'Yuma' DP: Focus is more character than cowboy

August 30, 2007 Director of photography Phedon Papamichael doesn't view his latest work, Lionsgate's remake of "3:10 to Yuma," as a classic Western. The cinematographer did watch classic Westerns in preparation for the production, and he says that his approach is most closely connected to "Once Upon a Time in the West" with its look and use of extreme close-ups on faces with extreme wide shots to play the action. Yet in his third collaboration with James Mangold (Papamichael previously lensed the helmer's "Walk the Line" and "Identity"), the director of photography says that the pair stuck with a visual language that was more about storytelling than genre.

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