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People in Film | Harris Savides

Posted December 01, 2010 to photo album "People in Film | Harris Savides"

We turn the lens on Harris Savides, the acclaimed cinematographer of Sofia Coppola’s award-winning film Somewhere.

Harris Savides | Fashion and the New School

Harris Savides | The MTV Music Video Awards

Harris Savides | The films of Gus Van Sant

Harris Savides | Milk and the San Francisco of the 1970s

Harris Savides | Noah Baumbach's Greenberg

Harris Savides | Sofia Coppola and Somewhere

Harris Savides | The Cinematographer and the Image

Harris Savides | Noah Baumbach's Greenberg

In 2010 Harris Savides shot two films that captured sides of Los Angeles rarely seen on screen. Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg stars Ben Stiller as a guy trying to stabilize his life by housesitting his more successful brother’s house in the Hollywood Hills. The film takes place not within the world of movie star premieres and industry parties but within the neighborhoods of mid-lifers just trying to make it through their days. It was Savides’ second film with Baumbach (it followed Margo at the Wedding), and the cinematographer infused the tale with an unfussy pictorial naturalism. “We looked at Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, and Five Easy Pieces,” said Savides to Moving Image Source about his prep work on the film with Baumbach. “But I never want to ape a movie. I think it just informs us and suggests a certain vibe. You know, you can't work in a void. I certainly can't go into a project and just do what I want. So to mention those movies to me just sets the tone and the pace for the way the movie looks.” Wrote Variety’s Todd McCarthy, “Except for the opening shots, which seem specifically designed to spotlight Los Angeles at its smoggy worst, the metropolis is presented from ground level without editorializing and with a fine balance between the beauty and the blight, the ease and the hassle, the luxury and the basic, the stimulating and the banal…. Lenser Harris Savides' contributions to the film's success in capturing a lived-in L.A. feel cannot be underestimated.”