Page 35 - Fujifilm Exposure_31 The White Countess_ok

Fuji Motion Picture And Prof
MOTION PICTURE & PRO-VIDEO flashback
A LIFE IN
MINIATURE
AN INTERVIEW WITH
PAUL WILSON BSC FBKS
A fter more than 60 years in the industry - from clapper
boy on Gainsborough’s classic bodice-ripper, The Man In Grey, to shooting miniatures on the latest Bond spectacular, Die
Another Day - you wouldn’t think luck had much to do with it.
But, at 80, Paul Wilson readily admits to at least a couple of slices of good fortune along the way, playing a sizeable part in a remarkable career, which has spanned some 115 films – “not counting bits and pieces.”
The first break was probably to avoid being a ‘Bevin Boy’ in World War Two and getting sent down the mines. Instead he went into the Photographic Section of the Royal Navy and ended up, two years later, filming the surrender of the Japanese South Eastern Pacific forces off Rabaul.
Scroll forward 30 years, and after more than a decade and a half as a prolific camera operator (working with the likes of Gil Taylor, Arthur Ibbetson and Chris Challis) and as second unit director/cameraman, he was sum- moned to Pinewood through Richard Lester to join the team on Superman.
So began another 20 years, this time in visual effects and miniature photog- raphy on the stream of eye-boggling spectaculars, including the Bond series and Batman. “I was launched into a new, [and, he might have added, Oscar- nominated] career,” he now reflects.
Mind you, there was also, he would probably agree, a bit of serendipity at the start of it all when, as a 17 year old, he took a fateful trip to Ealing Studios.
This was accompanying his father, the distinguished Star drama-turned- film critic AE Wilson who had, as they say, connections at the studio. When
Photo: Paul Wilson with Charlie Chaplin,
behind the camera, on the set of The Countess From Hong Kong
essional Video • Exposure • 33
continued over