Stephen H. Burum Video | Interviews

Stephen Henry Burum, A.S.C. (born November 25, 1939) is an American cinematographer. Burum was born in 1939 in Dinuba, California, a small Central Valley town near Visalia. He graduated from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in the 1960s, and became an instructor at the same school. He began his professional filmmaking career working on the Walt Disney anthology television series, and then was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to the Army Pictorial Center, for whom he shot army training films. Returning to California after his service was complete, he worked on... MORE

Stephen Henry Burum, A.S.C. (born November 25, 1939) is an American cinematographer. Burum was born in 1939 in Dinuba, California, a small Central Valley town near Visalia. He graduated from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in the 1960s, and became an instructor at the same school. He began his professional filmmaking career working on the Walt Disney anthology television series, and then was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to the Army Pictorial Center, for whom he shot army training films. Returning to California after his service was complete, he worked on commercials, television shows, and low-budget films; he won a technical Emmy for his special-effects work on the popular public television astronomy series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. He began working on major feature films for Francis Ford Coppola in 1976, shooting the second unit of Apocalypse Now and then The Black Stallion. His first credit as the cinematographer of a major motion picture was for The Escape Artist (1982). In 2007, Burum returned to UCLA as the Kodak Cinematographer in Residence. Burum was nominated for the American Society of Cinematographers Award for Outstanding Achievement in LESS