American Cinematographer - August 1986 - 70

Koenekamp, ASC, and Owen Roizman, ASC,
came pouring through.

among

others,

Meet Some of the New Cast

Bill Fraker is

alumnus of the

USC School of

Cinema, which he attended after
World War II on the G.I. Bill
"the only way that I
could have afforded to go." Fraker moonlighted for
years, doing inserts for commercials and "grab shots"
for features. After finally getting his union card, he
-

worked as an operator for TV films for 10 years. That
led to an assignment shooting commercials in 1965,
which led to "Games," his first film, in 1966. He won

Academy Award nominations for "Looking for Mr.
Goodbar," "Heaven Can Wait" and "1941" during
the 1970s. More was to come during the 1980s when
he earned nominations for "War Games" and "Mur¬

phy's Romance."

felt I could improve on nature.
I walked around and looked until I
never

found what I wanted to shoot
I'd
get composition with a tree or a bush or
.

rock

"
Vilmos

Zsigmond grew up in Hun¬
and graduated from the
state film school in 1955. He and Laszlo Kovacs,
ASC, smuggled some 12,000 feet of documentary
footage out of the country during the short-lived
1957 rebellion that was crushed by the Russian army.
He came to the U.S. unable to speak a word of Eng¬
lish. Zsigmond worked in a film lab, shot industrial

gary

during the cold

and educational

war,

films, and

half-dozen

or so

low-

budget features. The advertising agencies discovered
him during the early 1960s, and Zsigmond honed his
skills shooting commercials. His first feature film,
"The Hired Hand," was made in 1964. During the
1970s, he earned Academy Award nominations for
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "The
Deer Hunter." Zsigmond won an Oscar for "Close
Encounters" in 1977. His most recent Oscar nomina¬
tion was for "The River."
Fred Koenekamp was born in Los
John Alonzo at work

man

color intermediate II film 52.43.

year,

was

upgraded

to an

The following
Award of Merit, an Oscar.

Changing of the Guard
Many of Hollywood's most vener¬
able cinematographers had called it a career by the
end of the seventh decade of the century. Others
were thinking about doing so. Their ranks were being
filled by a highly talented cadre of younger cin¬
ematographers - some called them the New Wave.
A few made their marks in the 1960s, Haskell Wexler, ASC and Conrad Hall, ASC, to name a couple. By
the 1970s, the floodgates were opened and Bill
Fraker, ASC; Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC; Fred

36a

Angeles. After World War II, he started as a film
loader and worked his way up through the ranks.
Television gave him an opportunity to advance to
first camera, and Koenekamp took advantage of it,
winning several Emmy nominations for his work on
"A Man From Uncle." During the 1970s, he earned
Academy Award nominations for "Patton," "The
Towering Inferno" (with Joe Biroc, ASC) and "Is¬
lands in the Stream." Koenekamp and Biroc won an
Oscar for their work on "The Towering Inferno" in
1975-

Owen

Brooklyn and

grew up

Roizman

was

born

in the New York City

area.

American Cinematographer - August 1986

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