Episode 004 - Giles Nutgens, BSC: part 1

Rack Focus

Lauded cinematographer Giles Nuttgens recently completed photography on director Wash Westmoreland’s period drama Colette, starring Keira Knightley as a struggling French novelist. Previously, he lensed David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at 2016’s Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim. Starring Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster, Nuttgens earned a 2017 BAFTA Film Award nomination for Best Cinematography for his work.

In 2016 Nuttgens also worked on The Fundamentals of Caring, which first screened at Sundance.The film follows Craig Roberts, Paul Rudd and Selena Gomez as a trio who connect on a life changing crosscountry journey.

The last film to ever be shot on black-and-white Kodak 35mm film, Nuttgens shot Grain in Istanbul. Ironically, the movie tells the story of a seed geneticist attempting to save the last batch of genetically unmodified wheat. Nuttgens’ other feature credits also include: Young Ones and God Help the Girl, which both premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival; and The D Train (starring Jack Black and James Marsden) and What Maisie Knew (starring Julianne Moore and Alexander Skarsgard) – both shot with his long-time collaborators, the directing team Scott McGehee and David Siegel.

With director Deepa Mehta, Nuttgens lensed Midnight’s Children, based on the bestselling Salman Rushdie novel. Nuttgens’ also shot Mehta’s elemental trilogy Fire, Earth and Water. Water received a 2007 Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and earned Nuttgens the 2006 GENIE Award for Best Cinematography.

In 2007, Nuttgens’ “sigh-inducingly evocative” (the Telegraph) cinematography for Mister Foe earned Best Cinematography awards at the Copenhagen Film Festival and British Film Festival in Dinard, as well as a Best Cinematography nomination at the 2008 Evening Standard Awards. Nuttgens first worked with McGehee and Siegel on The Deep End, a film which earned Nuttgens the 2001 Sundance Film Festival Award for Best Cinematography and a nomination in the same category at the 2002 Independent Spirit Awards.

BBC trained, Nuttgens was one of the youngest cameramen ever to be appointed to the BBC and worked on a variety of dramas, documentaries and news program. Nuttgens remembers an exceptional experience in his early career spending four months in the Brazilian jungle sleeping on the sandbanks on the side of the Araguaia River. There, he ate dried manioc flour and the red-bellied Amazonian piranha that he fished for every day.

Giles Nuttgens is represented by DDA.