Roger Pratt death: Oscar-nominated Harry Potter and Batman cinematographer dies aged 77

British cinematographer Roger Pratt, best known for his work on Tim Burton‘s Batman and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, has died. He was 77.

The British Society of Cinematographers said in a statement that he died in December 2024 without providing an exact date or cause.

A report from when he was given the society’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023 stated that Pratt had been diagnosed with young onset familial Alzheimer’s disease in 2010.

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Pratt was born in 1947 in Leicester, and developed a love of cinema from his vicar father’s screenings of ‘Fact and Faith’ Christian films produced by the Moody Institute of Science in Los Angeles.

“I was mesmerised by the annual showing of religious films in the church, at times like Christmas and especially Lent. A box full of rolls of film, projectors, screens, loudspeakers. The lights go out, the whirring of mechanics,” Pratt wrote, “then real people talking, moving, laughing, and dying (I mention dying because they were about Christ and his crucifixion).”

Pratt attended the prestigious London Film School, where he decided he did not want to direct, and received his first credit as a camera assistant for the 1971 film Bleak Moments, directed by Mike Leigh.

He met frequent collaborator Terry Gilliam on the set of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1975 when Pratt was working as a clapper loader.

On their meeting, Gillam said: “We were filming the Bridge of Death sequence and needed a dramatic shot looking up at the bridge with the mountains in the distance. I stuck the camera on the edge of the cliff, but the lens wasn’t wide enough. We were a long way from the road, the light was going. It was terrible.

“This guy said, ‘Just give me a moment’, and in a few minutes, while we were still faffing around, he had run all the way down the mountain, forded the river, run up the other side, into the camera truck, grabbed the right lens and here it was. We stuck it on the camera and got the shot. That was the moment I fell in love with Roger.”

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Pratt also worked with Lord Richard Attenborough, shooting Shadowlands (1993), In Love and War (1996), Grey Owl (1999), and Closing the Ring (2007).

He served as cinematographer for two Harry Potter films—The Chamber of Secrets (2002), directed by Chris Columbus, and The Goblet of Fire (2005), directed by Mike Newell.

In all, Pratt served as director of photography for over 35 films, including Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), Troy (2004), and The Karate Kid (2010).

He earned two Bafta nominations, in 2000 for Chocolat and in 1999 for The End of the Affair. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for the latter.

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“People do have the most flowery language to talk about cinematography, the art of it,” Pratt said in an interview with TheNew Yorker in 2003.

“For me, there are many problems on a film that have nothing to do with theories of colour or highfalutin aesthetics. Because my job is concerned with big lumps of lights, metal cameras and laboratories, it makes me very pragmatic – it’s the opposite of artistic.

“I look at myself as a technician. Photography relies on science. Photographs are just chemicals in labs – light on paper – images in silver halide – but they turn into live things.”

Kenneth Branagh, who directed Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1994 said of Pratt:  “One of the few authenticated 100 per cent top-to-toe geniuses in his field I have met. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I just wanted to tell you how wonderful your work is in End of the Affair. The lighting is so textured and emotional, and honestly, I have never looked better in my life,”said Julianne Moore, who starred in The End of the Affair.