Hiro Narita
Encyclopedia
Hiro Narita, A.S.C. a Japanese American cinematographer, was born June 26, 1941 in Seoul
, South Korea
.
In 1945, he and his family moved to Nara, Japan
, and later on to Tokyo
. Following his father's early death and his mother's remarriage to a Japanese American
, he immigrated in 1957 to Honolulu, Hawaii
where he graduated from Kaimuki High School. He went on to the San Francisco Art Institute
from which he received a BFA in Graphic Design
in 1964. He quickly landed a good position at a prominent local design firm, but the job lasted barely six months before he was drafted into the U.S. Army. For two years, he served as a designer and photographer at the Pentagon.
An avid movie fan since childhood, Narita decided to go into filmmaking rather than go back into graphic design upon his return to San Francisco in the mid-sixties. After an internship with John Korty
and Victor J. Kemper
on the Michael Ritchie
movie The Candidate
in 1971, he photographed the television movie
Farewell to Manzanar
in 1975, for which he received an Emmy Award
nomination.
In 1976 he was one of the camera operators on Martin Scorsese
's documentary The Last Waltz
about the last concert of The Band
. Later he worked on projects like Apocalypse Now
, More American Graffiti
, and the Neil Young
documentary Rust Never Sleeps
. For his cinematography on the movie Never Cry Wolf
he won the Boston Society of Film Critics Award
and the National Society of Film Critics Award
in 1983. In 1989 he photographed the Visual Effects
in the Steven Spielberg
film Always. In the following years he was the Director of Photography on successful films like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
, Dirty Pictures
, and The Rocketeer
.
Narita served as Director of Photography on the 1997 Live Action Short Film Academy Award
winning Visas and Virtue
. He also directed the 1997 hour-long documentary film
, Isamu Noguchi
: Stones and Paper.
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
, South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
.
In 1945, he and his family moved to Nara, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, and later on to Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
. Following his father's early death and his mother's remarriage to a Japanese American
Japanese American
are American people of Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity...
, he immigrated in 1957 to Honolulu, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
where he graduated from Kaimuki High School. He went on to the San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
from which he received a BFA in Graphic Design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
in 1964. He quickly landed a good position at a prominent local design firm, but the job lasted barely six months before he was drafted into the U.S. Army. For two years, he served as a designer and photographer at the Pentagon.
An avid movie fan since childhood, Narita decided to go into filmmaking rather than go back into graphic design upon his return to San Francisco in the mid-sixties. After an internship with John Korty
John Korty
John Korty is an American film director and animator, best known for the television film The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and the documentary Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?, as well as the theatrical animated feature Twice Upon a Time...
and Victor J. Kemper
Victor J. Kemper
Victor Jay Kemper, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer who has worked on over fifty films. He is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers , and was its president twice, from 1993 to 1996, and from 1999 to 2001...
on the Michael Ritchie
Michael Ritchie (film director)
Michael Brunswick Ritchie was an American film director.Ritchie was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the son of Patricia and Benbow Ferguson Ritchie...
movie The Candidate
The Candidate (1972 film)
The Candidate is a 1972 American film starring Robert Redford. Its themes include how the political machine corrupts. There are many parallels between the then-recent 1970 California Senate election between John V. Tunney and George Murphy; however, Redford's character Bill McKay is a political...
in 1971, he photographed the television movie
Television movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
Farewell to Manzanar
Farewell to Manzanar
Farewell to Manzanar is a memoir published in 1973 by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston. It was adapted in the form of a television movie in 1976 starring Yuki Shimoda, Nobu McCarthy, Pat Morita, and Mako....
in 1975, for which he received an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
nomination.
In 1976 he was one of the camera operators on Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
's documentary The Last Waltz
The Last Waltz
The Last Waltz was a concert by the rock group The Band, held on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco...
about the last concert of The Band
The Band
The Band was an acclaimed and influential roots rock group. The original group consisted of Rick Danko , Garth Hudson , Richard Manuel , and Robbie Robertson , and Levon Helm...
. Later he worked on projects like Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
, More American Graffiti
More American Graffiti
More American Graffiti is the 1979 sequel film to George Lucas's hit film American Graffiti. Whereas the first film followed a group of friends during the summer evening before they set off for college, this film shows us where the characters from the first film end up a few years later.Most of the...
, and the Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
documentary Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1979. The bulk of the album was recorded live at San Francisco's Cow Palace, with overdubs added. Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening...
. For his cinematography on the movie Never Cry Wolf
Never Cry Wolf (film)
Never Cry Wolf is a 1983 American drama film directed by Carroll Ballard. The film is an adaption of Farley Mowat's 1963 autobiography of the same name and stars Charles Martin Smith as a government biologist sent into the wilderness to study the caribou population, whose decline is believed to be...
he won the Boston Society of Film Critics Award
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards 1983
----Best Film: The Night ofthe Shooting Stars The 4th Boston Society of Film Critics Awards honored the best filmmaking of 1983. The awards were given on 29 January 1984.-Winners:*Best Film:...
and the National Society of Film Critics Award
National Society of Film Critics
The National Society of Film Critics is an American film critic organization. As of December 2007 the NSFC had approximately 60 members who wrote for a variety of weekly and daily newspapers.-History:...
in 1983. In 1989 he photographed the Visual Effects
Visual effects
Visual effects are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects involve the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or...
in the Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
film Always. In the following years he was the Director of Photography on successful films like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a 1989 comedy film. The directorial debut of Joe Johnston and released through Walt Disney Pictures and Silver Screen Partners III, the film tells the story of an inventor who accidentally shrinks his and his neighbor's kids to 1/4 of an inch with his electromagnetic...
, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is the sixth feature film in the Star Trek science fiction franchise and is the last of the Star Trek films to include the entire main cast of the 1960s Star Trek television series. Released in 1991 by Paramount Pictures, it was directed by Nicholas Meyer and...
, Dirty Pictures
Dirty Pictures (television movie)
Dirty Pictures is a 2000 American docudrama directed by Frank Pierson. The teleplay by Ilene Chaiken focuses on the 1990 trial of Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center director Dennis Barrie, who was accused of promoting pornography by presenting an exhibit of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe that...
, and The Rocketeer
The Rocketeer (film)
The Rocketeer is a 1991 period superhero adventure film produced by Walt Disney Pictures and based on the character of the same name created by comic book writer/artist Dave Stevens. Directed by Joe Johnston, the film stars Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin, Timothy Dalton, Paul Sorvino...
.
Narita served as Director of Photography on the 1997 Live Action Short Film Academy Award
Academy Award for Live Action Short Film
This name for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film was introduced in 1974. For the three preceding years it was known as "Short Subjects, Live Action Films." The term "Short Subjects, Live Action Subjects" was used from 1957 until 1970. From 1936 until 1956 there were two separate...
winning Visas and Virtue
Visas and Virtue
Visas and Virtue is a 1997 narrative short film inspired by the true story of Holocaust rescuer Chiune "Sempo" Sugihara, who is known as "The Japanese Schindler"...
. He also directed the 1997 hour-long documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, Isamu Noguchi
Isamu Noguchi
was a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces,...
: Stones and Paper.