Page 36 - Fujifilm Exposure_50th AWARDS ISSUE FULL PDF - cropped

2008
“As I am a self-taught cinematographer, I have found the best way to teach the craft is to let the students go out and shoot, then discuss the results with the them,. Filmmaking is a
creative process and I believe that as a tutor you should not be prescrip- tive; there is no one way of doing things, every DP does the same thing but differently; all of us commit our personal vision to whatever recording medium we’re using. Giving students the opportunity to watch a number of practicing cinematographers at work, lighting sets in their own style, helps to give the students confidence in themselves and to realise that they too have a personal vision.”
Brian Tufano BSC
“ ‘A film about a vivacious, colourful, optimistic young woman and her friends in a contemporary London that’s both exciting and fluid’. When he first told me this [about Happy-Go- Lucky], I said to Mike [Leigh]: ‘Let’s do it widescreen’. We had considered the format on previous projects and even tested it but had always eventu- ally shied away. But this seemed to me an ideal opportunity to use it, and make our first widescreen venture together. He thought that’d be great, took it on board completely and we went forward with that idea in mind and also for everything – clothes, colours and so on – visually vivid, freshandverynow.” DickPopeBSC
“During my time abroad [working in maintenance for Panavision] I had many conversations particularly with John Seale who is perhaps my greatest influence so far. He taught me that there wasn’t such a great gap between the likes of me and the likes of him as well as other elder DP statesmen. As far as he was concerned, he told me, allittooktodowhathedidwasto have a light meter and an opinion.” Christopher Ross
“I like to do my own standing in while the DP is lining up and lighting the shot. This can be controversial if there is a stand in whom you are making redundant, or if the DP finds the presence of actors inhibiting. But if you can stand still and not talk (a big problem for me), it is possible to learn a lot while you stand there, and it also means that the DP has a chance to really work to your height and skin and angles, instead of what often happens, they line up on a stand in, then have to make all sorts of adjustments when you step back in.” Actress Olivia Williams
“Just recently, when Ingmar Bergman died, I did a little private retrospective of his work at home with my DVD
player. When I watched Persona, I actually felt, ‘well, that’s it, everything has been done’.It’s so brave. It would be interesting to see how he would get on if he were just starting out now. If he’d come from the theatre and said, ‘I’m going to make a film’, would he get the finance? It is all about actors and dialogue, and some people might regard it as highly intellectual film- making.” Florian Hoffmeister
“You could probably learn 50% of whatIdoinafewdays.Togetit roughly right is not particularly diffi- cult: it’s about getting it more right. Getting 60% right might take a year, and getting 70% right might take three years and so on; the increments of improvement are exponential. Then, once you get to a certain stage it takes quite a lot of effort to make it that little bit better.” James Welland
“I liked Michael Caine – but I’m not sure he liked me in the end. There was a shot where he had to hold a coin very close to the lens before we moved away toi a wide shot. ‘We need to see it’s a coin. Just hold it towards the light’, I told him, to which he finally erupted: ‘I don’t know where the f***ing light is with you – it’s always so f***ing dark’. I think he found my method quite unusual.”
Rob Hardy BSC
“The long dialogue scene {on Hunger] happened in a very organic way and the fact it happened in one shot is purely down to Steve [Mc Queen] Originally it was a dialogue sequence with normal coverage but then the idea was conceived of doing it as one shot because we could do it as one shot on a thousand foot roll shooting two perf. The roll is 22 minutes long and the scene itself was 22 minutes long so it was a technical possibility which was explored and exploited.’ Sean Bobbitt BSC
“I always try to use the craft to build the look in the camera as much as possible so I wanted to bias the neg towards the finished from from the start. I think anyone can expose a neg neutrally and grade it; it is much better to use the craft and manipulate the image before then.” Shane Daly
“You only realise when you start lighting that you should have paid more attention as a focus puller when you were working with all these fantastic cinematographers [Roger Deakins, Oliver Stapleton, Dick Pope, John Mathieson etc]. I think there’s obviously going to be a subtle influence from their work but when you’ve been a technician for 15 years you start to realise you’ve become slightly institutionalised, You need to start forgetting all that technical stuff and begin being a bit more creative.” Angus Hudson
“For our theatre interior [on A Bunch Of Amateurs] we used a real barn on a real farm on the Isle of Man. When we first saw it, it was full of agricultural equipment and it stank. We had a lot of actors involved in those scenes. To cover all their reactions – not to men- tion the fact that Burt [Reynolds] found Shakespeare quite difficult to retain – we needed a lot of coverage.” Ashley Rowe BSC
“Working with Lukas [Moodysson] definitely influenced my style but not in a deliberate way; he is not an advocate for spending too much time on the technical aspects of filmmak- ing. Lighting set-ups and blocking were kept to a minimum and we sort of ‘collected’ the scenes with the different camera set-ups. As a result, I personally got more interested in capturing the beauty of the performances rather than the technicalities that normally guide a cinematographer’s work.”
