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PAUL OTTER
“I absolutely understand the images are there to serve the purposes of the story and it’s not for the cameraman to indulge himself in pretty pictures.”
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He had also used the 500T for the majority of The House where the light- ing challenge was... well, challenging: “A theatre doesn’t tend to have win- dows so there’s no natural light. We were filming for a year constantly by artificial light. I put a small fluores- cent tube on top of the camera so I could film backstage with no lights fill. A lot of the time I would force the film one stop because there was just no way I was allowed to point any light backstage at the Opera House. On that one, I really learned how you could push film stock.”
The House was Otter’s big break as a cameraman after he’d spent some years as an assistant beginning in his native Newcastle. The success of the programme clearly opened doors for him and his CV since has been fasci- natingly varied including regular col- laborations with top directors like Clive Gordon, Angus McQueen and, of course, Kevin Sim.
The range of work includes every- thing from Multiple Personality Disorder and the tragic ‘lost boys of Sudan’ to behind-the-scenes at Billingsgate Fish Market, not to mention the life-and- times of a flamboyant Milwaukee pimp called Snooky. College Girls was by far and away his longest assignment. So what about all that material surely left on the cutting-room floor?
“Most directors I’ve worked with,” smiles Otter, “would probably say that I’m a content man as a cameraman. I absolutely understand the images are there to serve the purposes of the story and it’s not for the cameraman to indulge himself in pretty pictures.
“But I was also quite lucky with the editors on College Girls, especially one of them, Graham Shrimpton, who’s cut about five films I’ve shot. That helps a heck of a lot. He knows the visual angles you use and is famil- iar with the nuance of what you’re try- ing to say with your images. As a result you can find those images are
often used in an even better way than you first imagined.
“If I had any piece of advice for a cameraman it would be: spend time with the editor and explain what you’re trying to do with certain images, what it is you’re hoping to achieve in a particu- lar instance. You might then get all sorts of little things in a film you might normally get if it’s just the director and editor sitting in there.”
An unashamed devotee of the classic documentary form, Otter is apprehensive about the future for a form which is so obviously threat- ened, on TV at least, by a combina-
tion of tighter budgets and relentless ‘dumbing-down’.
“Now TV is much more interested in just bums-on-seats than trying to build an audience based on quality. A lot of the people I work with are now looking more towards theatrical release because TV is drying up as a source of income apart from some very complicated co-productions.
“More recently, I’ve been approached to do drama-documen- taries and low budget features which is perhaps the natural way to take my skills because those type of directors want a sense of reality, of verité, with- in the drama form. This is perhaps the way of the future for the classic docu- mentary cameraman.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
College Girls and The House were originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
Photos above left: DP Paul Otter, Director Kevin Sim and Camera Assistant Jeremy Baker on College Girls; top and above right: Scenes from The House (© BBC/Double Exposure) above centre: Oxford undergraduates, the ‘Stars’ of College Girls
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