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Photos: At the BSC New Equipment Show ’05; Rachel Baker, Bob Quinn and Millie Morrow with Sam Yamaryo, Senior Manager of Fujifilm Japan’s Motion Picture Product Division
In Memoriam: Peter Hamilton
Our Man (And Women In Cannes)
BSC New Equipment Show ‘05
W hen most of Britain was
enjoying the beautiful spring weather, Fujifilm’s
Millie Morrow, Rachel Baker and Roger Sapsford were standing in the middle of Stage One at Elstree Film & Television Studios promoting their new film Eterna 500.
With over 90 exhibitors the show was bigger and better than ever. The red carpet was laid and the attendees came through the doors in dozens.
Get ready for the flow of Rosé because it’s that time of year again. Fujifilm’s Roger Sapsford, Rachel Baker and Millie Morrow
will be at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. We’re all staying at the (in)famous L’Hostellerie du Golf, so please contact us if you would like to meet up. ■
It was an ideal opportunity for Fujifilm to promote their new film stock A 500 to curious DPs wanting to find out more about it. Many a DP (and exhibitor!) left Elstree with one of Fuji’s Eterna 500 black macs under their arm, which unfortunately was not ideal for the glorious weather but
has, hopefully, come in useful since! The Senior Manager of Fujifilm Japan’s Motion Picture Product Division, Sam Yamaryo, was in town on a business trip and managed to briefly attend the show and meet some DP’s and other industry people. ■
O ne of the industry’s most- travelled cameramen –
he visited no fewer than 90 countries, including long stints in Brazil and
New Zealand, during his long career – Jack Mills BSC (right) died in March
aged 84.
The son of production manager Frank Mills, he got his first ‘break’ in 1936 aged 16 working at British International Pictures, Elstree.
“At the time,” Mills
recalled in his short
autobiography, “Otto
[Kanturek] was photo-
graphing Pagliacci
starring Richard Tauber.
It was quite ahead of its time, shooting all the musical sequences in Bi-pack colour (and again in B&W just in case the colour didn’t ‘come out’!).
“Whilst still in my first week at the studio, their camera lad went sick and I was thrown in at the deep end. Not only were there different B&W and Colour Camera Sheets and mags, but
I also had to contend with the dreaded ‘Playback’ when one had to synchro- nise the last three claps out of six necessary for the editor to match the playback. Most disconcerting for a 16-year-old on a
theatre stage set in
front of a crowd of a
hundred or so!”
Mills progressed steadily up the industry ladder assisting, among others, Claude
Friese-Greene and Gunther Krampf, before war inter- vened and he spent the next
six years in the RAF.
As an operator and/or DP/cameraman on second
and visual effects units with,
eventually, stints as a fully- fledged DP, he built up a long
and impressive CV working on films like Town On Trial, Song Without End, The Siege Of The
Saxons, Tarzan The Magnificent, Lolita, Tom
Thumb, One Million Years BC, The Battle Of Britain and
2001 – A Space Odyssey.
Photos: Millie Morrow, Rachel Baker and Roger Sapsford in Cannes
InMemoriam:Jack Mills BSC
P eter Hamilton, a pioneering member of the BBC’s film unit,
died in March aged 82. When he retired from the Corporation in 1979 he was
Senior Film Cameraman.
A tail gunner in Wellingtons
during the war, Hamilton started out in the film industry before joining the BBC in 1955, notably collaborating on Wimbledon coverage that year.
He worked on some of TV’s most popular shows including Z-Cars, Softly
Softly, Barlow At Large, Maigret,
Dr Finlay’s Casebook, William, Dr Who, The Onedin Line and Wings.
Many of today’s finest cameramen, like Remi Adefarasin BSC, Nigel Walters BSC and Colin Munn, were his assistants down the years.
Hamilton’s family are also steeped in film and television. His widow, Joan, was a production manager while his son and daughter are, respectively,
a line producer and make-up artist. ■
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36 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video
Mills also worked on numerous TV productions such as Zero One, The Invisible Man and The
Littlest Hobo (in Canada). He leaves three daughters, six grandchildren and two great grandchildren. ■