Page 30 - Fujifilm Exposure_43 Slumdog Millionnaire_ok

ED WILD
“I WAS INTERESTED IN USING FUJIFILM STOCK FOR THE WIDE RANGE OF EMULSIONS, WHERE THERE IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO COMBINE LENSES AND STOCK FOR THE MOST OPTIMAL RESULTS.”
➤ ItwasafterleavingImperialCol- lege, where he read Petroleum Engi- neering, that a chance encounter led Wild into film. “I met a focus puller who gave me a trainee job and I knew after the first day that I wanted tobeaDP.”
The decade that has passed since then has seen him amass a range of credits in commercials and pop promos, developing fruitful contacts with different directors and more recently shooting feature films, beginning in 2006 with Severance.
Since then he has lit the action adventure tale Prisoners Of The Sun, directed by Roger Christian, and two films that played recently at the London Film Festival, Shifty and
I Know You Know.
Directed by Eran Creevy, Shifty is a tale of friendship set in contempo- rary London, as Chris (Daniel Mays) returns to the place he grew up and reunites with best friend Shifty (Riz Ahmed), only to see the dark changes that have taken place in his absence. Shot over 18 days, the film picked up five nominations at the BIFAs includ- ing nods for Creevy, Mays, Ahmed and composers Harry Escott and Molly Nyman.
“On Shifty, we were trying to en- hance the available light,” says Wild. “We didn’t want it to be too raw be- cause it’s a slightly stylised version of reality. What we were really look- ing for was a strong frame, to give the actors the freedom to work with a really great script.”
I Know You Know is a father-son story starring Robert Carlyle as the idolised, idealised parent to a child who gradually comes to understand that his dad is not the man he thought he was. Directed by Justin Kerrigan, the look of this film con- trasted sharply with Shifty.
“It’s completely different,” he continues. “It’s a much darker look and also Justin wanted it to have a rich oily texture. We had a limited design budget on it, so we had to come up with a look that would help it feel like it was filmed in the 80s.
“We actually made it feel older when we graded it by injecting ma-
gentas into the blacks, to make it feel like it been shot years ago. When we did the DI it was really sharp and clean, but that didn’t really work, it felt like a film shot today. Justin and I wanted the stocks to feel older. In the end, it really worked out well.”
Wild’s lighting helps accentuate the changes in the boy’s perception of his father, as he explains: “At the beginning we give him much more classic lighting, with nice profile edges to make him feel stronger. To- wards the end, it’s a slightly muddier feel, with less sculpting on him to make him feel less strong, with his eyes darker, and sunken back.”
Most recently, the DP has been in Qatar shooting Jasim for director Peter Webber about the Emirate’s founder for its National Day. “We’re shooting this on Super 35mm F-64-D, which is a stock I love though it’s very rare you can use it because it’s pretty slow. But we’re shooting it out in the desert and it’s just look- ing great.”
From gritty British tales to desert adventures, commercials to pop promos, Wild’s career is – quite appropriately – one of great contrasts, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I love mixing it up,” he adds.
“I love the fluidity and creative free- dom of music doing music videos, but I love the variety because they keep you thinking, keep you fresh and prevent you getting bogged down in any dogmatic way of working. And you work with lots of different directors so that keeps you on your toes, too. It’s really impor- tant to help you move forward, with the different requirements of all these jobs helping to stretch you in different ways.” ANWAR BRETT
Shifty was originated on 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8673 and ETERNA 250D 8663 and; I Know You Know was originated on Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8673 and ETERNA 250T 8653
Photo main previous page: DP Ed Wild at work; main this page: DP Ed Wild on location in Kenya; above l-r: still from Shifty; Robert Carlyle in I Know You Know
28 • EXPOSURE • THE MAGAZINE • FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE