I am fascinated by directors, which is not surprising since I am a hobbyist filmmaker myself. But the second most fascinating people on set, for me, are cinematographers. I simply love the work they do, and sometimes, I feel they should be at the helm, not the directors, but we all know that is never going to happen.

When I learnt of Chris Nolan’s Interstellar earlier this year, I already could not wait to see it. But now, Nolan’s work seems less exciting to me than the upcoming film, Transcendence.

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Pfister shooting for Nolan’s ‘Inception’. Nolan himself is visible at the back.
Courtesy, Collider.

The Pfister-Nolan journey

If one pair has turned out to be as interesting to me as Spielberg and Williams, it is that of Nolan and Pfister. Director-cinematographer pairs are not hard to come by. These men usually find their creative ideas in synchronisation and end up working together nearly every time.

For those of you who do not know, Wally Pfister is Nolan’s go-to cinematographer — i.e. the guy who decides what you see on the theater screen. As a photographer, then, it is no wonder why cinematographers inspire me greatly, and Pfister is definitely one of them.

Take a look at his work on Memento, Inception or The Dark Knight trilogy: all films directed by Nolan and shot by Pfister. In simple terms: Nolan tells Batman how to crash in through the door and Pfister decides where the lights and cameras go and how the audience will see their favourite superhero crashing through the door.

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Cover for ‘Interstellar’.
Courtesy, Wikimedia commons.

A project apart

So what happens when Nolan’s DOP decides to direct his own film? You hire another guy with a hard-to-pronounce name like Kaminski, Lubezki, Fiore or Hoyte. (All real names; there are more but these are all I can recall now.)

Of course Nolan picked Hoyte van Hoytema, cinematographer of TTSS and The fighter, to replace Pfister; but will their teaming up go just as smoothly? or, more importantly, will the audience receive Nolan’s new film looking so differently having got used to Pfister’s dark and moody shots?

Nolan is a director who can no doubt keep the production together and get his men to translate vision onto the screen, but when Pfister is out making the same genre of movie right around the same time, the British director has other things to fear.

Transcendence

Not surprisingly, both Pfister and Nolan have kept the stories of their new films very secretive. But we do know they are mostly sci-fi (Pfister) and physics (Nolan). It has been Pfister who released his film’s trailer first, however, so take a look at more TDKR-esque photography.

With a cast like Paul Bettany and Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman, Pfister has bagged himself a strong set of talent, so it is hard to see this one fall down.

Interstellar

But Nolan’s film is not weak in its cast either: he has with him Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, John Lithgow, and, in a supposedly fleeting role, Matt Damon.

As a viewer, I can say 2014 is going to be yet another nerdy year in film with some of my favourites coming out: The Hobit: there and back again; RoboCop; Pompeii; TMNT; X-Men: days of future past (which is hopefully as good as the comic arc); and… Godzilla.

That is apart from Captain America and other superhero films and, of course, Interstellar and Transcendence.

But the last two would be the biggest fight of all. When Pfister and Nolan became so famous for their work together, can each of them stand just as tall without the other? And then the inevitable question: who will be better?

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