Cinematographer, Who Shaped The Look of Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’, Dies
Roger Pratt, the cinematographer behind Tim Burton’s highly influential Batman as well as two Harry Potter movies, has died.
Pratt passed away last month at the age of 77, with the news of his death announced by the British Society of Cinematographers (BSC) on Friday.
“It is with deepest sadness that we learn of the passing of Roger Pratt (1947-2024),” the BSC says in a statement.
Pratt brought some of cinema’s most breathtaking fantasy worlds to life, showcasing his hauntingly beautiful artistry in Tim Burton’s Batman — a groundbreaking film that redefined the superhero genre — as well as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
As The Guardian notes, Pratt’s visual tone in the 1989 film Batman, with its vision of a menacing and decaying Gotham City, would influence superhero movies for decades.
Pratt was also a frequent collaborator of Terry Gilliam. Pratt and Gilliam worked on the movies Brazil, The Fisher King, and 12 Monkeys.
Pratt was born in 1947 in Leicester, U.K. He attended the renowned London Film School and began a longstanding collaboration with filmmaker Gilliam after they first crossed paths on the set of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), where Pratt worked as a clapper loader.
“We were filming the Bridge of Death sequence and needed a dramatic shot looking up at the bridge with the mountains in the distance,” Gilliam recalled of his first meeting with Pratt, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“I stuck the camera on the edge of the cliff, but the lens wasn’t wide enough. We were a long way from the road, the light was going. It was terrible.”
“This guy said, ‘Just give me a moment’ and in a few minutes, while we were still faffing around, he had run all the way down the mountain, forded the river, run up the other side, into the camera truck, grabbed the right lens and here it was.
“We stuck it on the camera and got the shot. That was the moment I fell in love with Roger.”
Pratt was nominated for an Academy Award for the 1999 film The End of the Affair. He was also awarded the BSC’s highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award, in 2023.
Pratts’s final films included a 2010 remake of The Karate Kid. He retired after being diagnosed with young-onset familial Alzheimer’s and wished that his brain be donated for research into the disease.
