Guido Seeber

Guido Seeber (22 June 1879 in Chemnitz – 2 July 1940 in Berlin) was a German cinematographer and pioneer of early cinema.

His pioneering work as a cinematographer from this time on laid the foundations which other cameramen of German silent film such as Karl Freund, Fritz Arno Wagner and Carl Hoffmann were able to build.

In addition to his technical talents with the camera (he developed several special effects techniques), his use of perspective and skillful contrasts between light and dark are noteworthy.

His main collaborators were the directors Urban Gad, Lupu Pick, Georg Wilhelm Pabst und Paul Wegener and among his most important accomplishments are the shots of the Doppelgänger in Wegener's Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague) of 1913 and the moving camera shots in the films of Lupu Pick, particularly Sylvester (1923), which can be seen as anticipating the so-called "unchained camera" of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924).

However, he continued to be involved in the film industry, taking over the management of UFA's animation department in 1935 and publishing several books for amateur filmmakers.