MOST Magazine Fashion APR'15 ISSUE NO.8 | Page 167

Actor:

By: Kate Brisbois

irst of all, if you are scratching your
head and saying, “Who the hell is Sean
Cronin?” then you are A.) not British and
B.) about to know who the hell he is. He is an actor
from the UK and if you have seen The Mummy and
The Mummy Returns, then you have seen him. You
can’t swing a dead cat in Britain without hitting one
of his films or TV shows, though. And he’s got a
role in the upcoming Mission Impossible 5, (which
is in post-production) so rest assured, my fellow
‘Muricans, you will be seeing more of him.
We’ll discuss his upcoming and just-finished
films a little later, but Mr. Cronin is apparently a
man of many, many talents. He is much more than
a murderous and brooding hunk in films. He also
directs, writes, and produces. “I love being both
in front [of] and behind the camera,” he says, “but
directing and being behind the camera is, in many
ways, a much higher calling. I studied cinematography at the New York Film School and learned
from one of the great cinematographers of all time,
Adrian Biddle. Adrian was the Director of Photography on many amazing films, including several of
the ‘Bonds’. Sadly he died in 2005, God rest his
soul. He taught me so much on the sets of James
Bond and The Mummy without even knowing it.
I just sat there quietly and watched him do his
magic. I truly believe that if you make every frame
a Rembrandt, then you are in with a chance of
making memorable cinema.”
There have been many strides in technology,
as it pertains to cinematography, and Mr. Cronin
has borne witness to them for the last 20-plus
years. He’s quite astute on the subject of cameras

and editing, as you’d expect of a man of his stature
and experience. “The most significant change in
technology, as far as cameras are concerned, was
the invention of the Red One 4k camera followed
by the Arri Alexa, which really changed movie making. Suddenly you could make digital look like film.
Nowadays nearly 75% of the films made are shot
on very high-resolution digital cameras. The beauty
of that is there was no ‘telecine’ required and you
can literally edit straightaway, which is made things
a lot cheaper and a lot more accessible.” While
the characters he plays are probably more likely
to ‘shoot to kill’, Sean says, “I usually like to edit
the stuff that I shoot because I ‘shoot to edit’ and I
understand when I’m directing exactly what I want
from a scene.” So now we know Sean Cronin is a
cinematography nerd, and maybe just a little bit of
control freak.
He just finished directing An Unfortunate
Woman and it is on the festival circuit. “I definitely
was ‘vested’ in it…in fact, it nearly killed me! I shot,
directed and edited it and had to hand deliver it to
the Cannes Film Festival office in Paris by 9:00 in
the morning after working on it all night!! I think
short films are very often the ‘stepping stone’
to convincing potential investors that you are
able and equipped to make films of a very high
standard. Hopefully that, and another film that I
recently directed, achieve just that. As far as accessibility, more often than not, once these short
films have completed the festival circuit they’re
often posted online on channels like YouTube,
Vimeo etc. so they can be viewed. But obviously
they don’t have chance of making any real money,>>>

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