Page 25 - Fujifilm Exposure_9 Love's Labour's Lost_ok

SAPSFORD OF FUJIFILM
S cratch Roger Sapsford and you’ll find a frustrated cinematographer. Which is why he readily admits that the biggest buzz from his day-to-day role as field sales manager at Fujifilm is spending time amongst the crews on location and at the studios. This isn’t just part of some industry fantasy but a reflection of, and perhaps just the mildest regret about, a long and intriguingly varied career
which for many years was quite literally steeped in film - from stills and commercials, to 16mm television drama and 35mm features.
But since suiting up almost a decade ago into his current executive post, the cheerful and popular Sapsford, 48, confesses to missing the instantly hands on aspect of film which began for him slowly soon after leav- ing school in the mid-Sixties. Shepherds Bush born, he has always enjoyed a keen interest in photography and, as luck would have it, living next door to his family was the man in charge of all the sets at Pinewood. So, with that useful contact, he then got his first break in the stills department at Iver Heath, mostly drying prints.
“I had to move on,” he recalls,”to get a union ticket and at that time the Rank Organisation at Denham were doing an incredible three-year trainee scheme. It was effectively an apprenticeship where you’d serve three-to- six months in each department getting involved in all facets of filmmaking - camera, processing, printing, opti- cal work and intermediates. I served the full three years and was then invited to choose a department in which to work fulltime. I wanted to go into grading. Unfortunately at the time, that was the only department you couldn’t walk straight into because it takes years and years of experience. The learning time on grading is really quite lengthy. So I ended up in intermediates, taking care of the master interpositives and internegatives - those are the insurance copies - of television series like Thunderbirds and Man In A Suitcase.
In his early twenties, with marriage and a house looming, Sapsford now had to choose between security and the mercurial world of the camera crew. He opted for the former though agrees that dreams of becoming a DP did continue to lurk in the back of his mind.
“I think that’s why I was so interested in grading and decided to choose that route to continue,” he says. As chargehand colour grader at Universal Film Labs, he also became very involved in rushes. “I probably thought that this is the nearest I can actually get to being a camera- man. I would be the first person to see the results. I became his set of eyes, though on many occasions we’d also work closely together.”
The years that followed included two spells at Universal, a lab specialising in 16mm TV drama, a stint at Buck Film Labs, and two at Technicolor where he was variously in 35mm commercials imaging and latterly, by
the late Eighties, in 16mm contact as well as sales.
As Universal’s plant manager at Ruislip he also had the dubious privilege of closing down the place and supervising redundancy following takeover by Zenith. “It was not a pleasant experience,” he recalls, “but we tried to do as much as possible via natural wastage.” A happi- er memory from that time was servicing Castle Of Adventure, produced by John Price for TVS: “There was one particular scene with 300 extras which incurred a technical problem - an extremely rare occurrence. But thanks to the then unique uni-tab telecine system and John’s tremendous filming background, we jointly man- aged to save the scene. There’s no price like John Price!” After he applied for and then won the key job of field sales manager at Fujifilm UK in 1990, Sapsford recalls that he was in a “state of some awe when first coming through the door of this great international company. It had so many divisions and so many different facets of imaging. It takes a long time to settle down in a company
of this size but it was a great feeling once I did. “Fuji has always had a
very good reputation espe- cially in its approach and flexibility to the market not to mention its famous hospi- tality. This refers to the way Fuji says thank you to its customers and that’s usually something they never forget. That also tends to lead on to a continuity of relation- ships,” he explains.
When he joined the
company, the predominant business was 16mm. “Because of my background I was able to pick up on 35mm very quickly. Mind you, it couldn’t be done within months. It was always going to take some time to gain the confidence of producers. It’s only by constant support, awareness and help that you finally get accepted.”
Sapsford agrees that persuading cameramen to con- template his product is often more than just merely an artistic matter; it can sometimes be a question of trying to reverse years of almost die-hard bias, even when it comes to considering, say, the pioneering new high- speed 500 stock with its fine grain structure, colour sat- uration and sharpness. “In features, he explains,”there
are certain cameramen who simply won’t change. A lot, though, now will if they’re given support. They require help through the testing stages and we must also be on hand to answer questions. During my time here, one of the very interesting areas has been 16mm with all the business over TV franchises as well as the recession. The one-time in-house cameramen now work as freelancers and may be more reluc- tant than ever to change old habits. Some, how-
ever, have changed with the times and now many DPs use both products and some even shoot both on the same production.”
Once they make the change, says Sapsford, “many can’t understand why they hadn’t used it before. Does that mean selling becomes easier? After all this time, in some ways. But one should never be complacent enough to think the product will sell itself.”
Word-of-mouth is naturally perhaps the best selling tool of all. “Take a beautiful film like Restoration, shot on Fuji by Oliver Stapleton. As a result there were at least three more features with which I was able to get involved,” says Sapsford. Eduardo Serra’s Oscar-winning work on The Wings Of The Dove was another priceless PR boost. Sapsford also likes to point to people like Tony Pierce Roberts, Peter Hannan, Sue Gibson, Robin Vidgeon, Terry Cole, Tony Imi, Gavin Finney and John De Borman as regular supporters of the Fuji “cause.”
He continues to press the point about after-sales ser- vice: “Once a picture is underway, that equal level of enthusiasm should continue. Location visits, for example, are very important wherever they might be although that can become quite frustrating and even a bit stressful when you’ve got seven films on the
go at once.”
Whether it’s being part
of a carefully structured deal epitomised by a stream of recent modestly-budgeted films made on the Isle of Man
- “its blues and greens look gorgeous on Fuji” - or encour- aging new talent via the Fuji Scholarship awards, Sapsford remains fired up by his job.
“The US dollar against our pound is presently very close to that point when Americans wanting to come and make movies in the UK get good value. Homegrown prod- uct nevertheless continues to flourish “It may for the most part,” adds Sapsford, “be low budget, Lottery-fund- ed, or whatever. But it’s certainly a great time for the younger up-and-coming DPs. A lot of them tend to oper- ate as well as light pictures, which producers like to con- sider as part of a very worthwhile deal. As for the future, it all looks very good indeed.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Photos top: Roger Sapsford with cinematographer Ossie Rawi BSC and inset: with director Alan Parker in Cannes
EXPOSURE • 25
inside track