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IN PRODUCTION
THERHYTH
espite the pressure, long hours Dand occasionally unpleasant
conditions experienced by anyone choosing a career in the motion picture industry,
the benefits are often very sweet. For Christopher Ross, lensing
the new Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll at the right hand of director Mat Whitecross (Spooks: Code 9, The Road To Guantanamo), the time spent filming live gigs was the high point.
“Who wouldn’t want to sit through a three-day performance by Ian Dury and the Blockheads,” he muses. Since the real Dury passed away in March 2000, these renditions were the product of Andy Serkis’, big screen incarnation of the legendary British rock musician.
Dury was a unique character on the rock ‘n’ roll scene, his music diverse and his lyrics often flavoured with dry humour. Then there was his well-accounted childhood battle with polio and re- sulting time being ‘toughened up’ at Chailey Heritage, a children’s school for the disabled.
This left Dury with a determination to succeed which saw him become one of the defining figureheads of the British ‘New Wave’ rock movement of the seventies, despite the diagnosis of permanent disability.
“The film opens with Ian introducing his life story in a series of flashbacks,” reveals Ross, “and then the dominant drama is the ‘New Boots and Panties’ era.
“I didn’t have a great deal of prep on the film but Mat and I spent a fair amount of time talking about the private Ian Dury: his life, family and work. It was clear to me that Mat wanted the film to mirror Ian’s state of mind at each stage of his life and that this should lead our visual approach.
“He also wanted to allow the actors as much freedom as possible, and with that in mind we adopted a quasi-documentary approach: broad light sources and zoom lenses. I felt that these were essential tools for Mat’s aesthetic of discovering and responding to performances during a take.”
Ross is no stranger to Fujifilm stocks: the five-part ITV drama Collision, the biopic feature Cass and the gritty Eden Lake were all shot on Fujifilm thanks to Ross’s influence as the projects’ DP.
On Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, choosing from the Fujifilm Super 16mm range for a drama destined for theatrical release was a conscious, creative decision.
“From Mat’s perspective we needed a camera format that would be small and discreet, allow us to react quickly to performance, deal with varied lighting conditions and help to create a sense of period and place,” Ross states. “Super 16mm was the perfect choice when faced with these dilemmas. I used Fujifilm ETERNA 500T for almost everything, including the live performances and only switched to ETERNA 250D for day exteriors.
“I felt the subject matter would benefit from the more organic feel of the higher speed film stock and hope to push this further in the DI. We used an Arri 416 and zoom lenses predominantly, with a set of Zeiss Ultra 16 lenses for low light, close focus or deep 2-shots, anything that would show up the faults of a zoom lens really.”
Plenty of archive material of Dury exists, handy when recreating the finer details.
“There are some great photographs of Ian that really show his quirky personality and I used these as a reference when shooting close-ups of Andy Serkis,” says Ross. “Generally, in reacting to the performances I felt that a connected approach was called for, so I used longer focal lengths and dirtier frames with tight eyelines to pull the characters together.
“As on many of my productions I operated the ‘A’ camera myself and called in Rodrigo Gutierrez for help with the two-camera days and live performances. My focus puller Tim Battersby, a regular collaborator of mine, coped with the long lens/handheld/no-marks scenario with quiet brilliance as always.”
So how did Ross cope with the varied lighting conditions required to tell Dury’s story, who through the
course of a single day might have moved from daylight to streetlight to spotlight?
“I had my usual selection of medium sized HMIs, a fair amount of Kino-flo units and a small tungsten package for night interior and exteriors,” Ross explains “For speed reasons one set was pre-rigged with Vistabeam units, a fantastic light that creates a soft yet punchy source with almost none of the extra grip requirements of frames, cutters andflags.” Therewasalsoanoppor- tunity to utilise some real concert lighting. “We had a four-day sequence in a theatre in Watford where I used the existing rig with the addition of two Robert Juliat
Spotlights and a smattering of pars and floor cans,” recalls Ross.
“There is quite a bit of archive footage of Ian from that period in the mid-seventies to eighties, so we used it as reference for the live gigs and for some of our recreations of actual events.” With so much to consider, Ross once again commends the support of a good crew. “The brilliantly laid-back Julian White gaffered the film for me,” he says, “his quiet calmness helped me cope!” NATASHA BLOCK
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
was originated on 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8673 and ETERNA 250D 8663
16 • EXPOSURE • THE MAGAZINE • FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE
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