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FRED TAMMES BSC
“Sometimes you must even
be prepared to give up certain ‘qualities’ with the lighting and just go for it.”
Photos from top and left to right: Fred Tammes BSC shooting Mad Love; Drew Barrymore and Chris O’Donnell in Mad Love (courtesy Moviestore Collection); Linus Roache and Tom Wilkinson in Priest The BAFTA winning Wives And Daughters; Tammes with Director Antonia Bird; on location with Best Of The Best ll; and with Wives And Daughters Director Nick Renton and crew
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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 could be a focus puller on a feature one day, lighting-and-operat- ing a documentary 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. He wryly recalls just a day working on a film directed by another local hero, Paul Verhoeven – “and that was one day too much.”
His first “official” credit was The Shooting Party, with James Mason and John Gielgud, after he’d emigrat- ed 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, who has just completed the Charles Beeson-directed 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 every- thing. When I looked at the record- ing later on ITV to remind myself of what I DID say, I found they’d cut half of it anyway, probably because I gave a special mention 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
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