Conrad
Hall, ASC
American Beauty
 Conrad
Hall, ASC has earned his ninth Oscar nomination and won a third ASC
Outstanding Achievement Award for American Beauty. The film
is the comical yet touching story of a middle-aged man who has a terrible
crush on his teenaged daughter's best friend.
Hall and director Sam Mendes decided the film's visual style should incorporate a dash of surrealism. They used picture books (Magritte, Hopper) and looked at films (The Ice Palace) to help determine the approach. Their compositions were often perfectly balanced to visually represent the main character's (Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey) constricted existence. Hall and Mendes decided that the neighbor's house should be darker in tone for the walls and for the lighting, and that the Burnham house should be brighter, more open and fuller in exposure.
Hall studied filmmaking at USC, where he earned the first ASC scholarship
for cinematography. He won an Oscar for his work on Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid, and Oscar nominations came for Morituri,
The Professionals, In Cold Blood, Day of the Locust, Tequila Sunrise,
Searching for Bobby Fischer and A Civil Action. His other
credits include Love Affair, Fat City, Cool Hand Luke, and
Marathon Man. In 1994, Hall received the ASC Lifetime Achievement
Award.
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