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PAUL WILSON BSC FBKS
“One snag about computer technology, as I see it, is that films are beginning to look alike, not so much what’s going on on-screen but more as to the way it’s done. It seems to lack the human touch.”
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you also discover his uncle was Daily Mail doyen, Cecil Wilson, and grandfa- ther, a pioneer photographer (who made his own wet-plates), it then becomes clear there must have been something in the genes.
Wilson Jr quickly soaked the atmosphere of Ealing and declared to his dad, “This is where I want to work.” With anyone over 18 being snatched away for war service, there were plenty of vacancies and, before he too would head off for the battle, he started work as a clapper boy at Shepherd’s Bush studios.
Returning nearly three years later, he soon discovered, like many others entitled to be re-instated in their old jobs, that the industry was now wild- ly over-manned. At Shepherd’s Bush, for example, there were 48 people in the camera department - twelve com- plete crews. The studio eventually closed down and, says Wilson, “I was out on my ear.”
A brief hiatus in freelance still pho- tography was quickly followed by a call to fly off to Sweden and help film some second unit footage for Traveller’s Joy, a fluffily forgettable domestic comedy, co-starring John McCallum and Googie Withers. This happily proved to be Wilson’s pass- port into camera departments at booming major studios.
Through focus puller to operator, he continued to build up a great CV which included observing cinema leg- ends like Charlie Chaplin (The Countess From Hong Kong) and Alfred Hitchcock (Frenzy) at very close range. And long before that fateful call
came from Lester (with whom he’d collaborated on many movies, notably the Beatles’ brace, A Hard Day’s Night and Help!) in the late Seventies, he’d actually done time on a model unit - for John Huston’s epic Moby Dick.
Before the career switch on Superman, it’s interesting to note that, also courtesy of Lester, Wilson earned his one sole DP credit (a later credit, Mel Brooks’ History Of The World - Part 1, was shared with Woody Omens). This was the director’s quick-fire adaptation of Terrence McNally’s hit stage comedy, The Ritz, set in a New York bath house but actually shot in four weeks on some elaborately steamy - and pre-lit - sets at Twickenham Studios.
Superman, on which he teamed up for the first time with effects wizard Derek Meddings, was the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership. “Yes, we really clicked. It was as if I could
read his mind - although he seemed to make it all up as he went along,” laughs Wilson.
When they weren’t alternating the Bond and ‘Man of Steel’ series, the pair also collaborated on the likes of Spies Like Us, Batman, Cape Fear, and Neverending Story II & III right up to Meddings’ premature death in 1995 after their final double act on Goldeneye.
Wilson has since gone on to work on the three subsequent 007 adventures before finally calling it a day, although he refuses to admit he has “officially” retired. Interestingly, he cites a much earlier Bond, the Oscar-nominated Moonraker, as his personal favourite among the ones he worked on.
As computer technology digs deeper and deeper into the effects business, Wilson offers an intriguing perspective on the nature of his work.
“Our attitude with Derek and later with John Richardson since on the Bonds always was, ‘Can we do it for real?’ then, ‘Can we do it with a model?’ If we couldn’t do it with a model, then we’d let the computer do it - but that was, for us, always the last choice. The way we did it meant you could see it tomorrow. If it didn’t work or you didn’t like it, then you could do it again straight away just a day later.
“One snag, as I see it, about com- puter technology is that films are begin- ning to look alike, not so much what’s going on on-screen but more as to the way it’s done. There’s a sameness about it, and it seems to lack the reality of the human touch.” That said, he admits to being in awe of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and is glowing in his praise for the New Zealand effects team.
The best compliment you can ever have about your work, Wilson suggests, is that no-one actually mentions the models. He remembers Richard Lester’s secretary remarking after seeing Superman II why they’d even bothered with a model unit. The point is, his efforts and the main action had blended so seamlessly, it all looked “for real.”
Then there was that occasion at his local cinema when he sat with an audience to watch the first Superman film. “We’d struggled so much with the flying. Then the kids all cheered whenever he flew and you realised they actually believed he could fly. Now that’s what I call job satisfaction!” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Photos top: Paul Wilson with Alfred Hitchcock on Frenzy and above with Derek Meddings on Batman
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