Inducted into ACS Hall of Fame – 1998
Russell Boyd born in Victoria in 1944, became keenly interested in photography as a young man, so upon leaving school, he sought and managed to get a job at Cinesound Newsreel in Melbourne, where he got great experience shooting news items, but after a few years moved to Channel 7 to shoot television news. He then joined Supreme Studios in Sydney to work on documentaries and television commercials.
From there, Russell became one of the trailblazers of the Australian filmmaking renaissance, his credits include the seminal films Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli (for director Peter Weir), as well as Between Wars (for director Mike Thornhill), The Man From Hong Kong (director Brian Trenchard Smith), Summer of Secrets (director Jim Sharman) and Break of Day (director Ken Hannam). Bruce Beresford’s Oscar nominated Tender Mercies, Gillian Armstrong’s Mrs Soffel and High Tide, the record breaking Crocodile Dundee I and II , along with the US features Dr Doolittle (director Betty Thomas); Tin Cup and White Men Can’t Jump (director Ron Shelton), Ghost Rider (director Mark Steven Johnson).
Highlights of Russell’s career include winning the Oscar for Cinematography at the 2004 Academy Awards for the Peter Weir feature Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, two ACS Milli Awards and named Australian Cinematographer of the Year for Gallipoli (1981) and Between Wars (1974), and won the BAFTA Award for Picnic at Hanging Rock in 1975.
As of 2010, Russell has been Director of Photography on sixty plus feature film and television productions. In total Russell has won twelve major awards, including his Oscar, and been nominated on twelve other occasions for his outstanding cinematography. Recognised as one of Australia’s most outstanding cinematographers, Russell has been a member of the ACS since 1975, and was inducted into the ACS Hall of Fame in 1998.
In 2004 he also became a member of the American Society of Cinematographers.
Russell states:
‘Film has been my life. I guess it’s been a passion that has just consumed me, really. It’s like cinematography has been my life, and I’ll be eternally thankful for that’.
