British cinematographer Roger Pratt has died, aged 77.
Best known for his work as director of photography on films including several Harry Potter movies and Tim Burton’s Batman, Pratt passed away in December 2024, as confirmed via a statement made by the British Society Of Cinematographers (BSC). The statement did not specify the date, location or cause of Pratt’s death.
Pratt was born in 1947 in Leicester, and studied at Durham University from 1966. He then went on to attend the prestigious London Film School, and received an Oscar nomination for his work on the 1999 film The End Of The Affair, a romantic drama starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore. He was also given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the BSC in 2023.
The cinematographer first met frequent collaborator Terry Gilliam on the set of Monty Python And The Holy Grail, where Pratt was working as a clapper loader. The BSC’s statement included a quote from Gilliam about them working together.
Gilliam said: “We were filming the Bridge of Death sequence and needed a dramatic shot looking up at the bridge with the mountains in the distance. I stuck the camera on the edge of the cliff, but the lens wasn’t wide enough. We were a long way from the road, the light was going. It was terrible.”
He continued: “This guy said, ‘Just give me a moment’ and in a few minutes, while we were still faffing around, he had run all the way down the mountain, forded the river, run up the other side, into the camera truck, grabbed the right lens and here it was. We stuck it on the camera and got the shot. That was the moment I fell in love with Roger.”
Other notable titles in Pratt’s filmography include 1995’s 12 Monkeys, 1991’s The Fisher King, 1994’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 2000’s Chocolat and 2010’s The Karate Kid.
Most will know his work from the look he created for Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989, which the BSC statement said “would launch many of the superhero franchises we have today.”
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