"Elephant" Gus Van Sant and Harris Savvides take on the challenge of realism and ultimate minimalism. What is the world-recognized “Death Trilogy”?

Contribution of Harris Savvides

This is how a special project gets underway, and there are members who can say with certainty that without this staff, the project would have turned out completely differently. Harris Savvides is the cinematographer. He was a giant in the American cinematography world and left behind a remarkable body of work until he passed away in 2012 at the age of 55 due to brain cancer.

He started his career as a fashion photographer, and later built a career as a video cameraman for music videos by Mark Romanek and David Fincher, and worked in films for Fincher, Ridley Scott, Jonathan Glazer, Sofia Coppola, and others. He has worked with great directors such as Noah Baumbach and Woody Allen.

He has professed to be a fan of the films of Antonioni and Ozu, and his extraordinary sense of being able to discover a high sense of aesthetics in the landscapes he sees is perfect for the experimental approach that Gus Van Sant seeks. He was a creator.

Preview of “When I Find a Novelist”

After collaborating with Gus Van Sant for the first time on ``When I Found a Novelist'' (2000), he was assigned to work on ``Death Trilogy.'' In an interview, he said that he was completely on board with the director's willingness to accept a low budget in order to create freely, and that he overcame the small staff and short filming period to make the film the best on set. Also, this trilogy has few dialogues and explanatory shots, so there was no need to follow the theory, and there were also rules such as not breaking cuts and not placing the camera higher than the table. Because he had already decided, the only advantage was that the shooting progressed quickly.

In fact, filming took 17 days for ``Elephant'' and 19 days for ``Last Days''. In both cases, as the production was ascetic, there was a high degree of freedom in terms of filming, and Savvides, who has an artistic streak, was able to fully demonstrate his creativity. He won the Best Cinematography Award at the 69th New York Film Critics Circle Awards for both ``GERRY'' and ``Elephant.''

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