Frequent award collector Paul Sarossy and Steve Danyluk led the pack of winners as the Canadian Society of Cinematographers celebrated the year’s best work at its annual awards dinner, April 9 in Toronto.

Sarossy took his seventh trophy in the theatrical feature category for Head in the Clouds, the Canada/U.K. copro from Brit director John Duigan. The Toronto-based Sarossy leant a golden glow to the period drama that is set in Paris and Spain before and during the Second World War, and was shot largely in Montreal. Last year, Sarossy received the Kodak New Century Award for outstanding contribution to the art of cinematography.

Sarossy is currently filming director Vincent Perez’s horror feature The Secret in Montreal, so his father picked up the latest award on his behalf, just as he did at the Genies a few weeks earlier.

‘It’s always a lovely surprise to get such an award, particularly when competing against such great fellow cinematographers,’ Sarossy told Playback upon a brief return to Toronto. He beat out Bernard Couture for Le Dernier tunnel and Rene Ohashi for New Line Cinema’s Highwaymen.

‘But you have to be careful not to place too much emphasis on the earning of awards, at the risk of becoming complacent,’ the DOP adds.

In the TV drama category, Toronto’s Danyluk took home the statue for the four-hour fantasy miniseries Legend of Earthsea from Hallmark Productions.

‘This particular job had a lot of aspects to it,’ says Danyluk. ‘It needed a lot of candle lighting, so the art department had to make thousands of double-wick candles to be able to expose with it.’

Armed with Kodak Vision2 500 film stock, Danyluk was able to achieve the desired look with the special candles alone. ‘[The Kodak stock] just has such a good range in the low end,’ he notes.

While a previous CSC Award winner for best commercial, Danyluk says he is pleased to now have a TV drama prize under his belt.

‘It’s from people who really understand what you do day in and day out. I felt very fortunate sitting in that room with great cinematographers like Richard Leiterman and Rene Ohashi,’ he says.

Other award winners included Michael Jorgensen, in the best documentary category, for Lost Nuke, about a missing U.S. nuclear weapon that was dropped along Canada’s West Coast in the early 1950s.

Vancouver DOP Glen Winter won in the TV series category for the ‘Memoria’ episode of Smallville, which aired on The WB.

In the docudrama category (a documentary that includes dramatic reenactments), veteran Montreal lenser Marc Gadoury walked away with the award for Pepita Ferrari’s The Unsexing of Emma Edmonds, about a 19th century Canadian girl who disguised herself as a man and fought in the American Civil War.

Special-award winners included CSC executive director Susan Saranchuk, who accepted the Fuji Award for outstanding service to the organization. Kodak’s New Century Award went to Picton, ON-based DOP Harry Makin for his contribution to the art of cinematography. Makin’s career in TV and features dates back to the 1960s.

Stan Ford, VP sales and post-production at Deluxe Toronto, was the winner of the Bill Hilson Award for outstanding service contributing to the development of the motion picture industry in Canada.

-www.csc.ca