Page 11 - Fujifilm Exposure_42 Cheri_ok

SHOCKANDAWESOME
UNDER FIRE WITH BARRY ACKROYD BSC
INTERVIEW
n between recreating 1999’s infa- Imous five days of WTO riots
(Battle In Seattle) and, currently, re-uniting in Manchester with Ken Loach for their 13th film together
(Looking For Eric), Barry Ackroyd BSC was bogged down in Baghdad. Or, to be strictly accurate, he’s
been shooting a pair of major new feature films – The Hurt Locker and Green Zone – both set squarely dur- ing the Iraq War.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker, deals with an elite US Army Explosive Ordnance Dis- posal team as they try to navigate – and survive - the streets faced by the constant threat of death from in- coming bombs and sharp-shooting snipers. The cast includes Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty with cameos by Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce.
“We shot it in Jordan in the mid- dle of summer,” Ackroyd recalls. “I got heat stroke; in fact everybody got sick. We shot, even the night scenes, with four cameras on Super 16 and it was almost entirely hand-held.
“There’s an almost classic struc- ture to the film, but we tried to make it look very dynamic and real. It was a phenomenal crew and we were so lucky to have some great operators. We’ve also shot masses of coverage – a 100:1 ratio. Fujifilm should be very pleased!”
By the time Bigelow needed to shoot a section of the film in British Columbia, Ackroyd was no longer available as he was already under fire in Green Zone, Paul Greengrass’s new film very loosely based on Washington Post writer Rajiv Chan- drasekeran’s remarkable Imperial Life In The Emerald City about America’s attempt to bring US-type democracy to Iraq after the invasion of 2003.
Shot in Spain, Morocco and even bits of London – all doubling for Baghdad and its environs – Green Zone stars Matt Damon, Greg Kinn- ear, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs, Bren- dan Gleeson and Khalid Abdalla.
Says Ackroyd: “Paul pushed me to shoot things in ways beyond sense, really. We’ve done whole scenes just lit with flashlights and torches. There were night scenes where I underexposed by three stops. The brief is to portray this city under curfew, bombed to pieces without light, a kind of vision of hell. How do you portray that? Luckily there wasn’t a script as such so we were al- most making it up as we went along.
“The great thing with Paul [for whom Ackroyd shot United 93] is this idea you should always go fur- ther, deeper, more sinister. ‘Show me the colour of death’, he’d say. It’s great to be able to work with direc- tors who give you that freedom. They force you to be more creative.”
As he prepares to resume shoot- ing on Green Zone in July, Ackroyd has been enjoying a considerable change of scene and style on Loach’s latest, based on an idea brought to the filmmakers by Manchester United legend, Eric Cantona.
It’s about a postman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and in between the story of football fans, Man U and the breakaway FC United, and the theme of corporate takeover, there also was a healthy dose, says Ackroyd, “of magic realism.”
“With Ken, you know it’s going to be a one camera shoot, his simple, classic style and an opportunity to take all the things you know of light- ing and realism and apply them to this story set in Manchester about a guy’s who’s cracking up, basically.” Enter Cantona? QUENTIN FALK
The Hurt Locker was originated on 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8673 and ETERNA 250D 8663; Green Zone was originated on 35mm Fujicolor Reala 500D 8592, ETERNA 500T 8573, ETERNA 250D 8563 and ETERNA Vivid 160T 8543; Looking For Eric was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8573 and ETERNA 250D 8563
“OPEN THE
HURT LOCKER AND LEARN HOW
ROUGH MEN COME HUNTING FOR SOULS.” POET BRIAN TURNER
Photos: main and below left: scenes from The Hurt Locker (photos by Jonathan Olley); above: Barry Ackroyd BSC with Ken Loach
on the set of Looking For Eric;
inset left: Paul Greengrass with Matt Damon
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