Roger Pratt, the cinematographer behind “The Fisher King,” “Brazil” and Tim Burton’s “Batman,” has died. He was 77.
The news was posted via the British Society of Cinematographers: “It is with deepest sadness that we learn of the passing of Roger Pratt BSC (1947-2024).” The news did not state when he died, nor did it share the cause of death.
Pratt was nominated for an Academy Award in 1999 for his work on “The End of the Affair.” He was also a frequent collaborator of Terry Gilliam. Pratt and Gilliam worked on “Brazil,” “The Fisher King” and “12 Monkeys.”
Richard Attenborough was another collaborator. Pratt worked on “Shadowlands” which won the BAFTA for Best British Film.
He also worked on the “Harry Potter” films, including “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”
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Pratt was born in 1947 in the British county of Leicester. In the 1960s, he enrolled at the London Film School.
His first job was working at Chippenham Films in the U.K. Pratt served as a clapper loader, and while there, he met Gilliam. According to the British Society of Cinematographers, Gilliam recalled meeting Pratt. “We were filming the Bridge of Death sequence and needed a dramatic shot looking up at the bridge with the mountains in the distance. 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.”
In 2023, Pratt received the British Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award.