When it comes to stop-motion animation, there are few who have as involved a history as Tristan Oliver. His list of work as a cinematographer and director of photography spans the genre's most successful endeavors: "Wallace and Gromit," "Chicken Run," "Fantastic Mr. Fox," "ParaNorman" and, most recently, "Isle of Dogs," the Wes Anderson-directed, Japan-inspired boy-finds-dog adventure.
There was little in Oliver's youth that would suggest a break into the world of film, and his first true experience in that world did not come until the age of 20, when he successfully auditioned for the part of Fowler in the 1984 film adaptation of "Another Country" starring Rupert Everett and Colin Firth. Oliver then spent "a peculiarly schizophrenic" two or three years acting and trying to get into the camera department of various productions.
"The main difficulty at the time was that the industry was very much dominated by the union," says Oliver. "That made it very hard to break into the industry unless you had family there." One of the only other ways to get a union ticket was to go to an accredited film school, so, at 24, Oliver returned to Bristol University to complete a postgraduate degree in film.
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