Watch: Video Essay on Steven Soderbergh, Secret Cinematographer

While it might not be a secret to some cinephiles, director Steven Soderbergh has served as editor his own films like Magic Mike and Haywire under the pseudonym Mary Ann Bernard (his mother's maiden name). But more frequently, Soderbergh has worked as a cinematographer on nearly all of his films under the guise of Peter Andrews (using his father's first and middle names). But why the pseudonym? In a cool video essay from Nelson Carvajal, the director is quoted saying, "My policy is to have my name on a movie only once. Having your name once increases the impact of that credit because I think every time you put your name up there, you’re actually diluting it.” And there's plenty more in the rest of the video.

Here's Nelson Carvajal's video essay Peter Andrews: The Soderbergh Vision via Press Play:

Since Traffic in the year 2000, Soderbergh has lensed all his various films from Ocean's Eleven and the sequels to the less flashy more realistically shot Contagion, The Informant! and Haywire. Soderbergh told The Chicago Tribune in an interview about Magic Mike last year, "Since I act as my own cinematographer, one thing I've had to learn is how to make things look not so good, to be able to go into a space and recognize this is the way this looks, and it's not always my job to make everything look pretty." Thanks to Nelson Carvajal for this look at Steven Soderbergh's work as a cinematographer. Good video?

1 jont on Mar 22, 2013

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