ASC Predictions and Preview

Tomorrow, the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) will announce their nominees for this year. In looking over their history vis a vis the Oscar race, one thing stood out — eight times since the ASC began through 2008, the Best Picture winner also won Best Cinematography:

The Last Emperor
Dances With Wolves
Schindler’s List
Braveheart
The English Patient
Titanic
American Beauty
Slumdog Millionaire

And since the Academy expanded its ballot from five Best Picture nominees to more than five (2009–present), we have just one winner of both awards:

Birdman

However, in the era of the expanded ballot, the cinematography nominees (and especially the winners) are more likely to come from Best Picture nominees. Voters tend to like spreading the wealth among the nominated Best Picture contenders by giving a big prize to each movie. It would be very rare if one movie managed to gain everyone’s support and win all of the major awards.

As such, whatever movie wins Best Cinematography is likely to be a Best Picture nominee but not your Best Pic winner.

In general, the big names in the cinematography industry tend to get attention, even if they aren’t in a Best Picture contender. People know who the best in the business are and they don’t usually go unrecognized.

Here are some of the standouts this year, either for their notoriety in the industry or the strength of their movies:

Janusz Kaminski, West Side Story — 6 ASC nominations, zero wins / 6 Oscar nominations, 2 wins
Dan Laustsen, Nightmare Alley — 1 ASC nomination, 1 Oscar nomination
Bruno Delbonnel, The Tragedy of Macbeth  — 4 ASC nominations, 1 win / 5 Oscar nominations, zero wins
Seamus McGarvey, Cyrano — 2 ASC nominations, 2 Oscar nominations
Jeff Cronenweth, Being the Ricardos — 2 ASC nominations, 2 Oscar nominations
Kramer Morgenthau, Respect — 5 ASC nominations for Television
Robbie Ryan, C’Mon, C’Mon — 1 ASC nomination, 1 Oscar nomination
Robert D. Yeoman, The French Dispatch — 1 ASC nomination, 1 Oscar nomination
Dariusz Wolski, House of Gucci and The Last Duel — 2 ASC nominations, 1 Oscar nomination
Linus Sandgren, Don’t Look Up — 2 ASC nominations / 1 Oscar nomination, 1 Oscar win
Chung-hoon Chung, Last Night in Soho — this guy is kind of a big deal 
Haris Zambarloukos, Belfast
Andrew Droz Palermo, The Green Knight
Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Bauman, Licorice Pizza
Edu Grau, Passing

Female contenders this year:

Ari Wegner, The Power of the Dog
Alice Brooks, tick, tick…BOOM!
Paula Huidobro, CODA
Claire Mathon, Spencer

When last we looked at cinematography, we figured out that in the era of the expanded ballot, when there is a split — Best Picture and Best Cinematography always go together.

2012 — Argo won Best Picture, Life of Pi won Director + Cinematography
2013 — 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture, Gravity won Director + Cinematography
2015 — Spotlight won Best Picture, The Revenant won Director + Cinematography
2016 — Moonlight won Best Picture, La La Land won Director + Cinematography
2018 — Green Book won Best Picture, Roma won Director + Cinematography

Funny, isn’t it? Who knows if that stat will hold, of course. Stats were made to be broken, but just saying. There might not even be a split this year, and then the point would be moot. To repeat, only Birdman has ever managed to win Picture, Director, AND Cinematography in the era of the expanded ballot.

Here are our predictions, and the charts to follow.

Sasha Stone, Mark Johnson:
Dune
Belfast
The Power of the Dog
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story

Ryan Adams, Clarence Moye, Marshall Flores:
The Power of the Dog
Dune
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story
Nightmare Alley

Here are our charts.