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Known for:	Superman II, A Hard Day's Night, Superman III
Birthday:	19 January 1932, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

He entered a university at 15 years old, and after receiving a degree in clinical psychology, he graduated at 19 years old. Started his creative career as TV director at CBS' WCAU-TV station, Philadelphia After the death of Roy Kinnear on the shooting of The Return of the Musketeers, he decided to quit directing. Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 581-586. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988. Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966 While working on the parts of Superman that would be incorporated in the sequel Superman II, cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth died unexpectedly on October 28, 1978. When Lester took over the directorial reins from Richard Donner, he decided to give the sequel a comic-book look rather than the stately, mythic look that Donner and Unsworth had crafted for the first movie, and intended for the sequel. He scrapped much of Unsworth's footage and hired British cameraman Robert Paynter, who had worked with potboiler director Michael Winner perfecting a style that complimented Winner's propensity for comic book-style violence. Lester was not sympathetic to the epic look that Donner had given the original "Superman" (1978), saying that he did not want to do "the David Lean thing". Lester decided on creating a comic book-style that would evoke Superman's roots in comic books. Lester deliberately wanted to break the stylistic "American epic" mold created by Donner and, with Paynter, set out to recreate the look and feel of a comic book. For this reason, Lester did not use his own long-time collaborator, lighting cameraman David Watkin, as Watkin's photographic style was too classical, and thus not adaptable to a comic book aesthetic. Working with Lester, Paynter and his camera operator Freddie Cooper developed a different type of framing from the original, but one that was ideal for their concept of a comic book film: They replaced Unsworth's gliding camera with horizontal panning and static framing to evoke comic books and comic strips, with their static frames that are crammed with people and objects. Similarly, the composition of shots the trio developed for "Superman II" had objects and people crammed into the frame. To further emphasize comic book composition, the action was photographed from one angle, to give the film a desired flatness. (Harkening back to the technique of the early sound era, Lester's films had always been shot with three cameras simultaneously filming the action all at one time, with two cameras for close-ups and one for the long-shot (the establishing shot).

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