His career has spanned visually arresting features including City of Lost Children; Seven; Alien: Resurrection, and he has now forayed into the commercial production realm through Serial Dreamer, based in LA. Khondji recently took the directorial reins on his first two commercial projects with spots for Microsoft and Lancôme that are set for world release later this year.

Khondji's visual dynamic of background blacks overlaid with saturated colors harmonize the Microsoft spot. Shot in London, the ad opens as darkness envelopes the city. Electricity lights the heart of the metropolis as a V/O questions where we would be without the revolution that turned the spark into illumination. A vivid palette of rich colors, varied camera angles and smooth pans document the cityscape. Light also bounces off various reflective surfaces, such as black vehicles and water, captured with sweeping motions by Khondji through the use of various focal length lenses.

"I wanted to emulate the photographer William Klein and his feel for wide angle lenses," explains Khondji, who favored 21mm and 27mm lenses during the Microsoft spot. "But I also enjoyed working with longer lenses to create some instances of shallow, almost watery, depth-of-field." Khondji utilized Kodak film stock that gave the commercial a harder edge due to its distinctive grain structure.

The Lancôlme ad has the opposite textural feel. The camera movement is extremely subtle as actress Uma Thurman glides majestically toward the camera. "I shot [the Lancôme ad] on Fuji film," stated Khondji. "It has a nice soft feel that is excellent for conveying the beauty of Uma for Lancôme." A huge storm and bad weather hampered production, however ensuing problems were fixed in post-production. All work on post was done in France, where Khondji worked closely with freelancer Eve Ramboz, out of Medialab and Didier Lefouest out of GLPIPA, both located in Paris. French production house Première Heure, based in Saint-Cloud, produced the spot.

Khondji's chiaroscuro approach to lighting hails back to his earlier days of photography. "I studied still photography in Paris before going to NYU Film School and the ICP," recalls Khondji, describing the origin of his visionary style. "I was a teenager studying natural light, playing with an old manual Nikon. I remember photographing statues lit by the window light in the Louvre and other museums around the world."

But is a director's/cinematographer's com-positional skills based more on instinct than training? "I think it is first an instinct from inside, what you have been exposed to from your culture," answers Khondji. "Yes, I think it is more of a natural thing, but it develops a lot with the training; the more you train with a camera, composition, watching the limits of the frame, the better you become."

As inspiration Khondji sites his own exposure to the impressive oeuvre of Jacques Tourneur, famous for his classic black and white film noir work alongside cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca. He is also a fan of older movies. "My visual school was science-fiction of the 1950s, Hammer (House of Horror, the British anthology that dripped the blood of demons, ghosts and other supernatural wonders). As I grew up, silent movies were also a huge influence on me because they relied heavily on the visual element."

The allure of Khondji's carved imagery relies primarily on a sensibility for dynamic camera movement, inventively lit scenes and a play of latitude on film, balanced later during development to acquire the correct visual dynamic. He feels it is often more productive to leave the image darker, especially when portraying the malevolence and decay of the urban landscape as conveyed so imaginatively in his work on Seven - considered by many as a milestone in cinematography. Khondji often uses a special lab process called ENR (a color positive developing process in which the bleaching bath is ignored and the print is given an extra black and white bath) to create an interesting feel on film.

Despite his natural inclination for cinema, Khondji looks forward to working on more commercials in the near future both as director and cinematographer; he sees commercials as opportunities to flex his creative muscles. "I have found them to be like a study, a laboratory of research for colors and lighting," Khondji concludes. He envisions his new role as a commercial director as a chance for experimentation. "I have only just started working as a commercial director as an experience. I am ready once in a while to do an edgy, freestyle commercial [that is] like a short film. I like it because I am experiencing something new; [however] I am always excited by what I do [as a cinematographer]. This is something that I will always love to do."