Michael Crawford Chapman, A.S.C. is a retired American cinematographer and film director who is well known for his work on many films of the American New Wave of the 1970s and in the 1980s with prominent directors such as Martin Scorsese and Ivan Reitman. To date, he has shot more than forty feature films. On over half of them, he has worked with only three different directors.
Early life and education
Chapman was born in New York City in 1935, but raised in Wellesley, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, without much of an interest in film. As a youth, he was more interested in sports than photography or painting. After high school, he attended Columbia University, where he majored in English. Upon his graduation, he worked temporarily as a brakeman for the Erie Lackawanna Railroad in the Midwest and then served a brief stint in the United States Army. Chapman’s father-in-law, Joe Brun, got him his first job in the industry: working as an assistant camera and focus puller on commercials, as there weren’t enough feature films being shot in New York at the time.
Career
Chapman began his film career as a camera operator before making the leap to cinematographer, distinguishing himself on Steven Spielberg's Jaws. He fondly remembers his time as an operator, and calls it one of the best jobs in the movie business because "you get to see the film before anyone else does!" As a cinematographer, he became famous for his two collaborations with Martin Scorsese: Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Chapman was also cinematographer for the 1978 hit remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He and Scorsese were huge fans of The Band, and Chapman served as the principal cinematographer for their documentary on The Band, called The Last Waltz. With nine cameras shooting at once, Chapman noted that “the strategy for filming all of their songs was planned out in enormous detail.” Chapman's style tends to feature high contrasts and an aggressive use of strong colors. He is also adept at setting up complex camera movements quickly and improvising on the set. This style is epitomized in the boxing sequences in Raging Bull, during which the camera was often strapped to an actor through improvised rigs. His bold use of black-and-white cinematography on Raging Bull proved particularly difficult and earned Chapman his first Academy Award nomination. As with his work on Jaws, Chapman used a handheld camera to shoot much of the film. Besides his work with Scorsese, Chapman has worked as Director of Photography for noted directors Hal Ashby, Philip Kaufman, Martin Ritt, Robert Towne, Michael Caton-Jones, Andrew Davis and Ivan Reitman. He occasionally made small cameos in films that he shot. He has also directed several films of his own, the best known being All the Right Moves, starring Tom Cruise in one of his breakout roles. In 1987, Chapman collaborated again with Scorsese on the 18-minute short film that served as the music video for Michael Jackson’s Bad. Chapman also shot a string of comedies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as Ghostbusters II and Kindergarten Cop, and admitted that he didn’t need to alter his style very much. But he has said, “On comedies, I use a little more fill light; you tend to create a lit atmosphere where the performers can be at home, where they can move around…without having to hit a precise mark." His final film was Bridge to Terabithia. According to the DVD commentary, Chapman was planning to retire after the film was finished, saying he would like to have the last film he shot be a good one; He has since officially retired.
Personal life
Chapman is married to screenwriter Amy Holden Jones. His father-in-law, Joe Brun, was an Oscar-nominated cinematographer who had emigrated from France in the early 20th century. He has stated that he no longer watches films directed by frequent collaborators Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, as he knows their general style will not change much. “Unless a director makes some huge sea change in what he does, that the work, the mechanical work, is going to be vaguely the same — or of the same school, anyway — but what changes is the intelligence and passion behind it in the script.” He also admits his preferred method is to watch movies at his home and that he rarely, if ever, goes to a theater anymore.
