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ROMANCE
in production
ROMANCE
of A Flight Of Fancy
little over a year ago quickly raising sufficient funding from British private investors – including sculptress Helen Denerly, whose striking metal- works decorate the film – to produce A Flight Of Fancy.
Investors in the Carnaby Films’ production were given an added bonus – the chance to appear as extras in the film’s opening scene, a glamorous awards ceremony held in the Ballroom at the Grosvenor House.
For Fairman, making his first film had been a “useful learning process. There was no budget, you were flapping your wings but because you’d made one, you’d ‘joined the club’ so to speak.”
Now armed with what he consid- ered a really good script, a proper budget and a clutch of household names in the cast, he set about his fol- low-up feature with even more gusto.
“I’m quite a relaxed person gener- ally and a lot of my job is creating the right sort of atmosphere on set for the actors to have some freedom. The process begins in rehearsal and with this I was very lucky to have Jason and Kirsty for a week before we start- ed shooting. Once on set they were up to speed about where they should be.
“The film has elements of romance, truth, comedy and even magic but as the director I still have to keep asking myself, “am I telling the story?”
As an experienced photographer in his own right – boasting years of ads, prints, posters and exhibitions on subjects ranging from Egypt to the
THE DP VIEW
Photos main: Samantha Janus, Jason Flemying and Frank Finlay; top: A Flight Of Fancy Co-Producer and Director David Fairman; above left: Jacqui Lee-Price and John Sessions; above right: Tony Imi BSC (left) and David Fairman (centre) on location; below left: David Fairman being interviewed by Quentin Falk
Venice Carnival – Fairman was only A too conscious of the film’s ‘look’ dur-
ing his close collaboration with cine- matographer, Tony Imi BSC.
TONY IMI BSC
s the film is very low budget, you probably have to be a bit more inventive than usual. How do we create the rather dreamlike aspects of the
“I particularly liked Tony’s approach. It’s very much the moving camera which is perhaps a more conti- nental than British thing. But I am only too aware of trying to do too many things and so have concentrated on the drama of the piece and especially the love story which is very engaging.”
For the country aspects of the story, Fairman agreed that some flat plain somewhere in the middle of Norfolk might have been the perfect solution for the purposes of pure isola- tion. Instead, logistics resulted in often noisy proximity to a bustling motor- way, a busy local airfield and adjacent trees with regularly raucous birdlife.
If Fairman was ever fazed he didn’t seem to betray it even having time to remind himself that as one of the pro- ducers too, the director should be reminded to keep things moving along on schedule.
“I don’t see why my career shouldn’t blossom after this,” he noted, disarmingly. To that end he’s developing a comedy called Jinxed, about the unluckiest man in the world, and another as yet untitled psychological thriller.
Then, of course, there’s always the Gauguin. ■ QUENTIN FALK
A Flight Of Fancy was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
story? When our hero’s in the city dealing with ‘the money’ we’re giving the film a much harder edged look using the Fuji 250D and the 500T for the night shooting and some of the interiors shooting with no diffusion so it looks blue and cold.
When he comes out to the coun- try, we’ve gone into the F400 which is much softer, more pastelly looking. Each time we cut back and forth you do get that slight change of ‘look’ and know where you are. We’ve often shot in very low light but the stock copes very well with it.
There are a couple of scenes for which I had to call on all my years of practice and experience. One was inside a caravan which was very limit- ing. We were shooting on Super35 with quite a wide-angle lens to accen- tuate where we were. To create the right mood in an 8ft by 6ft room was quite tricky but I think we achieved it.
Then there’s a kind of romantic scene in the bathroom. It’s meant to look like the heroine’s fantasy of a Turkish casbah – lots of drapes, twin- kling lights and reflective curtain mate- rial. That was quite challenging too.
Luckily when you’ve got a script as good as this and such an inven- tive cast you don’t necessarily need all those big sophisticated toys to make it work. ■