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ASHLEY ROWE BSC
“Because I used daylight-balanced film for all the interiors, whether day or night, all the tungsten lights, household lamps or lights in shop windows, seemed to
acquire an extra richness and warmth.”
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working on his first ever feature film within, quite literally, the long shadow of such an established talent was, he admits, “at times quite nerve-wrack- ing”. Menges, always a man of few words, spoke rarely to his new side- kick apart from the general brief that he wanted him to light it as naturalisti- cally as possible. “The main thing he said was that because we had this young lad who had never been in a film before, Chris didn’t want him tied to marks; he didn’t want lighting stands to get in his way.”
Although Menges used his own operator and focus puller, the chal- lenge for Rowe, who’d always operat- ed before and was also shooting for the first time in his life on 35mm, was clearly formidable. “The only time he really ever spoke to me about my lighting was that if I put a little bit too much fill in, he’d ask me to knock it back. Sometimes we shot scenes in complete silhouette because I wasn’t able to bring any lights on to the set. It forced me into lighting in a very sparse way and was altogether a very enjoyable experience,” says Rowe.
Making Second Best had, however, required something of a sea change in his personal circumstances because for the previous ten years he’d had the security of a good job with BBC Wales, the last four of them as one of their top film cameramen, winning numerous BAFTA Cymru awards for dramas like OM, One Full Moon and Friday On My Mind.
Before BBC Wales, Rowe had once dreamed of becoming a wildlife cam- eraman but his letters to various TV companies had fallen on deaf ears
mainly because he was only 14 at the time. Eschewing his career master’s unhelpful suggestion he join the RAF as a trainee photographer, he eventually fetched up - following three weeks as a TV repair man - with a small independ- ent film unit in Southampton, attached to the University’s medical school.
“I began as a trainee but almost from Day One I was loading, focus pulling or assisting the editor, some- times making up dubbing sheets for sound or sitting in on the grade. We were making films for the COI or drug company-funded training films. It was a great all-round experience. After the cameraman left, for my last two years with them, I got the job as camera- man/editor.”
It was that sort of grounding fol- lowed by the skills he then acquired with the BBC based in Cardiff which he thinks probably stood him in particular- ly good stead when he began to garner a reputation as a strong right-arm to first-time directors like Shane Meadows (24/7), Sandra Goldbacher (The Governess) and Suri Krishnamma (A Man Of No Importance) helping inject real style into low-budget productions.
“The thing about being a DP is that you often have to compromise because you’re usually working to such a tight schedule; there’s never enough time. So that’s when I’d call on my old BBC skills especially when I was shooting docu- mentaries. I used, for instance, to go in and light a whole church with just a box of four ‘redheads’. That kind of dis- cipline was invaluable; it was a question of knowing what you could get away with. Naturally, on a bigger film you get more of a chance to finesse the budget.
“With first time directors I always sit down and chat through the script very carefully as we work out how the thing should be shot. That’s another reason why I also like to operate. I find I can light far quicker looking through the frame. During the shot I am constantly thinking about lighting the next one, about the shot con- struction and about the next possible angle so I can, as a DP, influence the way a scene is going to make best use of my lighting.
“In fact, I’d say lighting is only one part of the job as DP; the other’s about how the film’s going to cut together. That definitely goes back to the days of my old job in Southampton when I actually got to shoot and edit my own work. That was something that really interested me.”
One of Rowe’s personal favourites in the ‘first-time feature’ category is The Woodlanders, the 1997 drama debut of acclaimed documentarist Phil Agland. He might, however, be just a tad biased since, being based on a Thomas Hardy novel, it was actu- ally made almost on his own doorstep at the edge of the New Forest – “it was the first film [possibly the last, too] where I was home every night after shooting,” he laughs.
His long experience shooting women sympathetically in films like Widow’s Peak, Sister My Sister, Affair Of The Necklace and, of course, The Governess, may, he thinks, have had something to do with why director Nigel Cole chose him to collaborate on Calendar Girls, the heart-warming story of some mature Yorkshire WI ladies who posed nude for charity.
Rowe says he consulted with the original photographer Terry Logan on how he’d lit the scenes first time round. “Terry used just a 1000 watt lamp ‘bounced’ and the look was very natural. We had to use more light for the filming, but we just boosted the natural light sources and really tried to keep it very simple and unfussy. The stockings over the lens gave more softness and helped even out skin tones because we were very
Photo main: Rowe with Hilary Swank on Affair Of The Necklace;
above l-r: Photographing The Woodlanders; on Ali G Indahouse; Ed Harris in Copying Beethoven (photo David Lukacs); with Chris Menges BSC (centre) on Second Best
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