Biography
Ben grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, until the age of 18 when he moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California's School of Cinema/Television where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in film production. Aside from directing and photographing numerous short films at USC, Ben teamed up with Sony's High Definition Division in 1996 to be their cinematographer on a short high definition project in which Sony used their new technology to transfer the final digital project to 35mm film. Ben then traveled with Sony to the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 where Sony showcased their new HD-to-film technology and introduced their first HDCAM camcorder to the industry.
Ben then worked as a freelance cinematographer for two years before he enrolled in the University of California, Los Angeles to earn a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Cinematography. During the six-year Masters program, Ben studied with Allen Daviau, ASC, Dean Cundey, ASC, Conrad Hall, ASC, Owen Roizman, ASC, and Roger Deakins, ASC, as well as photographed numerous short films, music videos and one feature film. Ben has also studied with László Kovács, ASC and Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC at the Kodak sponsored 2003 Budapest Cinematography Masterclass in Hungary.
Most recently, Ben has developed a new, patent-pending, post-production process for large format motion picture formats, in which he dubs Large Format Negative Repurposing (LFNR). He also produced and photographed the first 15/70 (IMAX) film, The Persistence of Dreams, utilizing the new LFNR process. He debuted the film, as well as his new process at the 2005 Large Format Cinema Association (LFCA) conference in Los Angeles in April of 2005. Currently, Ben is working with other large format producers who hope to incorporate his LFNR process into their future projects, as well as working as a full-time cinematographer in Los Angeles.
