2020 has been a very sad year for losing some living legends from the world of cinema and television crafts., and in the past 24 hours, it was announced that both Cinematographer Michael Chapman, ASC and Art Director Alan Tomkins have joined the long list of those taken from us this year.
Chapman earned his reputation by shooting films for Oscar-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese, most notably Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, the latter for which he received an Oscar nomination. He received a second Oscar nod for his cinematography on The Fugitive in 1993 and received the Lifetime Achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in 2004.
Chapman died of congestive heart failure at 84 with Chapman’s wife Amy Holden Jones, who is a screenwriter and film director herself, confirming his death with the eulogy, “Michael Chapman ASC, love of my entire adult life, has passed. Until we meet again.”
With a career that began in 1973 with the TV movie The Glass Menagerie and A Touch of Class, Tomkins famously art-directed The Empire Strikes Back, Batman Begins and Saving Private Ryan, and won a Prime-Time Emmy in 1995 for Gulliver’s Travels. He also received an Oscar nomination for the 1980 Star Wars sequel. Tomkins was 81.
