Sean Price Williams’ work brought colour to cinematography in 2017

Cinematographer Sean Price Williams has been accredited for highly acclaimed projects during the past decade. However, his recent work took a direction that is definitely worth paying attention to.

The work of the cinematographer has been highly commended

For the past ten years, Sean Price Williams’ work as a cinematographer has not failed to garner praise from indie critics and fans alike. His idiosyncratic style, which takes inspiration from film icons like filmmakers Robert Altman and Roman Polanski, implements ingenious use of colour to create visuals that sublime the ordinary into the extraordinary.

In 2017 alone, Sean Price Williams has been credited for not less than 4 movies, including Marjorie’s prime, Good Time, Golden Exits, and the spectacular Thirst Street. The latter was a major project for the photographer.

Williams got started by working in a specialised library

Williams’ film-making path started as he worked at the late Kim’s Video and Music, an audio-visual library then situated in the East Village of New York City. His position allowed him to meet directors like Ross Perry and Robert Greene, as well as actress Kate Lyn Sheil, all of whom he ended up collaborating with. For the cinematographer and his colleagues, working in a place that had so much content on the antiques of cinema turned out to be extremely resourceful.

“We could immediately be learning and catching up on the history of cinema with what was available to us, which was a lot compared to now,” Williams said.

An important part of the history of cinema is missing

Reflecting on his experience in a resourceful environment, Sean Price Williams remarked how unfortunate it is that much of the first 100 years of cinema are hardly represented in mainstream media. The licensing when it comes to the framework that those years have borne seems to be quite hazy, which makes important material difficult to obtain. To counter this issue in our modern context, Williams does not hesitate to recommend downloading, even if it sometimes has to be illegal.

The work behind Thirst Street was very organic

Upon seeing Thirst Street, one will immediately be stricken by the compelling use of colour in Williams’ work. For instance, when the protagonist Gina enters a fortuneteller’s abode, her face is pictured in various tones of red, standing out against a variegated backdrop. When asked how he came up with the visuals employed, the cinematographer revealed that, with the help of his gaffer, he experimented with newly acquired lights and gels to channel the potential of what the team had on their hands.

Face and body close-ups are a staple of Thirst Street’s aesthetic

Williams thinks that focusing on body parts, especially in a shot whereby motion is abundant, captures the details that offer for good cinematography. For instance, Thirst Street features a lot of face close-ups that often omit chins and foreheads. The cinematographer explains his choice through the following words:

“…What’s better than the face? I guess that’s the bottom line. Josh always likes to talk about how the close-up is the one unique thing to cinema, to see a face that big on a screen. That’s pretty special. I never quite understood when people say, ‘It’s too claustrophobic.’”

h/t: Hyperallergic
Also available on Zyne.ca