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MOTION PICTURE & PRO-VIDEO behind the camera
LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID JOHNSON BSC
I t’s not just about how you light something. It is also, argues
David Johnson, about how you behave on set, how you relate to everyone else on a film crew; in fact, how you are. This intriguing, very personal
observation about the cinematograph- er’s modus operandi comes as Johnson is ranging across his career which, in more recent years has encompassed films like Hilary And Jackie, An Ideal Husband, Resident Evil and, lately, the $65 million block- buster, Alien Vs Predator.
He casts his mind back to the time when he was working in a very lowly capacity on a commercial at the old Lee Studios. “There were probably fifty people on the floor at the time, and this really well-known director called up to a guy in the rigging by name, asking if he could move some- thing perhaps four inches to the right. And it was done just like that.
“I remember thinking: that’s how you do it. You can do anything you want, as long as you know whom to ask. The point is, you’ve got this team of professionals on the set and they’re always willing to work. They always want to show you how good they are at their job.”
Johnson has most recently finished shooting On A Clear Day (made at, one suspects, a fraction of AVP’s cost), a very British tale of native endeavour, starring craggy Peter Mullan as a disil- lusioned 55-year-old Glaswegian who decides to swim the Channel.
It’s the latest collaboration between Johnson and director (also life partner, to use that quaint phrase) Gaby Dellal, who’s making her feature debut after a series of respected short films includ- ing Football, Toy Boys and Rosebud, one of Sky TV’s popular Tube Tales.
Johnson has absolutely no prob- lem about working with Dellal whom he respects as “ an ambitious, bright, dedicated and intelligent” filmmaker.
In fact, he emphasises, “it’s a pleas- ure to work with her. Yes, we have a few rows and it can be difficult for the crew. It’s mainly difficult because we tend to work very hard and very fast.”
It turns out there’s a nice symme- try to all this because Johnson’s moth- er and father were also work partners (“and they survived it”) in Nottingham, where she was an embroidery designer and he helped her run a business. His grandparents were tailors, too, so the rag-trade was in his roots.
But that wasn’t to be for him. “My parents used to get Vogue so my only
access to the glamorous lifestyle was through the photographs in that maga- zine. When I left school I wanted to work in photography basically because I’d been inspired by what I’d seen in Vogue.”
The reality of the photograph- er’s studio in London where he ended up as an assistant at 18 was somewhat different. “I did every- thing: got there at 7am, opened up the studio, prepared the set, put the lights in place, loaded the cam- era, processed the film, did the printing, made the tea, cleared up the studio and then, finally, locked up the studio. I quite enjoyed it but ultimately l found it very frustrating because it was a lot of work for just one shot, and it didn’t move.”
Cast adrift in the world of the three-day week in the early 70s, Johnson realised by now that he really did want to be the man-behind-the- camera so scoured the Yellow Pages for film company leads only to discov- er the usual Catch-22 about union tick- ets. Eschewing any idea of “going to the labs”, he finally popped into Samuelsons, which he’d passed on the bus. It turned out there was a job going as an assistant battery charger and “could I start Monday?”
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Photo main: David Johnson BSC (Photo Quentin Falk); above l-r: Marina Fois, Henri Talau and Bulle Ogier in Claude Duty’s Bienvenue Au Gîte (Photo © Jérôme Plon); A scene from Alien Vs Predator; Shooting On A Clear Day
Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video • Exposure • 5