November 14, 2016—We are very sad to report that Benjamin (Ben) Palmer Brunkhardt, 41, of Los Angeles, CA, died August 30, 2016, at KU Hospital after a brief illness. Ben Brunkhardt, Principal of CineXtract, LLC, oversaw the marketing/licensing of his patented “Method for Recomposing Large Format Media,” a post-production process also known as Large Format Negative Repurposing (LFNR). His 15/70 short-film, The Persistence of Dreams, demonstrated the first use of CineXtract’s proprietary LFNR process when he debuted his film at the 2005 Large Format Cinema Association (LFCA) conference in Los Angeles. Ben was a charter member of the GSCA and became a member of the LFCA in 2002. He also participated on GSCA’s Technical Committee and several sub-committees.

Ben also was the 2005 recipient of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) Student Paper Award “LFNR – Large Format Negative Repurposing” (Published in the SMPTE Journal May/June 2006) as well as awarded the Lou Wolf Memorial Scholarship Award for his efforts in pioneering the LFNR Process.

Originally from Kansas City, Ben moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California’s (USC) School of Cinema/Television where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in film production. During his time at USC, Ben also partnered with Sony’s High Definition Division in 1996 as a cinematographer to help test their first 35mm “Film-Outs” from their digital 1” HD capture format. Ben then traveled with Sony to the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, where Sony employed Ben to help showcase their new HD-to-film technology as well as help introduce their first HDCAM camcorder to the industry.

He later received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Cinematography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he studied under the likes of Allen Daviau, ASC; Dean Cundey, ASC; Conrad Hall, ASC; Owen Roizman, ASC; and Roger Deakins, ASC. During his graduate studies, Ben also attended the Kodak sponsored 2003 Budapest Cinematography Masterclass in Hungary, mentored by Laszlo Kovacs, ASC and Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC. 

Click here for further information about Ben and the Ben Brunkhardt Memorial.