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Starting as a child actor in the 70s, Michael graduated to become a musician with a handful of albums in the glam-rock 80s. During this time he directed several music videos and commercials and sold a handful of scripts that later became feature films. Michael briefly disappeared from entertainment and into the dot-com world where he created a successful website company responsible for putting such companies as Mitsubishi and UCLA online. He later sold the business, went to law school, and came crashing back into entertainment by forming Silver Wings Productions ("Critical Mass" and "This Island Earth...") and later becoming the head of business affairs for Harvey Entertainment ("Casper, the Friendly Ghost" and "Richie Rich"), as well as production work for Universal, Paramount Classics, and Disney. He is a founding partner in Black Sky Entertainment which produced "Cabin Fever" and is in production on it's next, entitled "Site Unseen". Michael also owns his own production banner that has produced the "Climb On!" extreme sports series, and is currently directing "TechnoSmog" (release date December 2003) as well as producing several features, including "Blind Man's Bluff" (Sundance Film Festival short) and "Billy Whiteman" (based on the upcoming novel by Sid Jacobson).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
W. Howard Greene, a pioneer in color cinematography, was nominated for an Oscar seven times, including five straight years from 1940 to 1944. All of his nominations were for his work in color, in the days when color and black and white cinematography were different categories at the Academy Awards.
Color cinematography was not recognized as a distinct category by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences until the 12th Academy Awards, held in 1940 for the 1939 production year. For the 1936 to '38 production years, a committee of leading cinematographers made a recommendation to the Academy for an Honorary Award after viewing the color movies produced during the year. In 1937, Greene was the first winner of the Honorary Academy Award, a plaque, for color cinematography, along with Harold Rosson, for their work on The Garden of Allah (1936). Singly, he received the Honorary Award plaque for color cinematography in 1938, for his work on A Star Is Born (1937). He won a competitive Oscar in 1944, along with Hal Mohr, for their work on Phantom of the Opera (1943).
As befitting a man with his surname, Greene began specializing in color photography in the early 1920s. He shot the color sequences for Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) in Technicolor's two-color, subtractive cemented-dual-print process. Later, he worked as a camera operator at Warner Bros.-First National on Doctor X (1932) and _Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)_ (v), both of which were photographed with Technicolor's newer, subtractive two-color dye transfer process.
Warner Bros. was the industry leader in making Technicolor films in 1930, producing 15 color films, 11 of which were fully in color, the four others having color sequences. "Wax Museum" generally is considered the most beautiful color feature film produced under the two-color Technicolor process. Herbert T. Kalmus, the president of Technicolor, considered it to be one of the best examples of what was possible with the two-color system. However, color usage waned in 1931 due to the economic effects of the Depression, the lack of novelty, and audience dissatisfaction with the limited palette of colors. Audiences had grown content with sound and seemingly didn't need color, which was expensive to shoot.
It wasn't until the latter part of the 1930s, with the advent of Technicolor's three-strip, three-color dye transfer process, that color film matured into a real medium of artistic expression. The new process required an innovative, custom camera, outfitted with a film magazine that contained three reels of specially prepared B&W film. The process was made possible by the advent of panchromatic B&W film, which was sensitive to all of the colors in the visible spectrum, and was used to shoot reds and greens on two separate reels of films. The third film, which was for blue, consisted of the older orthochromatic B&W film stock, which was not sensitive to light at the red end of the spectrum. The three B&W prints registered the effects of red, green and blue light. They were optically printed and later dyed with the appropriate colors to create what was heralded as "Glorious Technicolor" prints.
_Becky Sharp (1935)_ (qv_, which was shot by Ray Rennahan under the supervision of Kalmus' wife Natalie Kalmus (who also served as a consultant on "Mystery of the Wax Museum" and later on "The Garden of Allah" and "A Star is Born"), was the first feature film to use the three-color process. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), which was shot by Greene and documentary filmmaker Robert C. Bruce, was the first Technicolor film shot in the outdoors. Technicolor chief Herbert Kalmus didn't believe it could be done outside of a studio, as he thought that the light and color couldn't be controlled, but director Henry Hathaway insisted, and the on-location photography was a success.
Now working for David O. Selznick, Greene established a reputation as one of the best color directors of photography in the film industry, working with the new three-strip Technicolor that reproduced the visual spectrum. He got his first honorary Academy Award for "Garden of Allah," but it was Selznick's "A Star is Born" that cemented Greene's reputation. His use of Technicolor to create a glistening palette of color was groundbreaking.
Subsequently, Greene shot Arabian Nights (1942) for Universal, which was its first color film, and won his Oscar statuette while at Universal for Phantom of the Opera (1943). He would go on to win one more Oscar nomination, for When Worlds Collide (1951), and shot his last film in 1955. His career as a leading cinematographer was cut short when he died in 1956.- Alex Kellam was born on 9 October 1908 in Rhodes Point, Smith Island, Maryland, USA. He died in March 1986 in Crisfield, Maryland, USA.