Academy Award Winners for Best Cinematography: 1997 — John Seale, ACS, ASC The English Patient (1996) Directed by Anthony Minghella Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
"We mulled it for a long time and finally the edict we came out with was 1 : 85 because it’s a movie about people in the desert, not a desert with people in it. A lot of people have argued because the desert is a flat format, which anamorphic [2.39 : 1] fits perfectly and we knew that, but we also argued against David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. It’s fantastic, unbelievable, but we didn’t want to do that. Anthony said, I will never want to start on a beautiful mountain range and come down and find the movie; we’ll always cut to the movie, and I had to remind him a few times about that when he’d ask, ‘could we start there and come down?’ … ‘No, we can’t, Anthony, the camera is not programmed to do that,’ I’d say. Because you end up cutting those shots out in the end anyway, so we worked very hard to set up a shot that had the desert in the background so then the cars or whatever would bring you right into the movie. I think it helps to keep the pace up, but the majesty of it is still there. I like that because it’s making the movie first and the cinematography comes second." — John Seale for Student Filmmakers Magazine, April 2008