'Arrival' Looked Amazing — Meet Bradford Young, the Guy Who Made It Happen

Arrival doesn’t look like any other science fiction film, and that’s in large part because of Bradford Young. The cinematographer was already widely admired in the film industry for his work on features like Selma and A Most Violent Year, but the scale and unique look of Arrival are getting him some new attention. As awards season approaches, Paramount has posted a video tribute that showcases Young’s dazzling work on the sci-fi sleeper hit (which was named one of Yahoo’s 10 best films of 2016). Watch it above.

Related: ‘Arrival’: An Astrophysicist Fact-Checks the Science and Gives It an ‘A’

Young, who’s from Kentucky, credits his talent for creating beautiful images to being raised in his family’s funeral home. “I didn’t know what a cinematographer was growing up, but I grew up around a lot of image-intense environments,” he said in an interview for the EFTI school of photography. Young was actually director Denis Villeneuve‘s second choice for Arrival, after 13-time Oscar nominee Roger Deakins (the DP for such classics as The Shawshank Redemption and The Big Lebowski), who was busy making Hail Caesar! for the Coen brothers. But it doesn’t appear that Young will be anybody’s second choice from now on: He’s already been booked as the cinematographer for Lucasfilm’s 2018 Han Solo film.

Bradford Young talks about ‘Arrival’: