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KNOWING YOUR
KNOWING YOUR
OWN STRENGTHS
M ediocrity is the enemy,” muses Oliver Curtis. “I want my films to
be interesting, watchable and chal- lenging in some way. When I look at my showreel, it’s quite schizo- phrenic. It has five or six pieces on it that are so different in style and
approach that they could be by five or six differ- ent camera people.
“Enough people tell me this is not a bad thing, that it’s actually a good thing... and to stick with it. As a film-maker I apply myself to the demands of the particular production, and to the director’s vision as I see fit. But always one has to ask, is it right for the script?”
Ah, scripts. Curtis, from the thirtysomething generation of bright young British cinematogra- phers, has some very firm ideas on that score: “As
I see it, the quality of scripts around is pretty
poor. And yet so many seem to go into production with just a notional polish. Yes, UK production is up. But, production of what? It’s already tough enough to get stuff shown.”
So it’s always a question of choices and Curtis, whose career encompasses film, TV and commer- cials, has to date made some intriguing ones – from the Cannes prize-winning Love And Death On Long Island to BBC’s Vanity Fair, for which he earned a BAFTA award nomination last year.
But back to beginnings. Despite what he calls “the political distractions”, Curtis - who’d from the age of five shot stills - managed to earn first class honours in photography and film at the London College of Printing.
“We did of lot of film studies there but technical- ly it wasn’t very strong, so the fact that I could
An interview with Oliver Curtis BSC
already use a light meter and understood exposure led to my shooting a lot of the other students’ work. The tutors were film theorists as much as film prac- titioners so, whatever else, the place gave me a solid grounding in film history. Directors since have tended to appreciate that because it can give us a mutual frame of reference.”
When Curtis left college he still had “half a mind to direct.” He got a camera and after a suitable bit of
ror Dream Demon – “ I kept kicking myself that it wasn’t, say, Chinatown,” laughs Curtis.
After a rather perfunctory Making Of... came the altogether more rewarding Whatever Happened To...? In this case, the reclusive Gillo Pontecorvo, director of the influential Oscar-winning drama-doc- umentary, The Battle Of Algiers. Curtis tracked him down in Rome and alongside interviews with com- poser Ennio Morricone and cameraman Marcello
Gatti, made a 50-minute docu- mentary for C4 called, simply, Pontecorvo.
He knew though that he must make a career decision and came down on the side of cinematography: “It had got to the point that with the scale of work I was being offered as a cinematographer meant that I must devote my whole time to it. There was no way I could just do it part time. As a cam- eraman you’re still learning all
the time about film-making so that if I wished eventually to direct...”
His first feature was Madagascar Skin, with Bernard Hill and John Hannah. “An art film with a capital A. It had a fantastically visual director Chris Newby who wasn’t par- ticularly communicative but together we somehow managed to achieve some rather remarkable imagery. In any case it gave me a very strong foundation for my showreel. A
producer once said to me, ‘Look, it’s very easy to prove you’re talented. But to prove you’re compe- tent as well is the key.’”
OWN STRENGTHS
sweet-talking landed the job of shooting, directing and editing one of those Making Of... featurettes. The film in question was the forgettable shlock-hor-
Photos main right: Oliver Curtis BSC; above from left: John Hurt and Jason Priestly in Love and Death on Long Island, Natasha Little as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair Amour, amour in Saltwater; John Hurt in Love and Death on Long Island
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EXPOSURE • 2 & 3