The Oscars Official Website has been updated with a new interview with Bruno Delbonnel, who was the cinematographer for Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince. The film has been nominated for an Academy Award in that category. The ceremony will air next Monday, March 7th, from Los Angeles at 8:00pm EST on ABC.

What was your most memorable moment in this movie?
I guess that’s when I saw the dailies of this cave scene and when I saw the light disappearing on Dumbledore’s face just in themiddle of one of his lines. For me, it suddenly added some tension and drama only with the us of light in a simple way. But there was some other moment such as working with Stuart Craig, the fantastic production designer. We shared a lot of ideas and his enthusiasm was amazing. And walking on his sets is just something I never experienced before at such a level. There was many memorable moments…..

Watching the movie now, what are your thoughts about it?
That’s a tricky questions. I’m happy I’ve done it, I think it looks good but now I’m somewhere else. I want to try something else. That’s probably why I said no to the last Harry Potter when I was asked to do it. I think I was scared of repeating myself. Needed to move on.

What was the biggest challenge you faced on the movie for which you were nominated?
First of all I guess it was to be as good as the previous cinematographers who worked on HP: John Seale, Roger Pratt, Michael Seresin, Slaqomir Idziak. To be as good but different.
Some of the sets are there since the very first Potter. How could I light them in a different way? This question brought another one based on the series itself. It was Potter number six, the story was less about the big fights than the relationships between the characters. Nevertheless the drama is still there and I thought it would be interesting to have those very intimate stories amidst this very dark mood. As if the school was a dark character. That’s when I suggested to go for this (again) dark moody variations of grays. Fortunately David Yates, and the producers liked the idea.
Then in terms of technical challenge, I had this idea for the scene on the crystal island in the cave, to add this moving light. I wanted to have some kind of “dynamism” with the light. The scene is quite static in front of the crystal bowl on an island which was not that big. I thought it could be interesting and more dramatic if the light was floating, circling above the characters faces; sometimes lighting them, sometimes hiding them in a very random and unpredictable way.
For that I put a single 6kw softbox on a remora head at the end of a 50 foot Technocrane that I was operating. It was a challenging idea because it was my only light and there was no way back; I mean thats what was dark was really dark. But it was a really interesting challenge (maybe I’m the only one to think so…)

Thanks Portus!