Original Star Wars cinematographer dies

'Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, whose body of work included 'Star Wars', 'The Omen' and 'Dr Strangelove', died on Friday at the age of 99.

Taylor worked on a huge number of legendary titles, including Roman Polanski’s 'Repulsion,' Stanley Kubrick’s 'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' and Alfred Hitchcock’s 'Frenzy.'

He also served as the cinematographer on the Beatles’ film 'A Hard Day’s Night,' Richard Donner’s horror film 'The Omen' and 1979′s 'Dracula' starring Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier, in addition to working with George Lucas on the original 'Star Wars' film.

Lucas and Taylor didn’t always see eye to eye on the set of the production.

In a 2006 interview with ASC magazine he revealed his part in the initial look of the franchise:

“George avoided all meetings and contact with me from day one, so I read the extra-long script many times and made my own decisions as to how I would shoot the picture,” he said. “I took it upon myself to experiment with photographing the lightsabers and other things onstage before we moved on to our two weeks of location work in Tunisia.

“I am most happy to be remembered as the man who set the look for Star Wars. I wanted to give it a unique visual style that would distinguish it from other films in the science fiction genre. I wanted Star Wars to have clarity, because I don’t think space is out of focus.”

His career in the film industry started in 1929 when he was still a teenager and was taken on as a camera assistant at Gainsborough Studios in London.

He worked on the special effects for the 1955 film The Dam Busters and turned down a Bond film in order to work with Roman Polanski, according to his wife Dee.

During the second world war, when he spent six years with the RAF, he turned his skills to shooting night-time raids over Germany after a request from Winston Churchill.

Taylor was a founder member of the British Society of Cinematographers, which presented him with a lifetime achievement award in 2001.

He died on Friday with his family at his bedside at his home on the Isle of Wight.