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THE DP VIEW
DAVID JOHNSON BSC
The only thing about shooting
in The National Gallery is “they’re quite fussy about you putting lights anywhere near the paintings. So I was never allowed to use very strong lights; I had to work round that very carefully.
In the end I think I was allowed one 1.2kw HMI and a couple of ki- noflows in each room, with probably no more than 20 lights in there. Your choice of stock is always crucial, but it was here more than ever.
“What I then tend to do is take a digital photograph of each scene as often as possible, do a little grade of it when I get home in the evening and e-mail it across to the grader.
I even went so far as take my laptop in to their office to make sure the colours matched on his computer and mine. That way I’m hopefully going to get
something that looks the way I
want it to look.
eturning to film in the UK
Lynn was delighted to find the capital much more welcoming.
“It’s much more film friendly,” he explains. “The City of London police couldn’t have been more helpful. We did a car chase in the City and it was no problem. I’d wanted to shoot a chase there for Nuns On The Run but wasn’t allowed to.”
Other key locations in London include Whitehall, Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, for an early scene involving Emily Blunt’s character. Cinematographer David Johnson BSC was set the task of shooting a long sequence that required some careful preparation.
“She rides her bicycle the wrong way up Whitehall through a traffic jam,” he explains, “then goes across a zebra crossing without looking and causes a couple of car crashes, then cycles up to The National Gallery.
“She sets off a firecracker to divert the attention of the guards away while she cycles into the gallery and then cycles around inside it. She then goes to visit one of her friends who is a painting restorer, because she wants to get him to make a forgery for her.
“I had three cameras that day, and it worked pretty well. We didn’t have a lot of time. There was one shot I needed to get where she was lighting the firecracker, so to get that
we took the front wheel off of the bike and rigged it to a golf trolley, so that we could sit in the back and get a hand-held close up.”
This very British comedy with more than a hint of Ealing about it is actually a remake of the French film Cible Emouvante, directed by Pierre Salvadori. It’s a film Lynn had seen and enjoyed when it came out 15 years ago.
“The story feels very English in some ways,” screenwriter Lucinda Coxon notes, “but I think in other ways it’s a crazy, free-roaming film with a lot of farcical elements in it. And it has a universal appeal.”
Amid the pressures of shooting any low to mid budget film in the UK, Johnson expresses his pleasure at working with his lighting crew – gaffer Peter Goddard, focus puller John Ellis Evans and grip Sam Phillips – as well as Adam Inglis at Framestore who collaborated with him on the D/I.
In the end the process of bringing to the screen a British take on a pre-existing French hit has been the product of a great deal of team- work, the respective support of the endlessly versatile Isle of Man as well as those authentic London locations and one of Britain’s most successful comedy directors.
“I think Jonathan’s quite choosy,” opines producer Martin Pope. “With this we very much wanted someone who understood comedy, who knew how to bring out the best in every comedy performance. Each time I’d mention a British comedy to him he’d say ‘oh yes, I was sent that, and didn’t enjoy it’. But he read this, rang up and said ‘let’s do it’.”
ANWAR BRETT
Wild Target, which opens in the UK in April, was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 250D 8563 and ETERNA 500T 8573.
FEATURE IN FOCUS
SHOOTINGFORLAUGHS
GALLIC ROOTS NOW LONDON STREETS FOR THE NEW KILLER COMEDY, WILD TARGET
R
almost two decades after his
breakout hit Nuns On The Run,
British director Jonathan Lynn
found things had changed for
the better with Wild Target.
His earlier film, which featured minor crooks Eric Idle and Robbie
Coltrane trying to elude a gangland foe, had a key chase sequence that had to be shot in Chiswick.
The reason for this choice of location was simple. The production had engaged retired Detective Jack Slipper, the famed Slipper of the Yard, as their consultant and he had once arrested a man who killed a police officer there. So he was owed a favour, and that favour was gratefully received by Lynn and his crew.
But while Wild Target features similarly loveable crooks on the lam
”– a conflicted professional assassin (Bill Nighy) and his art thief prey turned paramour (Emily Blunt) –
Photo top: Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt in Wild Target; above left; Nighy and Rupert Grint; right: Emily Blunt
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