Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS on The Mandalorian, Lion, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and more

The Cinematography Podcast Episode 85: Greig Fraser World-renowned
director of photography Greig Fraser grew up in Australia, working
as a still photographer before he moved into cinematography,
shooting shorts, TV shows and films for several Australian
directors. Greig's most recently completed project is The
Mandalorian, which recently earned him an Emmy nomination. At
first, Greig felt incredibly nervous about working on the frontline
development for The Mandalorian because of the massive amount of
technology involved. His usual approach as a DP has been
naturalistic lighting, in a real setting, rather than an entirely
manufactured environment on a soundstage. The Mandalorian brought
together gaming technology and set design, which could only be done
with the support of ILM and Lucasfilm. The Star Wars series used 3D
digital environments built with Epic Games' Unreal Engine gaming
technology that was capable of interacting with the cameras and was
projected on huge LED screens for very realistic backgrounds on the
soundstage. Greig was not a Star Wars newbie- prior to The
Mandalorian, he was the cinematographer of Rogue One: A Star Wars
Story. As a fan of Star Wars, Greig felt some trepidation at first
about shooting Rogue One, because he was worried about losing that
passion in the day-to-day while on set. Greig met with Rogue One
director Gareth Edwards and loved his early film Monsters, so he
was convinced to take the job. Grieg also discusses his work on the
2016 film, Lion, for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best
Cinematography. Greig was extremely excited to shoot Lion- he and
fellow Australian director Garth Davis had worked together a number
of times. As a photographer, Greig had traveled and shot in India,
and he loved being able to return to India and Melbourne to shoot
such a great story. For Lion, Greig and Garth Davis wanted to be
very respectful of Indian culture, and be careful of their choices
not to oversensationalize images of poverty. Greig shot many of the
railway scenes in the film at the level of a small child to capture
the character Saroo's feelings of loss and helplessness. Grieg
Fraser is the cinematographer of two hugely anticipated films
coming soon: Dune with director Denis Villeneuve and The Batman,
directed by Matt Reeves. Find Greig Fraser: Instagram
@greigfraser_dp Find out even more about this episode, with
extensive show notes and links: http://camnoir.com/ep85/ Sponsored
by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com Website: www.camnoir.com
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