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BARRY ACKROYD BSC
“I think my camera work is very sculptural... it’s not static frames beautifully lit, it’s more to do with the juxtaposition of the camera, the subject and the light, which is an art in itself.”
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An almost documentary style per- vades any Loach film, as much for the unfussy way that the director and his DP go about their work. Loach, for example, insists on the camera being a very simple window on events, static and with minimal lighting effects, the sort of conditions that some cine- matographers would surely balk at.
“It’s limiting only if you think of it as a static thing,” says Ackroyd, “but you will hopefully never see a shot in a Ken Loach film – or any film I do – where it feels like there’s someone liv- ing behind the camera. Hopefully it gives you more of a feeling that you’re participating in that film, it draws you into the story.”
Ackroyd’s background certainly helps in achieving this level of realism on (generally) low budgets and with the minimum of equipment. Such an atmosphere on set must also be less distracting for the actors, which is useful as Loach casts new and inexpe- rienced actors, people whose lives often reflect those of their characters.
And at least Ackroyd is secure in the knowledge that his continued good health is not under threat, as it must have seemed on assignments like The Leader, The Driver & The Driver’s Wife for Nick Broomfield. There the focus of the film, South African fascist leader Eugene Terreblanche, grew increasingly exasperated with Broomfield and Ackroyd’s presence.
“Nick Broomfield was far worse than Eugene Terreblanche,” laughs Ackroyd. “That was the first film I’d done with Nick, and I was from that school of filmmaking where you respect the subject to try to get the best from them. Nick has to hate his subject, by and large.
“He has this antagonism towards them, and in the initial stages when
people would say ‘put the camera away’, my instinct was to stop. But it became the weapon, to provoke peo- ple, and I learnt that very quickly. We put it to good use on four films.
“He’s an amazing filmmaker. In spite of the Ken Loach stuff, I still say that the best film I have ever done was The Leader, The Driver and the Driver’s Wife. It was so much of its time, apartheid was still enforced, and we did so many of the things you’re not meant to do.
“We went in without permits, we stayed in the village full of fascists, but we never lied to them. Nick’s very clear about that, that you should stand up for who you are and see how people react to you.”
Such vivid experiences – he also cites working for Oscar winning DP turned director Chris Menges on The Lost Son – have stood Ackroyd in good stead for the film career that has fol- lowed. But now, with over a dozen films to his name he is keen to try his hand
at directing, following the BAFTA nomi- nated short film The Butterfly Man.
In the short term though, his attentions are focused on Navigators, and the intriguing Dust.
“Dust is quite mystical,” he explains, “it’s a story that’s told in pre- sent day New York, which goes back to the Wild West, and then to the Balkans in the early 20th century, and comes full circle.
“Rather perversely I shot it entire- ly on the F-500 tungsten stock, whether it was day, night or in 50 degrees of heat. That makes life easier on the loader so you don’t get any mistakes with the wrong stock coming out, and I’ve filmed a lot in those latitudes, so I know that a lot of peoples’ filmmaking is done at the end of the day.
“The first hours of filmmaking, for all kinds of reasons, are usually lost. The most crucial part of the day is the last hour and a half to two hours. And that’s when the light changes the most dramatically.
“So there’s a risk in deciding to shoot something and then changing stock, and then changing stock again in another half an hour when it’s dark- er still. I’d rather optimise that period and use the same stock throughout.
“That’s when I find you get the most work done, when you can say there is only another half hour avail- able, we have to do this. You basically suffer it through the day, stopped down and polarised and all that, then you open it up in the evening and shoot. That’s the kind of energy I like to utilise.” ■ ANWAR BRETT
Dust was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
Photos top: Setting up a shot on location; above l-r: Daniel Auteuil in The Lost Son; Peter Mullan in My Name Is Joe;
Adrien Brody and Pilar Padilla in Bread And Roses; Emer McCourt and Robert Carlyle in Riff Raff (photos courtesy Moviestore Collection)
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