The American Society of Cinematographers salutes the career of Victor Kemper with its 1998 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Over the past 27 years, director of photography Victor J. Kemper, ASC has compiled 52 major feature film credits. His eclectic body of work ranges from stark drama to outrageous comedy, and includes such diverse titles as Husbands, They Might Be Giants, The Candidate (see AC Sept. 1972), The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Dog Day Afternoon, Stay Hungry (AC Feb. '76), Audrey Rose, Slap Shot, Oh God!, The Jerk, The Four Seasons, Mr. Mom, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Clue (AC Jan. '86), Author! Author!, See No Evil, Hear No Evil (AC July '89), Beethoven, and Jingle All the Way. In honor of his career efforts, the American Society of Cinematographers has named Kemper the recipient of its 1998 Lifetime Achievement Award.
"This award is given to an individual who has made substantial and unique contributions to advancing the art of cinematography," says former ASC President Owen Roizman. "I can't think of anyone who is more deserving. Victor is an amazingly talented artist. Many cinematographers can point to 5, 10, or 15 good or great films where they made important contributions. Victor has done it year after year."
Kemper will be honored at the 12th Annual ASC Awards event, to be held on March 8 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. With this prize, he joins a distinguished club of previous Lifetime Achievement Award winners: Roizman, Sven Nykvist, Gordon Willis, Conrad Hall, Haskell Wexler, Philip Lathrop, Charles Lang, Stanley Cortez, Joseph Biroc and George Folsey.
Kemper is the third Lifetime Award recipient in the past four years who launched his career in New York during the 1960s. His path to Hollywood was a circuitous one. Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, he claims that he never went to the movies as a kid, except for Saturday afternoon serials. Instead, his interests lay in such activities as building radios. As a teenager, he earned pocket money by repairing neighbors' malfunctioning television sets. After graduation from Seton Hall University, Kemper worked at a local TV station, where he operated a sound boom, mixed sound, repaired cameras and served as a floor manager and technical director on studio productions.
When the station was sold, Kemper went into business with a cousin, running a Florida hat manufacturing factory. He then took a position at a paint and lacquer manufacturing plant. Subsequently, however, the manager of his local TV station requested that he return to Newark.
In 1954, Kemper heard that Ampex had invented a two-inch black-and-white videotape system which was being touted as a replacement for film. When the company offered a two-week training course at its corporate headquarters in Redwood City, California, he asked the station manager to fund his trip. After the station reneged, Kemper quit his job and paid his own way to Redwood City. It was quite an audacious move for a young person with very little money, but Kemper was looking towards the future. He believed that Ampex's system marked the beginning of film's demise. In fact, Daily Variety announced the invention with the gigantic headline: "Film Is Dead?"
Kemper soon found himself in the unique position of being the only freelancer in New York City trained to use the new Ampex system. He was hired by EUE, the city's top TV commercial production company. Feature-film cinematographers from around the world were then shooting EUE spots, but when Screen Gems purchased the company a few years later, the video department was eliminated. With the aid of a financial backer, Kemper and an EUE staff director purchased a quarter of a million dollars' worth of video hardware for $70,000. In a moderately successful venture, they produced commercials and duped tapes for about two years. But when their financial backer suffered a heart attack, business was closed.
Several cinematographers who had met Kemper at EUE put him to work as an assistant cameraman. He quickly advanced to become a camera operator for Arthur Ornitz, ASC. Kemper initially worked on commercial crews; his first narrative experience was as an operator for Ornitz on the 1964 ballet film A Midsummer Night's Dream, performed by the New York City Ballet. During the next several years, Kemper worked as a camera operator with Ornitz on The Tiger Makes Out, Charley and Me and Natalie, and with Michael Nebbia on Alice's Restaurant.
These jobs provided Kemper with seminal experiences. Ornitz himself was a minimalist in his use of artificial light. "Arthur believed that the fewer lamps you used, the better it was because that gave you freedom to move the camera without creating shadows that couldn't be accounted for by natural light," recalls Kemper. "I was much more interested in understanding why he wanted a particular look than in how he achieved it. I also watched how he related to people, including directors, actors and his crew, which is a big part of the job."
[ continued on page 2 ]