Roger Pratt, an Oscar-nominated British cinematographer who worked on two Harry Potter films and with such top directors as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Kenneth Branagh, Mike Leigh, Lasse Hallström, Neil Jordan, Wolfgang Petersen and Richard Attenborough, has died. He was 77.
The British Society of Cinematographers said he died in late 2024 but did not provide an exact date or a cause.
Pratt earned an Academy Award nom for Jordan’s The End of the Affair (1999) and also lensed the filmmaker’s Mona Lisa (1986) and 2000 short Not I. His dozens of credits include Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) andHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005); Burton’s Batman (1989); Leigh’s High Hopes (1988); Gilliam’s Brazil (1985), The Fisher King (1991) and 12 Monkeys (1995); Branagh’s Frankenstein (1994); and Hallström’s Chocolat (2000); and Petersen’s Troy (2004).
Pratt also was the go-to lenser for the late two-time Oscar winner Attenborough on several films including Shadowlands (1993), In Love and War (1996), Grey Owl (1999) and Closing the Ring (2007).
Born on February 27, 1947, in Leicester, Pratt enrolled at the London Film School in the late 1960s but decided that he didn’t want to direct.
Pivoting to camera and editing work, his first production was as camera assistant on Bleak Moments(1971), directed by fellow student Leigh. He worked as a clapper loader on the classic 1975 comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where Pratt formed what he called “a strange and close relationship” with Gilliam.
He got his start working on a number of early-’80s short films and made his feature DP debut with The Sender in 1982. Also among his first feature credits was a segment of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). He also did some TV work later served as cinematographer on features including Iris, Inkheart, 102 Dalmatians and 2010’s The Karate Kid.
In a 2003 interview with The New Yorker, Pratt said: “Because my job is concerned with big lumps of lights, metal cameras and laboratories, it makes me very pragmatic – it’s the opposite of artistic. I look at myself as a technician.
Photography relies on science. Photographs are just chemicals in labs – light on paper – images in silver halide – but they turn into live things.”
A two-time BAFTA nominee for Chocolat and The End of the Affair, Pratt received the British Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023. He retired during the 2010s due to Alzheimer’s.
There was no immediate word on survivors or services.
From Deadline.com