John M. Stephens was a cinematographer and camera operator best known for his work on the films Grand Prix, E.T. the Extra -Terrestrial and Field of Dreams.
After serving in the U.S. Navy, where he learned to operate a camera in extreme conditions, Stephens worked as a photographer at a Sun Valley, Idaho, ski resort. He then got his start in entertainment in 1956 when the crew for the film Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Monroe, was filming in town and hired him as a replacement assistant camera person. From there he shot a promotional piece for the film Oklahoma! in 1955, and three years later he served as a second assistant camera person for another musical, South Pacific.
He was also a director of photography on the films Billy Jack, Blacula, Sorcerer and Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha. In addition, he served as second-unit director of photography on ¡Three Amigos!, Midnight Run, V.I. Warshawski, Major League II, The Peacemaker and Bandits.
One of Stephens’s most notable achievements was developing the first remotely controlled pan-and-tilt head camera, which was used for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 auto-racing drama Grand Prix, starring James Garner. The camera had the ability to capture close-ups of Garner moving along the track at 160 mph, as opposed to a car being shot moving much slower and then sped up in postproduction. His work won him the Technical Achievement Award from the Society of Operating Cameramen in 1994.
John M. Stephens was a cinematographer and camera operator best known for his work on the films Grand Prix, E.T. the Extra -Terrestrial and Field of Dreams.
After serving in the U.S. Navy, where he learned to operate a camera in extreme conditions, Stephens worked as a photographer at a Sun Valley, Idaho, ski resort. He then got his start in entertainment in 1956 when the crew for the film Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Monroe, was filming in town and hired him as a replacement assistant camera person. From there he shot a promotional piece for the film Oklahoma! in 1955, and three years later he served as a second assistant camera person for another musical, South Pacific.
He was also a director of photography on the films Billy Jack, Blacula, Sorcerer and Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha. In addition, he served as second-unit director of photography on ¡Three Amigos!, Midnight Run, V.I. Warshawski, Major League II, The Peacemaker and Bandits.
One of Stephens’s most notable achievements was developing the first remotely controlled pan-and-tilt head camera, which was used for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 auto-racing drama Grand Prix, starring James Garner. The camera had the ability to capture close-ups of Garner moving along the track at 160 mph, as opposed to a car being shot moving much slower and then sped up in postproduction. His work won him the Technical Achievement Award from the Society of Operating Cameramen in 1994.
Stephens also worked on two Steven Spielberg classics, E.T., for which he devised the memorable bike-chase scene, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which he worked on as an operating cameraman. He also shot aerial photography for Field of Dreams and filmed pickup shots for James Cameron’s Titanic.
For television, he worked as a director of photography on the classic Doug McClure-James Drury series The Virginian, as well as Alias Smith and Jones, Search and McCloud.
Stephens died June 18, 2015, in Orange County, California. He was 82.
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