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behind the camera
RISING TO THE
RISING TO THE
CHALLENGE
CHALLENGE
There is not much point in becoming a director of photography if you don’t like a challenge, but few face their chal- lenges with the good humour and forti- tude shown by Sue Gibson. As one of the few women in an area of the indus- try dominated by men, the cheerful 45- year-old has earned plaudits for her work on a string of commercials and feature films. She was also the first female member of the BSC, and has feature credits that include Dennis Potter’s Secret Friends, Peter Chelsom’s whimsical comedy hit, Hear My Song and, most recently, the stylish period drama, Mrs Dalloway, starring Vanessa Redgrave.
Yet her earliest ambitions lay in the field of stills photography but, like many other cine- matographers, she was eventually seduced by the lure of the moving image.
“Initially I wanted to go to the Royal College of Art,” she recalls, relaxed between assignments in her lovely north Dorset home. “I loved photogra- phy, but when you take stills you tend to take ‘found’ pictures. When I looked at all my pictures I felt they were all connected with the way light played on things rather than simply being an image. That’s what interested me the most, light and how it creates a mood.
“I ended up taking a year out because the Royal College of Art turned me down and then I re- applied, but by that time I’d become more inter- ested in films. I also applied to the National Film School at Beaconsfield and was accepted by both places. So I opted for film school.”
It is a curious thing that so many women stand out in the field of stills photography, while so few have made the grade as cinematographers. To that end Gibson might be said to have made a
small piece of history, coming in the wake of respected documentarists such as Diane Tammes and setting a positive example for the likes of Nina Kellgren in the future.
Yet when she enrolled at film school 18 years ago, Gibson never really wavered from her desire to become a cinematographer, although she did dabble in other aspects of filmmaking.
“I wrote and directed my own short film,” she smiles, “but I was disappointed with it. I found it wasn’t a process I enjoyed as much as deciding what you want something to look like and then finding a way to make that happen.”
A key to being a successful cinematographer seems to be finding that balance between the lim- its of possibility and the fixed realities of any given situation. Such a skill proved useful to Gibson when she finally graduated in 1981.
“There simply weren’t any women cinematog- raphers when I graduated,” she continues, “so I became a clapper loader for 18 months, much to the chagrin of the Director of the Film School who thought I was completely wasting my time. My fear was that nobody would ever take me seriously if I hadn’t got at least some valid practical experi- ence, and besides that I wouldn’t have had the confidence to just go into it.
“It’s different now, but then the last thing you ever said to anyone on a set was that you’d been to film school, because everybody else had worked their way up through the ranks. That’s the way it always was, and in some respects it’s a very good way to learn. I wanted to be able to fit into the industry - I didn’t want to change that world, I wanted to be a part of it.”
Able to observe more experienced crew mem- bers - cinematographers especially - at work, continued over
An interview with Sue Gibson BSC