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P. 5
behind the camera
MAVERICK
MAVERICK
AT LARGE
AT LARGE
An interview with Alan M Trow BSC
When writer-director John Godber’s Up ‘N’ Under decorated multiplex screens all around the country earlier this year, there was an understandable sense of satisfaction and no lit- tle relief for its hardworking cinematographer Alan Trow. Kidderminster-born Trow, 49, has made films all over the world - from Sarawak and South Africa to Harare and Hollywood - but until Godber’s sporty, saucy rugby comedy, with Samantha Janus, Gary Olsen and Neil Morrissey, a wide cinema release in his own native UK had so far eluded this much-travelled cameraman.
Yet ask video hungry action buffs and they could probably reel off chap- ter and verse about Trow’s explosive work on cult favourites like Monolith, Project Shadowchaser, Xtro II, Cyberjack and Night Siege featuring interna- tional stars such as Bill Paxton, Lou Gossett Jr, Jan-Michael Vincent, Michael Dudikoff, John Hurt and Joss Ackland.
“It has,” Trow admits, “been frustrating after all the hours of film I’ve done especially when one’s happy with the work and they have also been demand- ing technically. But you have to be philosophical too. The fact that they haven’t made it on to the big screen here is down to things I can’t control... like market forces.”
Those straight-to-vid titles along with other colourful credits such as Chasing The Deer, The Punk & The Princess, Slow Burn, Dragonworld and, in the pipeline, a Gothic nuclear thriller called Dominoes in Estonia, suggest that even by the usual gypsy standards of peripatetic technicians, Trow is a bit of a maverick.
It certainly all seems a very long way away from what, 30 years ago, was his particular film ‘school’ - the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Bedford. He went straight from his local grammar to the RAE as a trainee assistant pho- tographer after dazzling his interview board at the Ministry Of Aviation in
Photo top: Samantha Janus and cast of Up ‘N’ Under; left: Alan Trow.
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