Gyula Pados Welcomed as New Member
The Golden Frog-winning cinematographer's feature credits include Fateless, The Duchess, entries in the Maze Runner and Jumanji film series, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
Los Angeles-based cinematographer Gyula Pados, ASC, HCA grew up watching Russian war movies in communist Hungary, where few films from the West were exhibited. His first experience with an American movie was Star Wars, which arrived in Budapest a few years late and attracted huge lines at the box office. “After the credits, I ran straight back to the end of the line to get another ticket,” he recalls. “How strange it was to love Star Wars and Come and See with the same passion!”
After graduating from high school, Pados founded a music-video production company with some friends and started working on camera crews on local productions, including the telefilm Stalin, shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, HSC, and the feature The Long Shadow, directed by Zsigmond and shot by Gábor Szabó, HSC. In 1990, Pados enrolled in the cinematography program at Hungary’s renowned Academy of Drama and Film, where his diploma project, Hajnal (Dawn), which he directed and shot, won recognition at several film festivals. While still in school, he shot the short Meter Running in England, and he returned to England to continue working after he graduated in 1996. After shooting more short films, he made his feature-cinematography debut on Hotel Splendide and followed it with another English feature, The Heart of Me.
Director Nimród Antal’s comedic thriller Kontroll, set entirely in the Budapest Metro system, brought Pados back to Hungary, and his work on the film garnered international acclaim. Once Pados moved to Los Angeles, he and Antal eventually reteamed on the action film Predators and the 3D concert/narrative hybrid Metallica Through the Never.
Pados won a Camerimage Golden Frog, among other honors, for the Holocaust drama Fateless, directed by Lajos Koltai, ASC, and he collaborated with Koltai again on the feature Evening. His feature credits also include Basic Instinct 2; The Duchess, for which he received a Camerimage Golden Frog nomination; Million Dollar Arm; Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials; Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle; Maze Runner: The Death Cure; Jumanji: The Next Level; Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. He also shot the television pilot Scorpion.
Find Gyula Pados' website here, and follow him on Instagram here. View the ASC's complete membership roster here.
