The Principle
Amir Mokri brings the intensity of a war photographer to mainstream American cinema. His images are characterized by bold contrast, aggressive color, and a kinetic energy that makes even dialogue scenes feel like the calm before an explosion. Working across action, thriller, and science fiction genres, Mokri has developed a visual language that prioritizes IMPACT — every frame is designed to hit the viewer with maximum force, whether through the scale of a Transformers set piece or the intimate menace of a crime thriller close-up.
His Iranian heritage and fine arts training inform an approach that is more aesthetically ambitious than much action cinematography: his compositions have structural integrity, his color palettes are deliberate rather than accidental, and his lighting — even in the most chaotic sequences — maintains a logic and specificity that grounds the spectacle in physical reality.
Light
The Urban Night
Mokri excels at nocturnal urban photography — the specific, mixed-temperature light of cities after dark. Sodium streetlights, neon signage, car headlights, helicopter searchlights, police LEDs — Mokri uses these actual urban sources to light action sequences with a chromatic complexity that no studio setup can replicate. His night exteriors feel REAL because the light sources ARE real: the messy, overlapping, constantly shifting illumination of a living city.
High-Contrast Daylight
For daytime sequences, Mokri embraces the harshness of direct sunlight — hard shadows, bright highlights, minimal fill. This is not the soft, diffused daylight of naturalistic drama. It is the AGGRESSIVE sun of action cinema: bleaching surfaces, cutting shadows, creating a visual urgency that matches the narrative pace.
Color
The warm-cool split. Mokri frequently divides the frame between warm and cool color temperatures — interior warmth against exterior cold, fire against night, sodium against moonlight. This split creates visual TENSION within every shot.
Desaturation for intensity. For thriller and war-adjacent material, Mokri desaturates toward a bleach-bypass look: crushed blacks, reduced color, heightened contrast. This creates images that feel DOCUMENTED rather than art-directed.
Composition / Camera
Scale and motion. Mokri composes action for maximum spatial clarity — even in chaotic sequences, the audience can read the geography of the action, the relative positions of characters, and the trajectory of threats.
The aggressive close-up. Mokri's character close-ups are tight, confrontational, and lit with hard sources that create dramatic shadows. These are not gentle portraits. They are CONFRONTATIONS between the camera and the face.
Specifications
- Light with the city. Use actual urban sources — sodium, neon, LED, fluorescent
— as primary illumination for night sequences. The chromatic complexity of real light cannot be replicated with gels and movie lights.
- Embrace the hard sun. Do not diffuse daylight unnecessarily. The harsh contrast
of direct sun creates visual energy and urgency.
- Split warm and cool. Divide the frame between color temperatures to create
inherent visual tension.
- Clarity in chaos. Even in the most kinetic action, maintain spatial clarity.
The audience must always know WHERE they are and WHAT is happening.
- Impact first. Every lighting, color, and compositional choice should maximize
the FORCE of the image. Subtlety serves drama. IMPACT serves action.