Page 4 - Fujifilm Exposure_4 Samantha Janus_ok

behind the camera
“HAVE LIGHT METER,
WILL TRAVEL...” An interview with Ousama Rawi BSC
There was a time, not so very long ago, when Ousama - much better known as Ossie - Rawi was not just an award win- ning ads and feature cameraman but also a budding film mogul in his own right. He was running the second largest commercials company in Canada, complete with 52 employees, 17 vehicles and a busy rental arm, too. There were offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Rawi was chief executive officer, overseeing everything from film stock to paper clips, while also trying to com- bine his own acclaimed director-cameraman work which has yielded shelves full of various Mobius, Bessie and Clio trophies over the years.
But if that sounded like a dream come true for the Iraqi born film-maker who grew up in England and Scotland from the age of nine, nothing could have been further from the truth. He wasn’t just bossing the show, he was handcuffed to it. In fact the whole thing had been the stubborn result of a stupid dare and he was well and truly hoisted with his own petard.
Cut to last autumn when, in an idyllic village in Buckinghamshire, Rawi was back doing what he’d put on hold for far too long, happily boasting a simpler lifestyle he would summarise as “just a phone number and a light meter, the way I like it.”
Some might say that his return to the mercur- ial freelance world of cinematographer smacked of jumping from a Canadian frying pan into the Home Counties fire. For the assignment was Michael Winner’s 35th feature, Parting Shots, a comedy with Chris Rea and Felicity Kendal not to mention a host of cameo stars including John Cleese, Joanna Lumley, Ben Kingsley and Bob Hoskins.
“Yes, I knew Michael’s reputation but, in fact, I’d known him socially for some time and I found the whole experience great fun. It was also a big challenge because I’d never worked his way before. From the outset he was very clear about what he wanted, which was a lot of set-ups - I’m talking sometimes of more than 30 a day - and he also shoots in continuity.
“By that, I don’t mean day to day but actually scene to scene. He likes to construct a scene liter- ally bit by bit, even line by line because he’s cut- ting the film in his head as we go along. So your set-up might change 180 degrees between shots in a short scene. And unlike other directors I’ve worked with he doesn’t ever use master shots. Now that may have occasionally been a problem to the artists but it was fine by me.
“It took me three or four days to know his style and after that I felt I could anticipate what he wanted. Making decisions about where to place lights is not what takes time; that can be settled in a flash. What really wastes time is if you haven’t properly prepared your crew, organised where cabling is to go, made sure vehicles are out of shot, perhaps already set up a camera tower. The way to keep things moving - and this is what Michael appreciates most of all - is putting time to good productive use. It often became like a sort of time and motion study in organisation.
“Also, being back on an English set after such a long time away brought back to me vividly some of the major differences between the British and American ways of working.
“The American crews are schooled to antici- pate more. They watch the director and camera- man like hawks. Even as a director is picking up
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EXPOSURE • 4 & 5