Certain filmmakers are noted for frequently working with the same actor: Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro for instance.
Less known are the behind-the-camera people that some directors favor.
Bernard Hermann wrote several operas and ballets, and was a guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic. But he is best known for his film scores, especially for Alfred Hitchcock.
They collabrated on “The Trouble With Harry,” “The Wrong Man,” “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” “Psycho,” “The Birds,” “Marnie” and the remake of “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” in which the composer has a cameo as a conductor.
Other famed director/composer partnerships are Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Prokofiev, Ennio Morricone and spaghetti western master Sergio Leone, and Federico Fellini and Nino Rota.
Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese were schoolmates at NYU. She later made a name for herself editing many of Scorsese’s films, even winning an Oscar for one, “Raging Bull.” She’s the widow of British director Michael Powell.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was a novelist and short-story writer. In the mid-’60s she turned to screenwriting, beginning an association with director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant that continues to this day. She grabbed a screenwriter Oscar for the 1986 hit “A Room With a View.”
Santo Loquasto – a set designer for stage, ballet and opera – has worked on Woody Allen movies since the 1970s.
Sven Nykvist gained notice starting in the 1960s as Swedish icon Ingmar Bergman’s regular cinematographer, although he has worked with other top directors, including Allen and Andrei Tarkovsky. He took home Oscars for two Bergman flicks, “Cries and Whispers” (1972) and “Fanny and Alexander” (1983).
Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson and Spike Lee were classmates at NYU, where they joined efforts on Lee’s 1980 master’s thesis flick, “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.” Since then, Dickerson has been behind the camera for many of Lee’s features. In 1992 he tried his hand at directing, with the crime drama “Juice.”