Page 40 - Fujifilm Exposure_47 Hurt Locker_ok

FESTIVALS & EVENTS
DUNN’STRAVELS
ON THE MOVE IN NORTH AMERICA WITH ANDREW DUNN BSC he past 12 months or so have
“I’M VERY PRIVILEGED T
proved something of a
TODOWHATIDO. OFTEN I’M GOING TO A PLACE WHERE I HARDLY KNOW ANYONE AND YET AM STILL ABLE TO PRACTICE MY CRAFT WITH A BUNCH OF PEOPLE YOU’RE HAVING TO MOTIVATE ON A DAILY BASIS FOR SOMETIMES UP TO 16 HOURS A DAY. IT’S EXTRAORDINARY.”
Stateside odyssey for Andrew Dunn BSC. At the start of 2009, Precious, the film he’d shot the
previous year in New York for producer-director Lee Daniels, began its amazing rise to award- winning prominence after premiering sensationally at the Sundance Festival.
A month later, Dunn was in Portland Oregon, beginning ‘prep’ before a nine-week shoot on CBS’s Extraordinary Measures, inspired by the true story of John Crowley who teamed up with a brilliant doctor to try and find a cure for the obscure terminal illness – called Pompe Disease – afflicting two of his
three children.
Then, following five weeks back at his new home in the West Country, Dunn crossed the Atlantic once more for Life As We Know It, a darkly-tinged romantic comedy, filmed in Atlanta, Georgia.
Extraordinary Measures, by Brit director Tom Vaughan (Starter For Ten), originated from an article, later a book entitled The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million and Bucked the Medical Establishment in a Quest to Save His Children,
veteran star Harrison Ford had first read six years earlier in the Wall Street Journal.
Ford had originally wanted to play Crowley but eventually switched to the role of testy Dr Robert Stonehill, a reclusive research scientist and
a composite of several real-life pioneering medics, with Brendan Fraser as the dogged dad.
As the film was merely inspired by the Crowleys’ story, the
filmmakers felt they had the freedom to place the story geographically to their liking – hence the switch from East Coast New Jersey to the Pacific North West.
Explains Dunn: “We had a mixture of local crew and some from Los Angeles, where we also processed at Deluxe. Unfortunately
I wasn’t around to do the grading so Allen Daviau came in for that.
“Harrison Ford [also an Executive Producer] was very professional. If the call was for 8am, he’d be there at 7.50 ready to go. I have to admit I was a bit intimidated at first because he’s made so many films and is in, everysenseoftheword,amajor movie star. I really liked lighting his face. He has quite deep eyes but once you get the correct light into them, they really shine.”
Life As We Know It, directed by Greg Berlanti, co-stars Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel as a pair of non- friends suddenly forced to become the care-giving couple to a young child after its parents, their mutual best friends, have been killed in a car accident.
Musing on his peripatetic lifestyle, Dunn says: “I’m very privileged to do what I do. Often I’m going to a place where I hardly know anyone and yet am still able to practice my craft with a bunch of people you’re having to motivate on a daily basis for sometimes up to 16 hours a day. It’s extraordinary.”
Next stop on the North American trail is likely to be Alabama when Dunn teams up again with Lee Daniels for Selma, an account of those turbulent Civil Rights marches in 1965 as well as the relationship between US President Lyndon B Johnson and black leader Martin LutherKingJr. QUENTINFALK
Extraordinary Measures, now on release in the UK, Life As We Know It, to open here later this year, and Precious were all originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8573 and ETERNA 250D 8563
Photo top: Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford in Extraordinary Measures; left: Andrew Dunn BSC with Director Greg Berlanti on the set of Life As We Know It
38 • EXPOSURE • THE MAGAZINE • FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE