“Otto Nemenz, the Austrian cinematographer and camera operator whose namesake company designed and supplied cutting-edge cameras and lenses to film and television productions for more than four decades, has died. He was 83. Nemenz died Saturday at his Kaanapali home on the Hawaiian island of Maui, a spokesperson for Otto Nemenz International told The Hollywood”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Nemenz died Saturday at his Kaanapali home on the Hawaiian island of Maui, a spokesperson for Otto Nemenz International told The Hollywood Reporter.
Nemenz founded his company in 1979 in a small storefront off Sunset Boulevard, and by 1982, he had built a new Hollywood headquarters on Vine Street. In 2020, he celebrated the grand opening of a 38,000-square-foot facility in Culver City. (The company also has an office in Atlanta.)
In 1991, Otto Nemenz International employees Dick Cavdek and Steve Hamerski received an Academy Award for technical achievement for the design and development of the Canon/Nemenz Zoom Lens, originally developed for five-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Haskell Wexler.
For Roger Deakins, Nemenz came up with a lens system known as “The Deakinizer” when the cinematographer wanted pictures with a sharp foreground and middle ground and very soft edges.
“What’s special about my company is that I went through all the stages of being an assistant cameraman, being an operator, being a director of photography,” he said in 2021, “so I pretty much know what’s going on behind the scenes.”
Born in Judenburg, Austria, on Nov. 12, 1941, Nemenz was the son of an Austrian father and a Greek mother. He spent his youth in Greece, Turkey and Austria, where he attended technical school and worked briefly for Austrian public broadcaster ORF before coming to the US in 1964. (He spoke fluent Turkish, German and English.)
Nemenz landed a job as a lens technician at Panavision, then built specialized lenses and camera rigs for the Formula 1 race cars employed for John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (1966). He would become the director’s trusted technician.
He said six or seven cameras were smashed during the making of James Cameron’s action film Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), shot by DP Adam Greenberg. And for the Roger Avary-directed Killing Zoe (1994), shot by Tom Richmond, he developed “Swing and Tilt” lenses to create “perspective distortion.”
Nemenz also noted that it only took his company “three months or so” to be prepared for the industry transition from analog to digital.
A champion of innovation and craftsmanship, Nemenz was an associate member of the American Society of Cinematography and a member of IATSE Local 600 and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
He received the ASC Award of Distinction in 2015 and the ASC Legacy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023 and last year was presented with Cine Gear Expo’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
“We will deeply miss Otto’s warmth, generosity and unwavering commitment to the craft that has inspired generations of filmmakers,” Cine Gear Expo said. “His legacy lives on in every frame captured with the tools and technologies he helped perfect.”