Page 6 - Fujifilm Exposure_1 Michelle Pfeiffer_ok

The Art of Tony Pierce-Roberts
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colour service decided to do every- thing on 16mm for cost reasons) which truly fascinated him, he finally quit the Corporation for freelance insecurity.
After an initial hiccup on Excalibur
- “I was only on it for three or four
weeks so we’ll draw a veil over that” -
the work came slowly but steadily until
the time he was chosen to succeed
Walter Lassally as Merchant-Ivory’s
new - and subsequently, most regular - cinematographer. The film was A Room
With A View, “chicken feed to the pro-
ducers Goldcrest who were more con-
cerned at the time with bigger projects like The Mission, Revolution and Absolute Beginners. The point was they left us alone to get on with it.”
It has proved an immensely fruitful partner- ship, notably on further award winners like Howards End and The Remains Of The Day. Pierce-Roberts explains: “I’m really allowed to contribute as much as I can. Jim [Ivory] is the complete opposite of, say, John Boorman who has a viewfinder and everyone else runs after him with a tape measure. John picks the shots explic- itly and that’s it. Jim doesn’t do that at all; to a large extent he’ll leave that to me while he runs off to deal with the actors and sets.
“Mind you, that’s slightly changed now because Jim has got into the video assist busi- ness. It’s a shame in a way because there isn’t quite the same immediacy about it. So I regard it
as a very mixed blessing. It tends to take the initiative away from people like cameramen because they’re often agonising over a bit of a scene, without properly seeing the whole picture.
“Also, half the time the picture’s so bad on the video you can’t make a proper decision on it. At least when you’re looking through the camera you do get a good image whatever the lighting conditions.”
Video assist was perhaps the least of Pierce-Roberts’ problems on Surviving Picasso, Merchant-Ivory’s
account of the rampant dotage of a great artist. “We had, of course, no co-operation from the Picasso people so I had to make it quite dark because we simply couldn’t show too much.
“I think that probably worked rather well in the sculpture scenes where you were aware of them but not too aware. In the case of the canvas- es, we either had to show someone’s else painting or else be behind it so you couldn’t actually see the picture.
“It’s only,” this master of motion picture ‘painting’ reflects, somewhat sadly, “when you see that much-talked-about scene with Matisse’s work when you realise how much you miss by not see- ing Picasso’s art properly.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Room With A View and Surviving Picasso were originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative.
Photos: Top: Tim Allen (right) and Sam Huntingdon in Jungle 2 Jungle • Centre: Emma Thompson in Howards End (BFI Stills)
Above left: Simon Callow in a pastoral scene from A Room With A View (BFI Stills) • Above centre: Natascha McElhone as Francoise Gilot in Surviving Picasso Above right: Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in The Remains of The Day (BFI Stills).
EXPOSURE • 6
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