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from 1996 to 2001. One of the most popular segments was ‘Toy Movies’ in which they animated their collec- tion of soft toys into hilarious and inventive spoofs of box office hits like Trainspotting, Se7en, Showgirls and The English Patient.
Cornish has also since directed the odd documentary and music promo as well as co-written Steven Spielberg’s latest film, The Adventures Of Tintin: Secret Of The Unicorn. He also made brief but telling cameo appearances in both Shaun Of The Dead – also contributing a video diary extra to the DVD - and Hot Fuzz.
Noted Tom Townend, Cornish’s DP on Attack The Block: “I think he was always ambitious to be a film director, and was not so much sidetracked as found a very lucrative streak as 50 per cent of a
comedy duo. In terms of man hours, he probably has as much time under his belt as many commercials directors. Townend, who made his own feature debut on Samantha Morton’s award-winning The Unloved in
FEATURE IN FOCUS
OUTOFTHISWORLD
ATTACK THE BLOCK PITS “INNER CITY VS OUTER SPACE” IN NEW LONDON-BASED ACTION ADVENTURE
rom the makers of Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz. That punchline provides expectation enough. But when you then add the name of Joe Cornish as writer-director, the buzz among fans for Attack The Block becomes almost overwhelming. Perhaps better known as one half of the popular comedy duo, Adam and Joe,
whose shows have lit up Channel Four and BBC6 Music, Cornish’s feature debut is, in his own words, “a lean, mean action adventure movie that pits a teen gang against an invasion of savage alien creatures.”
And in an even more lip-smacking piece of PR, the new British film is said to “turn a London tower block into a fortress under siege, and weapon-wield- ing teenage thugs into heroes. It’s inner city versus outer space.” Cornish, a graduate of Bournemouth Film School, and Adam Buxton first came to promi- nence with their eponymous C4 show, which ran
2009, reckoned that it was probably his night work on a Virgin Media commercial that swung the assignment his way.
“Attack The Block is set entirely over one night and filming was split about 50/50 between exteriors and interiors - which meant that for our 12-week schedule we had six weeks of night shooting.
“Did we talk about other films in ‘prep’? Yes, we did, but more in a stream-of-consciousness fashion than in terms of particular touchstones. We especially admired the look, an almost forgotten look, of some of those John Carpenter films of the early 80s like The Thing and Escape From New York, as well as other people’s work such as The Warriors and The Terminator, many of which were seriously low budget. One of the things you notice about them was the majority of night exterior work was using practical lighting with its mercury vapour, so the
films have a blue green tone to them as opposed to yellow and orange. We rather liked that. In fact, we then always tried to introduce an- other colour, our theory being that as there were so many night scenes, it might get tiring on the eyes.”
Townend who had shot The Unloved on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 400T and ETERNA 500T, was already in pre-production on Attack The Block, “when I toddled along to the first unveiling of the new Vivid 500T. It took me about two minutes to decide that it would be ideal. My first thought was that it’d be just used for all the exteriors because, in the back of my mind was also the thought that when we went back to the studio [3 Mills] to do interiors we might use some other stocks. In the
end I decided to use the Vivid 500T for the whole thing.
“Look, I don’t want to give away too much, hut there are, as you can imag- ine, creatures in the film. They weren’t going to be expensive CG entities but they obviously should have
a ‘look’ and Joe’s one overriding concept was they’d be jet black and completely featureless so that all you see on screen would be an outline.
“In any given frame, whatever tone represented full shadow, they would be as dark as that, so it seemed to make sense to stick to a stock that kept black and naturally contrasty,” added Townend.
“I’d used the Vivid 160T several times before and was always very impressed b y it, so to get a 500 ASA version of the same stock for a film entirely set at night was a good thing, really.
“Another concern we had was although this was a low budget independent British film we’d didn’t want it to end up with that a typical kind of gritty, de-saturated, ‘social realism’ look. It should be glossier than that. The script is pitched somewhere between serious and, I suppose, an audience having at times to suspend its disbelief.”
The film used locations all over South and East London, from a street and adjacent park in Brixton, “about 100 yards from Joe’s house, so he always had that in mind” – to the block itself, in Stratford, a stone’s throw from the new Olympic site. There were also some weeks on the notorious Heygate Estate at the Elephant and Castle, now 99% vacated as it awaits demolition, which also ‘hosted’ Hereafter and Harry Brown. The weight of night shooting didn’t seem remotely to faze Townend, who now keeps constantly busy with music promos and commercials in between features: “There’s not much traffic and very few people around, a great time to shoot in London in those hours before dawn, Basically, just you and the foxes!” QUENTIN FALK
Attack The Block, for May release in the UK, was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA Vivid 500T 8547
Photo Above, l-r: A scene from Attack The Block; and right; DP Tom Townend; Townend (right) with director Joe Cornish
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