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Arts And Crafts
If only reel life were always an autumn afternoon in a Tuscan villa. That would be the ideal for a veteran cameraman who has often had to shed light in many of cine- ma and television’s darker corners.
Tammes, 63, has worked prolifically here for nearly 20 years ever since quit- ting his native Holland at the turn of the eighties, combining features (The Shooting Party, The Whistleblower etc) with acclaimed TV including The Man Who Cried and, most recently, his own BAFTA-winning Wives And Daughters.
This gorgeous adaptation of the 19th Century Mrs Gaskell novel, his first big costume serial for the small screen, was not just a welcome change of subject matter – “I’d got a bit tired of all the gritty business,” Tammes admits – but also a chance to collaborate again with director Nick Renton. They’d first worked together on A Landing On The Sun followed by eleven episodes of Hamish Macbeth.
Renton’s brief was “a sort of reality, not the glossy stuff. It was a major challenge for me. In those days, for example, if people weren’t rich they’d blow out candles if they didn’t need them. In other words, there was no rea- son to have lots of candlelight just for the sake of it. Instead, we’d try and use natural light where possible. I kept thinking about that Terry Pratchett line, ‘To make the darkness visible, you need light... “ It seemed particularly appropriate here.”
Tammes sets great store by regular collaboration – for that reason he actively dislikes commercials because, he says, they are usually dictated by too many opinionated chiefs – which accounts for his often remarkable ongo- ing work with director Antonia Bird.
They first met on an ITV series Tecx before combining again on no fewer than, to date, five other projects such as Safe, Face, Priest and Mad
AWARD WINNING CINEMATOGRAPHER FRED TAMMES BSC TALKS TO QUENTIN FALK
could be a focus puller on a feature one day, lighting-and-operating a doc- umentary the next.”
Ambitious to progress beyond what some local documentaries (albeit a pair for the celebrated Bert Haanstra) and a few native-produced Dutch features could offer him, Tammes knew that his real future lay beyond Holland.
His first “official” credit was The Shooting Party after he’d emigrated to the UK in 1982. Although he had, by British standards, started quite young as a lighting cameraman, suddenly here he was as a fully-fledged DP in a new industry where he was still, effectively, an unknown quantity.
“It was fairly difficult, As an assis- tant coming up through the ranks here you get to know everybody. I came in at a level where I didn’t know anybody so the crews were completely new to me. At the time I didn’t realise quite how difficult that would be. I was forced on the director Alan Bridges but in fact we had a good relationship and worked together again.”
Despite two decades of fine work in his adopted country, Tammes, current- ly working on Thursday The 12th, a four-parter for ITV, clearly still feels something of an outsider. So his BAFTA award was something very special.
“I always thought these awards were just about back-slapping – until I was there. Then, I just had to win. I had this speech prepared in case I won, then I forgot everything. When I looked at the recording later on ITV to remind myself of what I did say, I found they’d cut half of it out anyway, probably because I gave a special men- tion to Chris Packman, the telecine colourist at the BBC.”
Apart from that notion of Tuscan perfection, how would he sum up his “style”? “Preferably no harsh colours. Nice, subdued, classy...” In fact, not unlike the man himself. ■
THELIGHTFANTASTIC
Photos top from left: Lesley Sharp and Christine Tremarco in Priest; BAFTA-winner Wives And Daughters James Mason and Sir John Gielgud in The Shooting Party; main above: Fred Tammes BSC with Antonia Bird
Love. The last, shot out of Hollywood, would have ideally contained Bird’s trademark grittiness if it hadn’t been for constant studio interference which demanded, frustratingly, that the film’s two young stars, Chris O’Donnell and Drew Barrymore, remain “beautiful” under any and all circumstances.
For Tammes, Bird “always comes up with the unexpected, that ability to surprise – which I find remarkable when you are working with
that director every day.”
Bird’s reciprocal testimonial
is even more flattering: “He’s
quite brilliant, keeps growing,
is excitedly challenged by the
new technology and always
game to be experimental.”
Born in a small village just out- side Amsterdam, Tammes studied geology at university before being steered by a friend’s helpful sugges- tion towards his future career path at the city’s Cinetone studios where he began as an enthusiastic trainee in the camera department.
“The studios had everything – construction, sets, sound, editing and projection, all the usual stuff, a sort
of mini-Pinewood. After three or four years I turned freelance and began to go through the ranks. It was much easier to progress there, not nearly so structured as the industry in this country. I
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