Page 27 - Fujifilm Exposure_35 Miss Potter_ok

Eventually he got his own DP break on a commercial directed by Julius Cassar whose interest in a Turkish com- pany later led to the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with the coun- try. It was there he eventually made his feature debut in 1999 with Everything’s Great (“yes, on Fujifilm”), a comedy- drama for director Omer Vargi.
‘As far as Turkey’s concerned – the analogy I use is a football one. For me it was suddenly like being able to play in the Premiership, to do things that would have taken years to achieve here. The industry there has really changed and improved.
“It was quite basic when I first went there. Now they are completely professional: everything’s brand new and available - from stocks, cameras and lighting through to post-produc- tion facilities. What they now need to do is to match this with good opera- tors and more skilled personnel. I tend to use the same local crew whenever I go out there. If they don’t happen to be available, then these days there are alternatives, which shows how far the industry has now come.”
If Turkey has some fraught bor- ders then Lebanon, for its part, is almost surrounded by them. It was, in fact, during several months of compar- ative peace – in stark contrast to the much more recent conflict – that Turnbull got to film another of his fea- tures there. Bosta (the word means bus’ which apparently has huge emo- tional resonance for the Lebanese peo- ple due to a bombing on a bus full of school children some years ago) is
centred round a dance troupe, young people trying to rebuild their lives after exile or as refugees.
“I was recommended to the writer-director Philippe Aractingi, who was Lebanese-French; he hadn’t con- sidered an English cameraman at the time probably because of the French connection with the country. It was then suggested that I might bring a dif- ferent sensibility to the project. We got on well and so, off we went.
“I was there for three to four months based in Beirut, at about the most peaceful time they’d had for some 25 years, and I also got to see a lot of that remarkable country,” sighs Turnbull. ■ QUENTIN FALK
The Boy Bitten was originated on 16mm Eterna 500T 8673
helped change everything. Turnbull recalls: “He gave me the chance to look through a film camera – a 16mm ACL which many freelances used to use in those days. As soon as I touched it, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. There was something about the relationship between the photo-chemical, mechanical, the tactile and, of course, the aesthetic. I now knew there was nowhere else to go. It also got me out of the cut-
ting rooms and on to the sharp end of filmmaking.”
Next stop was his native Scotland where, in the great tradition, he worked his way up the craft ladder working with DPs like Mick Coulter, Richard Greatrex, Andrew Dunn and Dick Pope. He moved back down to England at the end of the 80s where he linked up again with Pope and the likes of Roger Deakins and Nic Knowland – “great mentors all.”
Fujifilm Motion Picture • The Magazine • Exposure • 25