![A Cinematographer Career: Conversation with Hiro Narita, ASC]()
Hiro Narita is a cinematographer, member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences. He was born on June 26 1941, in Seoul (South Korea) to Japanese parents. In 1945, he and his family moved to Nara, Japan, and later to Tokyo. Following his father's early death and his mother's remarriage to a Japanese American, the family emigrated in 1957 to Honolulu, Hawaii, where he graduated from Kaimuki High School. He went on to the San Francisco Art Institute where he received a BFA in Graphic Design in 1964. He soon 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. When he was discharged from the U.S. Army, John Korty, director of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and the documentary Who Are the De Bolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? (Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature) took him under his wing. With Korty, for more than three years, he collaborated as an assistant cameraman, gaffer, projectionist, film-poster designer, etc. After his experience as additional camera operator on Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970), John Korty gave him his first substantial film, a TV movie called Farewell to Manzanar (1976) for which he received an Emmy Award nomination. Then Narita worked in movies: The Last Waltz, More American Graffiti, Never Cry Wolf (for this movie he won the Boston Society of Film Critics Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award), Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Always, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Dirty Pictures, The Rocketeer, Hocus Pocus, The Time Machine, The Arrival.
