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PETER WIGNALL
“You can never have enough ‘prep’ because come four or five weeks into shooting you’re so tired and can easily fall into the trap of just doing your wide shot, your two-shot and your single.”
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basically,” said Wignall, “about three characters [bikers on a cannabis-seek- ing mission] going through their lives and talking. For the film, Jon has, of course, expanded it. As a favour to someone called The Chairman, the hero has to go off to his native Wales where his ex-wife and young daughter still live. Now we also get motor-cycle gangs and warring factions.
“The lure of it for me was that it made against all the odds. We had helicopter shots in it, a tracking vehi- cle, steadicam on board all the time, a full complement of lights, silks and blacks and also helium balloons for the night shots.”
They even managed to film briefly in the States - on a suitably desert-like, cactussy stretch of road outside Los Angeles, which doubled for the leg- endary Route 66, as well as in Hollywood itself. Wignall, who also operated and handled steadicam, noted, proudly, that “we probably broke all the rules for a low-budget film.”
Tim Maurice-Jones, who gave Wignall his operator ‘break’ 10 years ago on A Feast At Midnight, would have been delighted with his protégé and also friend from the days when they were both - aged 17 and 21, respectively - working in motion con- trol at the BBC.
Wignall, a lifelong camera nut who had actually filmed his last day at school on Super 8, joined the BBC after being unable to make up his mind about a career following a two year foundation course at art school in his native London. His first job was in the stores at Broadcasting House mostly lugging stuff like huge echo
chambers to various Corporation buildings round the capital.
“The best way to get a job in the BBC was to be in there in the first place because there was preference for internal applicants. I went up for loads - camera trainee, assistant pro- jectionist, assistant editor, among them - and eventually I got into ros- trum cameras, the big animation ones, on which we ended up doing most of the trailers for BBC1, loads of trailers and so on,” he said.
He then switched to BBC Bristol becoming his own boss in the depart- ment. However, with his 30th birthday approaching, he realised he was get- ting increasingly desperate to be “out there” doing “live action and stuff. So he quit the Beeb and went freelance. But his first employers weren’t exactly live-action either as he continued in motion control for Aardman Animation, working on everything from Crunchie commercials to Nick Park’s second Oscar and BAFTA win- ner, The Wrong Trousers. In between, though, he started getting plenty of work as a loader then focus puller.
Since graduating to operator, with an additional expertise doing
steadicam, he has, alongside his cred- its with Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn, also done films like An Ideal Husband, High Heels And Low Lifes, Lucky Break, Bend It Like Beckham and Suzie Gold. But it’s probably his work with Ritchie which has, sometimes for the wrong reasons - as with Swept Away and this year’s Revolver - attract- ed the most attention.
Of the latter, Wignall commented: “Some of Guy’s decisions about what to leave in the final film weren’t per- haps the greatest because, I think, there was a fantastic movie there. It was all shot, and there’s a better one than the film that was released; there was the potential to make it more appealing to the general masses.”
No such doubts about Freebird, even though, at time of writing, it was still in post-production. “I’ve seen vari- ous cuts and I think it’s looking really good. I take my hat off to Dave, Adam and Jon who brought in something that was way beyond what the budget and the schedule (just five and a half weeks) seemed to allow.”
No stranger to Fuji having used it before on films like Snatch and Bend It Like Beckham, Wignall - married to
loader-turned production manager Sandra Shuttleworth - decided to use tungsten the whole time (the F-500 and F-250) because “it’s a bit fairer on the loader, but I also think it gives a nicer look even to daylight. I also mixed and matched filters.
“The whole film was, of course, a real challenge - ‘gonzo’ filmmaking at its finest. I especially think back to one sequence which involved 150 to 200 bikers having a pitched battle in the Black Mountains in Wales. We had two days to shoot it then one of them was rained off. Most of them were having to get back to work on the Monday and it wasn’t as if these were extras. They were the authentic thing, a bit like Mad Max. It was a battle in more ways than one.”
Despite such short “prep” time, this was one occasion when Wignall’s storyboarding skills came into their own although he simply didn’t have time to ‘cartoon’ up the whole film: “Ideally, you need six to eight weeks to do the job properly,” he explained.
He’s certainly getting that kind of ‘prep’ time for Stardust and he hopes it could be the same if he links up again with producers Reid and Bohling who have a couple of new projects in the pipeline including an ambitious film about the Falklands War.
Stardust particularly excites him because, “I’ll be able to take my little son along to see it. Most of the films I’ve done haven’t really been suitable,” he laughed. ■ QUENTIN FALK
Freebird was originated on 35mm Fujicolor Super F-500T 8572 and F-250T 8552
Photo top l-r: Geoff Bell, Phil Dainels and Gary Stretch in Freebird;
above l-r: a scene from Revolver; Dennis Farina with Vinnie Jones in Snatch; Parminder Nagra in Bend It Like Beckham; Summer Phoenix (right) and her film family in Suzie Gold
28 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture