Page 17 - Fujifilm Exposure_45 Ondine_ok

IN PRODUCTION
Photo main: Fist to fist in The Kid; above l-r: scenes from The Kid; above right: Director Nick Moran on set with DP Peter Wignall (photos courtesy John Rogers)
hey say that truth is stranger Tthan fiction, and judging by the
sales of his two volumes of autobiography, the public has clearly lapped up the often har-
rowing real-life story of Kevin Lewis. Kevin who, you might ask? The
39-year-old from South London is author of The Kid and The Kid Moves On, which told graphically about Lewis’s early years after surviving an abusive Seventies’ and Eighties’ childhood in and around a rough council house estate.
Lewis, who after flirting with crime and bare-knuckle fighting, has since gone on to become a successful novelist. He has most recently been witness to the filming, by the company he launched, of his own well-documented life in a new British feature he’s also scripted called, unsurprisingly, The Kid.
It’s the second project for actor-turned-director Nick Moran following his acclaimed debut with Telstar, another, slightly earlier, slice of post-war British history, which traced the colourful and ultimately tragic career of pop entrepreneur Joe Meek.
The Kid, now in post-production, gathers together a glittering cast including Rupert Friend, Augustus Prew and William Finn Miller, as the three ages of Kevin along with Natascha McElhone, Jodie Whittaker, Ioann Gruffudd, Bernard Hill, James Fox, Tom Burke and Con O’Neill.
As well as O’Neill and Burke, who played, respectively, Meek and songwriter Geoff Goddard, in Telstar, Moran has also been re-united on the latest film with two of his main heads of department, designer Russell De Rozario and cameraman
Peter Wignall. The ever-versatile Wignall moves seamlessly between Steadicam, operating, lighting and, on occasion, notably with The Kid, a mixture of all three. He’s also a dab hand at storyboarding, most recently required to ply, in addition to shooting second unit, that particular trade on Matthew Vaughn’s latest feature, the comic- book adventure Kick-Ass.
Says Wignall: “Nick first came to me with this nearly a year ago but I was in prep on Kick-Ass at the time. So they then had another cameraman and he stayed with it until the end of March when still nothing had happened. They got hold of me again about five weeks before shooting was due to start but I then had an enormous two-week Virgin commercial, which I just couldn’t afford to turn down.
“In all, I ended up with about two and a half weeks of ‘prep’ on The Kid. The Casting was up to the wire too. I didn’t even know what lights they had, or what they could actually afford, until about two days before shooting.”
According to Wignall, who also shot second unit on The Descent Part 2, “we had basically six weeks to shoot 300 scenes. We were doing on average 25-27 legitimate set-ups a day as well as, on average, one or two unit moves daily. It was beyond hectic.”
Shooting was entirely on location – in Lewis’s old stamping ground of Croydon, but also using a stand-ins at South Oxhey and Bushey near Watford. The production was also the beneficiary of one of North London’s newer favourite filming haunts – the old BFPO Inglis Barracks at Mill Hill.
Wignall was also re-united with Fujfilm, which he used most enthusiastically on two earlier stints as DP – Telstar and Freebird – as well as on The Descent Part 2 and another second unit, Eden Lake.
“It’s a question of going with what I know. The ETERNA 500T is fantastic - it can handle anything. In the end we got the lights we wanted but probably could have done with more because we were leapfrogging sets.
“We started out using the Super F-64D inside. We then used the ETERNA 500T with an 85, and had an antique suede in there as well. At least I had 200 ASA. You know, you can’t really tell the difference in grain between the 500T and the 64D, so I got it down to just two stocks. “On 16mm you’ve got to be ever so careful about grain because if you underexpose it at all you can have all sorts of serious problems. So I had to make sure I was overexposing everything. You can always drag it down but you can’t pull it back up.
“Mind you, it’s nice to have a bit of grain so you know it’s not video. It’s also a question of speed. We simply couldn’t have done this on HD. With film, you can just put a dolly or tripod down and you’re off. No cabling, no hard drives, no downloads, no checking to see if the shot’s corrupted or not. It’s film – pure and simple, and so portable.” QUENTIN FALK
The Kid, due for release next year, was originated on 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8673 and Super 64-D 8622
ACHILDOF OURTIME
HOW THEY RECREATED A TOUGH
SOUTH LONDON UPBRINGING IN THE KID
FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE • THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 15