Page 11 - Fujifilm Exposure_33 Magnificent 7_ok

The Cops, won Best Drama series at the BAFTAs.
So Waters gets to enjoy the best of both worlds, joining each director on projects that are inevitably contrast- ing. And yet Magnificent 7, which was originated on several different stocks including 16mm F-250T and F-250D, is something different again for Waters and Glenaan. It tells an uplifting tale of a mother (Helena Bonham Carter) who has seven children, four of whom are boys with varying forms of autism.
“There was a BBC 2 documentary about this family called My Family And Autism,” he explains, “but in terms of our story we felt it should have a very different feel. Even though it’s a real story and people need to believe in the family itself, there’s a fairytale quality to it that was quite important.”
Each of the four autistic sons per- ceive the world in differing ways and to differing degrees. The decision was made that much of this should be con- veyed through the camera.
“A few sequences were actually written to be inside the heads of the kids,” adds Waters, “which meant see- ing the world how they saw it. There were endless discussions about how we could do this; in the end we did it by under-cranking the camera, running the film through at different speeds, and using different shutter angles just to give a slightly different quality.
“We’d be right in with the kids, close up on their face, and do really tight close ups of what they were look- ing at. The way the camera panned, and how we shot it in terms of camera speed and shutter angles was trying to convey their world. We tried to do slightly different techniques for each character as well. Even though we can never know quite how they see things, it was just to convey the fact that they don’t see the world as we do. It’s great to be given a challenge like that; if you’re a cameraman this is what you want to do.”
As the story unfolds from one Christmas to the next, the decision was also made to portray the chang- ing year as vividly as possible, so dif- ferent stocks were used for each passing season.
“We used Fuji stocks for the spring and summer scenes,” he continues, “because I thought they would bring out the warm, saturated colours. There’s a sports day event where we had a lovely green field, and I thought it would really bring it out even though the weather wasn’t kind to us that day. But we had a nice saturated colour that we could further enhance in the grade.”
Shot at Webb Studios in Bolton, the story is certain to be a festive tear- jerker in the BBC Two December schedule. But in spite of the chal- lenges he faced – not the least of which was working with seven young actors who, though not autistic, did possess varying degrees of experience – Mark Waters’ own emotions were moved more by the drama unfolding within the story than any practical problems that arose from it.
In less that two decades, he has accumulated an impressive range of credits, learnt a lot about a job he loves and come an awfully long way from the Nottingham University physics department.
“People who are starting out them- selves ask me how to get into the busi- ness and you can never give a defini- tive answer. This is the only thing I’ve wanted to do, and I just went down to London with no money and phoned people and did all I could to get expe- rience. You need the breaks but you also need the tenacity to do it.”
That tenacity has paid off hand- somely, for the job remains enjoyable for the contrasts it brings. “The thing about my job is that I like to do differ- ent things every time,” he says. “Everything has a new challenge. There has to be something new and exciting that gets me up in the morning.” ■
Magnificent 7 was originated on stocks that include 16mm Fujicolor Super F-250T 8652 and Super F-250D 8662
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