Page 31 - Fujifilm Exposure_50th AWARDS ISSUE FULL PDF - cropped

s and Oscars Galore
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to talk about his films, but he was only interested in my car, a Triumph Gloria. He was a great mechanic and had a wonderful workshop at Denham with all the latest tools.” Eric Cross BSC (who died in 2004 aged 101)
“I want to put as much bite into the image as possible so I will usually shoot without using any 85s and have HMIs instead which are a daylight-bal- anced light source. With underwater stuff, most people expect the light source to be from above and therefore for it to punch through the water. HMIs punch through a lot more than the Tungsten.” Mike Valentine BSC
“On a feature film, you quickly begin to realise there’s a much bigger family involved. Now you are all in the serv- ice of the actors. You have to do everything to accommodate them throughout the long shooting schedule by not letting your lighting, camera plans and speed get in the way of their performances.” Jakob Ihre
“Personally I have always found the discipline of shooting film absolutely sharpens the way your mind works. For me, there’s a kind of precious nature about film. It somehow focuses your responsibility having this sort of organic thing running through your camera.” Paul Otter
2003
“I must say I miss black-and-white. It has a kind of purity. It does not try to imi- tate reality; it keeps a distance. Colour tends to be too realistic. It overloads the senses with too much information, sometimes useless, and provokes
emotions that have nothing to do with the scene or subject; it detracts from the essentials.” Pierre Lhomme AFC
“Lighting a scene is only part of the jig- saw. How you achieve the shots logisti- cally and whether they cut together are other parts, and so is your rapport with actors.” Roger Bonnici
“As DPs, we are all individual person- alities who have different methods of approach and aesthetic attitudes, even though the story should define 98% of that. The whole business of pre-pro- duction is finding space for that little bit of yourself, without it becoming an ego thing. There are plenty of exam- ples of films where one sometimes feels the DP has repeated themselves too much and shown their style, and that can tend to dominate proceed- ings.” Anthony Dod Mantle BSC DFF
“Music has always been very impor- tant to me, and my background in music has been very useful in my pro- fession. There is nothing more difficult than to talk about the visuals, l’image, in words. To speak with words about the photography of a film that has not yet been made can be very abstract... With some directors, we discuss the film by making references to pieces of music. We cite musical passages to describe the timing of a shot, the rhythm and pacing of a scene... For me there has always been a strong relationship between music and l’image.” Jean-Francois Robin AFC
“I’ve had several scripts sent to me but turned them all down because, as far as I’m concerned, they weren’t good enough. I don’t want to end up shooting for six to eight weeks with
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