Page 19 - Fujifilm Exposure_4 Samantha Janus_ok

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
An interview with Chris O’Dell BSC
A part from occasional, and much-deserved, recognition at annual award ceremonies, the television cameraman’s art is notoriously anony- mous and often shamefully overlooked. Especially when comparison is made with his more cele-
brated feature film counterpart. Ever-tightening budgets and light- ning schedules might even tend to sug- gest that TV production is more often a case of “never mind the quality, feel the width” and endless, painful compromise. But punctuating the 24 hour require- ments of wall to wall programming are still enough examples of top quality to suggest that the small screen can regular- ly vie more than favourably with cinema. Chris O’Dell, schooled for years in documentary, was, in industry terms, a genuine latecomer to television drama but in a little over seven years, since being given his break on the third series
of Poirot, has built up an impressive folio of about 10 primetime hours a year... that’s the annual equivalent of some four feature films.
Poirot, followed by, among others, all or part of The Big Bat t alions , Shar pe, Love Hur t s , Inspector Morse and, more recently, Mosley (for C4) not to mention The Midsomer Murders (ITV network) may not have made him exactly a house- hold name but it’s an awesome track record swift- ly acquired in a tough, competitive medium.
Ever since being given his first camera at the age of eight, O’Dell reckons he was hooked on film and knew very early on that he wanted to make his career in the medium - “I can’t quite explain why, but it just always held an intense fascination.”
Later, reading Lillian Ross’ Picture - about the making of John Huston’s flawed classic, The Red Badge Of Courage - may have actually got him hooked. Her account of the fun and the sheer chaos involved in such a fraught process was infectious. Since there were no nepotistic ways into the industry- the family background was army through and through - O’Dell settled instead for the academic approach with two years at the Berkshire College of Art in Reading.
“That would eventually stand me in very good stead,” he recalls. “It rammed classroom work for- mally into my head so some of the basics were firmly wedged between my ears from the word go.” However it cut no ice when he then tried to
get into the BBC camera department as a trainee. He remembers, less than fondly, going up to London’s Langham Hotel wearing his old school suit and “being endlessly interviewed by these Corporation suits who explained to me they didn’t feel I was cameraman mate- rial. There was also that usual Catch-22 union bind. So I failed in that first initial attempt to get into the business.”
After Reading, he found difficulty getting any suitable jobs, even in stills, so it was back to academe and enrol- ment at the famous Brighton College of Design where he embarked on its last ever National Diploma Of Design roll (NDD), the old general arts course.
“This was the first turning point,” says O’Dell. “The place had some 8mm film equipment and I had the run of the photography department. It was a great place to be and the people were very kind to me. That was a three year course and because I knew Bob
Dunbar, who ran the London College of Film Technique, I then managed to get in there as a post-graduate. I was not just able to work with all their equipment but it was a very technical place too and provided very good contacts. Among my fellow students were other future cameramen like Ivan Strasburg and Curtis Clark who would break into drama much earlier than me.”
But still there was to be no magic slot behind a camera for O’Dell. Everything but. Art depart- ment, draughtsman, even sound recordist at a time when American investment in British films - this was the back end of the Sixties - was becom- ing very shaky indeed. His first major on-set job saw him as a production runner on the notorious
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behind the camera