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know anyone either.
A great admirer of both Ridley
and Tony Scott’s work in the field, his interest in commercials had first been nurtured at college where much of his own work and ideas were based on the structure of TV ads. As part of his graduation project he had story- boarded and shot a 30-second Coca Cola commercial on Ektachrome reversal stock. Little could he have know then that, years later, he’d become one of the industry’s most respected practitioners, winning, in 1996, Best Cinematographer at the British Television Advertisement Craft Awards.
All of which was still a long way off when he turned up in the smoke. He had his own 16mm Aaton with which to shoot documentaries but in the mid-80s the feature industry was going through one of its more seri- ous declines. He said: “There were hardly any British films being made. I had operated on a couple of com- mercials for Phil Meheux but he had his own regular guy for features. So I decided to teach my self, with Joe Dunton’s help, to be a Steadicam operator with the result that Phil called me in to do some work on The Fourth Protocol, with Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan.”
More conventional operator assignments followed but Almond was determined to graduate to light- ing. “The reasons for being an opera- tor were, (a) I could do it and (b) I could then observe directors of pho- tography more closely.” But how to light when he hadn’t lit before? The old Catch-22.
Intriguingly, he decided to hook up with a stills photographer, David Gray, who had aspirations to direct commercials and together they made
a couple of test ads which helped both their showreels. The phone did- n’t go immediately but when it did it was Anna (sister of Jane) Campion who, on Michael Seresin’s recommen- dation, asked Almond to work on her feature debut, Loaded, as lighting cameraman and operator.
Recalled Almond: “We shot on 16mm and of course I was relatively inexperienced. Unfortunately, so was the director. It was a wordy script and cast heavy. Scenes tended to be bogged down in dialogue. If I had a chance to shoot it again I think I could make much more of it.” Despite his own reservations, Sight & Sound admired “the camera’s elegant long takes.”
He’d operated once for Udayan Prasad when the director offered him successive features, Brothers In Trouble and My Son The Fanatic, the latter scripted by Hanif Kureishi. The highlight for Almond, especially on My Son, was working with the great Bollywood actor Om Puri.
“The director doesn’t want every- thing just to be illuminated, he wants lots of mood too. If there was only a
sliver of light to work in the actor would have to make sure he hit the mark. Om was always there. He’s a fantastic professional and also under- stands the technology of film-making - which side of the line the camera should be. And he loves to get involved in the structure of a scene.”
Almond has barely had time to draw breath over the past couple of years. Get Real, a rather touching teenage comedy-drama set in unpromising Basingstoke, earned him a Best Cinematography Award at the Dinard Film Festival while another “rites-of-passage” film, Greenwich Mean Time, managed to look visually very striking despite being plagued by untold back-of-camera problems during its shoot.
GMT got a pretty rough ride from critics but the reaction was mild com- pared with the venom which attended the release of Guest House Paradiso, a longer-form version of Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall’s Bottom- style TV mayhem. Almond had never worked with the pair before nor, for that matter, done comedy. He found
the assignment fascinating and espe- cially profitable because it led direct- ly to Kevin And Perry Go Large.
“The difference in the people made it a quite different sort of job. Adrian is very clear about what he wants. Like Adrian, Harry Enfield is also very thoughtful and serious - and was incredibly nervous about the film. Harry and the director Ed Bye told me how they imagined the film should look; they talked especially about a ‘heightened reality.’
“You were dealing with a couple of thirtysomethings [Enfield and cross-dressing co-star Kathy Burke] and making them part of the world of two teenagers. The audience should have the general feeling they were seeing the story through their eyes - colourful, heightened eyes, as if it was always Saturday morning. Certainly the rushes looked great. I felt I achieved what I set out to achieve without it all looking ridicu- lously pastelly.”
From those early days in docu- mentary to the recent string of what have been effectively bargain-budget- ed features, Almond has more often then not found himself virtually shooting ‘on the hoof.’
“You charge around, crash in and out of places and that can be a hard habit to get out of. Now I have got to the point in my career where I would really like to attempt some rather more considered work. I happened to be watching The Big Count r y on TV recently and it looked so beauti- ful. How I would love to work on that sort of thing.” Cue soaring Western theme. ■ QUENTIN FALK
Kevin And Perry Go Large
(which will be released on April 21), Loaded and parts of Greenwich Mean Time were originated on
ALAN ALMOND BSC
Photos top: Alan Almond on the set of Kevin And Perry Go Large and above left with director Ed Bye (left); above centre: Harry Enfield in Kevin And Perry Go Large above right: Om Puri and Rachel Griffith in My Son The Fanatic (courtesy Moviestore Collection)
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