Page 8 - Fujifilm Exposure_29 Trial & Retribution_ok

DAVID JOHNSON BSC
“The more I discovered about cameras, the more I was captivated by the magic of the machinery. I used to think cameramen were magicians.”
continued from previous page
This obviously helped accelerate some sort of epiphany. “When I first got there, I remember seeing this Eclair NPR 16mm camera with a Cooke Varotal 5:1 lens, and it had a perfec- tone crystal controlled motor, cutting edge at the time. And I thought, ‘this is what I want to do. This is my machine.’
“I had a great time learning about all the pieces of equipment. The more I discovered about cameras, the more I was captivated by the magic of the machinery. I used to think cameramen were magicians. John Alcott, with whom I worked occasionally on com- mercials, even looked a bit like a wiz- ard with his eyebrows all twirled up.”
It wasn’t too long before he was able to go out on film crews as a clap- per loader and he recalls what may have been his first feature assignment – behind locked doors at Shepperton on Ridley Scott’s Alien. He and Richard Garland were the loaders while Tony Gaudioz, Adrian Biddle and Colin Davidson were the main unit focus pullers.
“That was a great experience. It was like living on a space ship and it was a completely closed set. Secrecy was paramount because they didn’t want anyone to see the creature. Yes, I was present for the ‘chestburster’ scene. One of the actresses, Veronica Cartwright, really didn’t know it was going to happen and let out a scream. Most of my time, though, was spent between the loading room, the cap- puccino machine and studio floor.”
The process of graduating from those humble beginnings to when, nearly 25 years later, he would find himself on massive sets in Prague co- ordinating sometimes up to nine full operational cameras on the latest in 20th Century Fox’s Alien franchise proved fascinating, inevitably halting and often quite lucky.
There was the Houdini-themed music video, his first, which he shot in New York on black-and-white reversal film stock for a friend. As if that wasn’t lucky break enough, it got better when, back in London, Peter Care, per- haps the hottest guy in music videos at the time, saw the result in post-pro- duction and hired him on the spot.
More than a hundred promos on, Johnson now reflects, “they’re great for a cameraman because there aren’t too many rules and regulations about how they should look, so it’s an ideal place to experiment.”
Later, while on holiday he bumped into Tony McGhee, stills photogra- pher-turned-director and that started Johnson off in commercials. As he tells it, the same kind of serendipity would eventually result in his feature film ‘break’ on Oliver Parker’s Othello. A chance meeting with a producer led to three short films and a firm friend- ship with Parker.
But by the time Othello, co-starring Laurence Fishburne and Ken Branagh, was in the offing, not even his DP credits on Anand Tucker’s Saint-Ex for the BBC and The Yob, a Comic Strip film, seemed to cut much ice. It was felt that Parker, on his own feature debut, would probably benefit from a more experienced cameraman. Finally Johnson got to plead his case with producer, David Barron.
“And he gave me the job. I was speechless. I knew it was, like the luck- iest break anyone could ever get because this was a $10 million produc- tion, being shot in Bracciano and Venice. I had a fantastic gaffer, Terry Potter, who sadly died last year, and a really good operator, Martin Kenzie.
“It was great having David as pro- ducer because he knew the dilemma we were all in – neither Ollie nor I hav- ing made a proper full-length feature
before. He took a huge risk and I’ll be eternally grateful to him. Mind you, it was like being on a knife-edge all the time and I hardly got any sleep at all during the production.”
Johnson worked again with Parker (An Ideal Husband) just as he would with Tucker (Hilary And Jackie) as well as, even more pyrotechnically, with Paul WS Anderson on The Sight, a supernatural thriller, for Sky TV and the FX Network, and Resident Evil, a big-screen version of the video game.
Third in a trio together and most lavish of all, is AVP on which, com- ments Johnson, “you realise from the outset you’re making a product rather than creating an exciting journey into the complete unknown.”
Or, “feeding a franchise” may be another way of putting it. Johnson’s realistic enough to know it’ll look good on the CV, and anyway he found the experience very rewarding and, in the Czech Republic for months on end, not too far from home.
The altogether smaller scale, French-produced, comedy Bienvenue Au Gite (aka Bed And Breakfast) filmed earli- er this year was another kind of experi- ence – “generous spirited”, he calls it.
Before starting, he was keen to try and fix up a stock test because of exte- riors in steamy Provence and interiors in Paris as well as all sorts of age groups involved to find the most suit- able film to cover all bases.
“They brought in Bulle Ogier [she’s 65] specially and I used the same light source and different film stocks on her. We did them side by side. I looked at them in the labs and really couldn’t tell the difference. Then I got a pair of scissors and cut a bit of film out and looked at it in a slide projector.”
And so they went on testing until Johnson came to the final conclusion that Fujifilm was much softer on skin tones – “more contrasty in the way the old lady’s face read.” He ended up using mainly F-500T and then, for the exteriors in hot sunshine, the F-64D.
“I’ve always been a believer that there’s more than one way to crack a nut. The important thing is to have confidence in the product before you use it. What was really interesting was that by doing that film stock test I was able to get the most pleasing look for that actress at that particular time.”
6 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video