Ulf Brantas
“Cranford was an opportunity to shoot something quite classically without being too flashy for the sake of it. It was not about the camera, of course,; it was there to record some amazing faces, particularly some of the older women. I just shot them as they were with all their lines. I thought I might get a lot of trouble about that from Eileen Atkins, so I was really glad when she won the BAFTA.” Ben Smithard
“This was a fantastic job [Telstar] for a DP because we go through different ages and looks. At the beginning it’s basically three-strip film like The Sound Of Music – really rich,, heavily backlit, the classic sort of 50s/60s Hollywood look. We then progress through a more contemporary sort of lighting to the very end when it’s extremely contemporary – in a 1967 kitchen-sinklkind of way, with hard, realistic lighting, virtually no fill, no backlight, hard contrasty with just a bit of twinkle in the eyes.”
Peter Wignall
“I love the fluidity and creative free- dom of doing music videos, but I love the variety because they keeps you thinking, keep you fresh and prevent you from getting bogged down in any dogmatic way of working. And you work with lots of different directors so that keeps you on your toes, too. It really important to help you move for- ward, with the different requirements of all these jobs helping to stretch you in different ways.” Ed Wild
2009
“I didn’t know what to expect working with her [Samantha Morton on The
Unloved] as a director but as it turned out she’s very confident, clearly drawing on her experience of having acted in more than 20 films. One of the things that can make first-time directors nervous is interacting with actors. That was no worry for her ... Sam was after naturalism but never forcing it and, in terms of the lighting, keeping it as simple as possible. Most of the cast were young kids with no prior experience so it seemed to me important to try and keep most of the tools of the filmmaking process off the floor,asitwere.” TomTownend
“On its [The Damned United] day of release, I went to the Odeon in Shaftesbury Avenue to check out the first showing with the public so I could see the virgin print for myself. After a gruelling shoot and a longish post-production process I could almost ‘smell’ the late 60s, early 70s period the film was set in. Job done ... I could ‘smell’ this film as soon as I read the book and that was why I spent six months trying to get a meet- ing with the director. I had to shoot it, even if it was the last film I ever shot.” Ben Smithard
“I would call this film [Looking For Eric] ‘magic social realism’ – a new genre. Everyone who knows Ken [Loach] might greet this with shock and awe. Cantona’s first appearance is in a cloud of smoke as the other Eric is puffing on a joint. I tried to set up some shots subliminally. Cantona might be sitting on a bed with a pillow behind him and a bit of a headboard. In my mind, these were his ‘wings’. Or else, he’d be in as high-backed chair. This isn’t something I said to Ken, rather something in my own head, sort of subtle visions to tell you he’s a spectre.” Barry Ackroyd BSC
“We just had a rhythm when we were on set that works for the film [Fish Tank]. It’s quite organic for Andrea [Arnold]. She’s brilliant and lets you do what you want. She’s just got one rule, which is never to be ahead of the action visually. Unfortunately there were two occasions where the camera is in a room and the actor walks in. She hates that: she thinks that’s the worst possible thing and she fights to cut any of that out because, for her, the films are about honesty, reality and truth.” Robbie Ryan BSC
“Inspiration even now is often sought in the world of stills photography, from the world’s press photographers to the pics you find folded up in an old book. They are great reminders and stimulators of the imagination and how you can approach a scene or film.” Trevor Forrest
“Neil Jordan asked me at the begin- ning of our collaboration, ‘how come all your films have a different look?’
34 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture