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TRUSTING
TRUSTING
YOUR INSTINCT
YOUR INSTINCT
An interview with Malcolm McLean
W ith his beard and shoulder length fair
hair you might be forgiven for thinking that Malcolm McLean had some Viking in him.
For his most recent assignment in the Shetlands lighting and operating on Stuart St Paul’s dark thriller Devil’s Gate, a little Nordic ancestry might have come in useful as together with the rest of the cast and crew, he bat- tled horizontal rain, wind and mud for five weeks.
In fact, McLean actually hails from the Australian town of Chiltern in northern Victoria where, as a 12-year- old, he got his first active taste of film- making performing in front of the cam- era for a Disney family movie called Ride A Wild Pony.
Though more than 25 years ago, McLean still remembers the experience vividly: “They closed the whole town down, painted it all back to the 1920’s and covered the main street with dirt.
“I also remember the white cam- eras, the great big Brute lights and the white-bearded director [Don Chaffey], who looked like Colonel Sanders, strid- ing round the set.
“Me, my three horses, my sister, parents and grandparents – in fact the whole town – were in the film as extras.” The great Jack Cardiff was cin- ematographer but eventually following
in his footsteps was probably the last thing on the youngster’s mind at that exciting time.
In fact, his eventual path into the film industry started as an apprentice electrician working in amateur theatre. “I ended up following an actress to Sydney then it was on to Melbourne where I went for a job with the ABC. The first day on the set I saw this chap behind a camera and thought, ‘I’d like to be doing that’ and sort of made that my aim.”
After also working for Crawford Productions on fast-moving TV dra- mas like Flying Doctors, McLean, now an increasingly experienced gaffer, decided to move to the UK where for the next few years, both here and on a global beat, he began to compile an extensive CV of music videos, com- mercials and features.
Gaffering for John de Borman – “we were known as the terrible two- some” – McLean also got a chance to shoot second camera on films like Small Faces, New Souls and The Passion Of Darkly Noon. “On that we were filming in Canada, and John had to leave so I got to do the last ten days including all the studio effects stuff.”
This seems to have been the final trigger to make the switch to DP. “I was working with a commercials direc- tor who liked to operate but couldn’t light for toffee so he’d get good gaffers in to light for him in order to keep him out of trouble. These were often big, big commercials and I made the move across without seeming to bat an eye- lid. It was like a natural progression.
“It had always been in the back of my mind to become a DP and I wanted
to make the move much earlier but I was a pretty successful gaffer.
“Like all these things, it’s a hard thing to leave when you’re doing real- ly well at the top then dropping back down to be bottom of the other. I’d had a broken marriage which also slowed me down and for monetary reasons it was better to be working solidly than to be struggling for a year or two. Anyway, as anyone will tell you, a good gaffer’s worth his weight in gold.”
He says he had no nerves when invited to light his first feature, the low- budget Soup, written and directed by George Tiffin. It was a comedy about God and The Devil, played respectively by Alan Howard and Trevor Eve, set in a big house in Wimbledon.
Says McLean: “It was rather cere- bral but very well written and, for my part, it was an easy progression. I think it’s probably harder for, say, focus pullers to move up because in all the years I’ve been working I’ve never met a focus puller yet who could light. They spend all their time with the camera, never really watching how the DP lights. In the end it’s usu- ally down to that well-worn path of getting hold of the gaffer to get the DP out of trouble.”
The old de Borman connection was to come in very handy when, in 1996, stuntman and second unit direc- tor Stuart St Paul was planning his fea-
continued on page 4
Photos main: Malcolm McLean; above: a scene from Stuart St Paul’s Devil’s Gate
EXPOSURE • 2 & 3
behind the camera