more satisfying than a filmmaker who not only fulfills but wildly exceeds the promise of their early work. With his third film, A Most Violent Year, writer-director J.C. Chandor has done just that, elaborating upon the themes and techniques of his previous movies (Margin Call and All is Lost) to create a work far deeper and more ambitious than anything he’s done before. It’s another portrait of men and women under extreme pressure, but this time the broader implications are simultaneously more complex and more seamlessly woven into the narrative. Ambitious immigrant Abel […]
by Jim Hemphill on Dec 31, 2014 -
Drive, He Said: A Most Violent Year
The guy’s a tease. Up until the end of Margin Call (2011), the debut feature of A Most Violent Year director J.C. Chandor (All is Lost), our moral compass in the story of a New York investment firm at the onset of the 2008 financial crash is brainy risk analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto). The young MIT graduate is so upright that he not only disentangles the masked electronic numbers signaling impending doom for those who can least afford it but also allies himself with the mid-level powers who prefer to forestall than cash in. In the penultimate sequence, once […]
by Howard Feinstein on Dec 30, 2014 -
What New Film Has the Most 25 New Faces of All Time?
There are many good reasons to see David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, opening today. Many of those are articulated in David Barker’s interview with Lowery and Anthony Kaufman’s interview with its D.P., Bradford Young, but here’s another: this single film displays the work of more of our 25 New Faces than any other picture. Here’s that list: Jay Van Hoy & Lars Knudson. Now mainstays of the independent scene, New York-based Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen were, in 2006, the first producers to appear on the “25 New Faces” list. At the time the Parts and Labor team […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 16, 2013 -
“In the Same Way Painters Used Their Paint…”: D.P. Bradford Young on Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Mother of George
In just a few years, Bradford Young has emerged as one of the most auspicious and distinctive cinematographers in American independent film. First noticed in 2011 for his work on Andrew Dosunmu’s Restless City and Dee Rees’ Pariah, he was profiled by the New York Times the following year for his subtle, carefully framed cinematography on Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere. In just the past year, Young confirmed his early promise with two sumptuous and yet highly disparate visions: for David Lowery’s Texas-set period film Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (opening this week) and Dosunmu’s Brooklyn-based contemporary drama Mother of George […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Aug 14, 2013 -
KICKSTARTER: “PARIAH” PRODUCER NEKISA COOPER’S “FIVE NIGHTS IN MAINE”
Though her Sundance hit Pariah opens through Focus in the winter, producer Nekisa Cooper hasn’t slowed down as she reached out to us about a project she’s currently getting off the ground through Kickstarter, Five Nights In Maine, directed by Bay Area filmmaker Maris Curran. They are currently trying to raise $40,000. Here’s the synopsis: Sherwin and Fiona are at a crossroads. As an interracial couple living in the south, they seem to have created an idyllic bubble for their love. But after a recent visit to her ailing and prickly mother, Fiona is changed. Suddenly, their relationship is contentious […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Aug 23, 2011 -
TRAILER WATCH: “PARIAH”
Dee Rees’ powerful gay-themed drama has been one of our favorite film projects of the last few years. The film went through the IFP Narrative Lab, and two of its principals — writer/director Rees and d.p. Bradford Young — appeared on our “25 New Faces” list. So, we were thrilled when the film was picked up at Sundance by Focus Features and Rees was given a development deal. Focus has just released the trailer, which I’ve embedded below. And see my piece on Rees from the 2008 25 New Faces list and Jason Guerrasio’s on Young from the 2009 list.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 13, 2011 -
PARK CITY CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK #1: WOMEN IN TROUBLE
On the night the latest edition of the Sundance Film Festival kicked off, I was approached by a man in a beat-up looking bubble coat and slacks three thousand miles away in a Crown Heights, Brooklyn laundromat. He extended his hand, in which he was holding six plastic sheets with DVDs in them, and tersely said, “Movies.” I looked down at the half-a-dozen bootleg discs in his hand, most of which were sequels to “urban” thrillers I had never heard of in the first place. “I’m good,” I brusquely whispered, causing him to saunter off into the fluorescent hum and […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 22, 2011
