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TREVOR FORREST
“WHAT’S REALLY LOVELY ABOUT THE ETERNA 400T IS ITS LOW CONTRAST CHARACTER WHICH PROVIDED US WITH THE RETRO AND DREAMLIKE WORLD THAT OUR COMEDIANS LIVE IN.”
➤ It marks the directorial debut of comedy genius and star Ben Miller and was shot in a dizzying 18 days in and around London using 35mm ETERNA 400T stock.
“Huge is about the love affair of a double act and its about comedy,” Forrest explains, “As a film about comedy, Jez, Simon and Ben had created this world in the script, where you feel like you’ve gone back 10or15years-oritcouldbe10 minutes. It has a real timelessness to it all, I think.
“What’s really lovely about the ETERNA 400T is its low contrast character provided us with the retro and dreamlike world that our comedians live in.”
“It has an enormous extensive range; we were using it for its low contrast and pastel look, which in turn is quite dreamy.
“I went on a hunch right from the beginning, sometimes you have three or four stocks and use all of them, but this one has become about the one stock really.”
Trevor Forrest’s next lighting job was a Chivas Regal commercial in Los Angeles shot in a more leisurely 10 days. He takes these contrasting pressures in his stride.
Forrest came into the business via art school and the world of stills photography, and is quick to acknowledge the practical encouragement that enabled his career to progress so swiftly.
“I was clapper loading and focus pulling with two really cool people, Andrew Douglas and Klaus Obermeyer, who gave me a lot of opportunities to shoot other stuff on set,” he says. “They were the sort of people who would allow you to set up shots in their absence. I suppose
that and a being photographer helped me become the head of department as swiftly as I have.”
A major break came in 2003, when Forrest gained his first experience shooting on 35mm stock on a series of high profile commercials for Indian telecommunications and Tourism.
“John Mathieson introduced me to a director he used to work with, Bharat Bala, who was doing commercials for Reliance, the biggest Telecommunications Company in India. They were laying fibre optic cable the length and breadth of India so we travelled through the country telling the story of their progress.
“I shot so much in India and became so comfortable with the crews, speaking to them in bits of Hindi. Then Angus Hudson gave me the opportunity to shoot second unit on a film he was shooting, Hari Om, in Rajasthan. I got my team back together and off we went.”
To hear him describe it now it all seems so simple, as feature work of his own has duly followed. His debut was Someone Else in 2006, the romance Bombil And Beatrice came a year later, followed by the school set horror flick Tormented, (distributed by Warner Brothers across 250 screens on Fujifilm print stock after shooting on the RED Camera), and Cuban escape story Una Noche.
“I got Someone Else largely through my stills photography,” he adds. “I showed Col Spector 25 stills that I thought were applicable to the look of the film. We shot it in a very static way, the camera tracks back but it holds almost the same still frame. “There’s a few zoom shots but it’s a film that’s almost entirely
made up of very objective and pho- tographic images. Whenever I’ve gone back to my stills I’ve thought ‘that’s a great still, I just need it to move now.’
“Once I came out of the subway in winter in New York. I looked across to see to this image of a blind man wandering through the mist, I’m always collecting these moments and trying to plug them back into the films that I get the opportunity to shoot.
“Striving all the time to create moments that serve the story. Travel and recording the life you see is such an amazing resource. I don’t think I will ever lose that excitement when you have captured a split sec- ond that can make people feel strongly about the content. It’s still a bit magic to me.
“Inspiration, even now, is often sought in the world of stills photography. From the World’s press photographers to the pics that you find folded up in old book. They are great reminders and stimulators of the imagination and how you can approach a scene or film.
“A lot of the time the scripts that I’ve done have dictated the movement of the camera through the story. Tormented was a teenage horror film, and in addition to wanting to tell a horror film story we wanted it to be personal, we wanted you to care about those people.
“There are a couple of photographers, Bill Henson and Todd Hido who do very personal work. With Henson you feel you are viewing intimate moments of the subject’s private life, and with Hido you feel you are seeing his most pri- vate thoughts through his eyes and in turn, the camera. All good clues to
projecting intimacy into a teenage horror film. “When I shot Bombil And Beatrice, this was my first solo step into World cinema, which is fast be- coming a really important part of my work and interest. An interest only made more prominent by Una Noche, which I shot in Havana. It makes me think what if we treated London as part of the world rather than the city we that know and live in. What other side of London can we show if we approach it like that.”
Given all that has gone before it is perhaps surprising that Huge is only Forrest’s third English movie. But his incredible ability to look at familiar locations with a fresh eye ensure that it remains visually interesting, complementing Ben Miller’s tale of the showbiz travails of a comedy double act – with Noel Clarke and Johnny Harris as the un- likely comic pairing.
“Ben brings a lot of his own personal experience to it,” Forrest adds. “So when we get into a scene which is familiar to Ben he can connect to that situation with his own experiences to help me see the moments through his eyes.
“This relationship with Ben has been really exciting because I got to see into this world that I otherwise never would. When you’re a cameraman and you’re thrust into a new world, it’s the very best thing. Through the director you can get a first hand journey through a strange world with a first class guide and working on Huge has really been like entering another world.” ANWAR BRETT
Huge was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 400T 8583
Photos left to right: scenes from Tormented; Director Ben Miller (centre) on the set of Huge at work with Trevor Forrest (photos courtesy Adam Lawrence)
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