Page 12 - Fujifilm Exposure_1 Michelle Pfeiffer_ok

The story goes that director Alan Parker, fed up with hysterical journalists in Buenos Aires during a promotional tour for his film of Evita, decided to take a few days off at the beautiful, remote Iguazu Falls in the far north of the country. He walked into the hotel and was spotted by the barman, who grinned and said: “Alan Parker?” The director nodded smugly, awaiting the usual autograph request when the local asked in halting English, “Do you know Mike Roberts?”
Missions Impossible
A ccording to Alan Parker, who has worked closely with Mike Roberts on seven movies (from Birdy to Evita), the Surrey-born camera oper- ator is “a rare and brilliant individual ... the best in the world, by far. His ability to put a camera in exactly the right spot and execute the most difficult ‘choreographed’ tracking shot is uncanny.
“Lining up a shot,” continues Parker, “I would say to Mike, ‘Just here on a 50mm lens.’ Mike would nod and walk 10 yards to the left and crouch. I’d say no, holding my ground on the spot where I saw the shot. ‘No, Mike, here. And high. Not low. And a 50, not a 75.’ Mike would nod politely and without argu- ment. His suppression of his own ego at the service of megalomaniac directors is part of his brilliance.
“Then,” sighs Parker, “I would walk off to talk to the actors and Mike would put the camera exactly where he had thought in the first place. With the lens he chose. And he is never, not ever wrong.”
Roberts, now a wiry, leathery 57, has been a camera operator for 21 years on more than 60 movies since joining the late, great Ted Moore on A Man For
All Seasons in 1966. The film won a cinematography Oscar that year, among its six-trophy haul, and Roberts has since been part of three more Academy Award winners. He was partnered with director Roland Joffe and cameraman Chris Menges on The Killing Fields and The Mission (hence the barman’s pos- sibly apochryphal query 10 years on), and with Parker and Peter Biziou on Mississippi Burning. In addition he’s won three Operator trophies.
This year, he’s been part of not just one but two Oscar-nominated movies: Michael Collins, back in tandem with Menges as well as another regular ‘boss’ Neil Jordan, not to mention Evita, which marked Roberts’ first fruitful teaming with Frenchman Darius Khondji - “a fabulous man,” according to the grizzled operator, who for more than two decades has been there, done that and prob- ably worn the tee-shirt, too. Roberts’ career path started in the 1950s when on the same day he and fellow film-maker Peter Macdonald both became office boys at the Fleet Street offices of an Australian newspaper. Roberts then joined Pearl & Dean at their recently purchased Southall Studios before moving to Associated British at Elstree where he stayed six years.
EXPOSURE • 12 & 13
camera operator