Page 7 - Fujifilm Exposure_34 Curse Of The Were-Rabbit_ok

“I then got a job as a trainee on Nicolas Roeg’s film Insignificance fol- lowed by a job at Samuelson’s which led to my union ticket. I was helped greatly by Michael Samuelson who was a great friend of my father’s and also helped by Harvey Harrison who pushed me forward. He’d say, ‘Come in and be a focus puller... OK, Ben, you’re now operating!’” That in turn led to lighting, first shorts then, in col- laboration with director Malcolm Venville, some commercials.
Before his feature break in 2002 on the quirky British rom-com, Miranda – starring Christina Ricci, John Simm and John Hurt – Davis shot about three years worth of commercials. “Every day you go into work you’re presented with a different challenge dealing with everything from beauty to action - things you’ll probably later encounter on features. The difference is learning continuity over a longer time.”
The gangster thriller Layer Cake really put Davis in the frame. “Like Miranda, it was still quite low budget. Matthew Vaughn hadn’t directed any- thing until then and when I went to see him, he said he wanted his film to look like a big-budget American movie. Quite a tall order when you’re shoot- ing in England with only five million. I asked him what he particularly had in mind and he gave me a copy of Michael Mann’s Heat. That’s what we tried to achieve for him.”
Working with first time feature directors as he has done on Miranda (Marc Munden), Layer Cake and, more recently, Imagine Me & You (Ol Parker), clearly appeals to him because it probably goes to the very heart of a true collaboration.
“I learned on commercials quite early on that just because someone comes up to you with a different idea doesn’t mean it’s the wrong idea.
We’re often in danger of disappearing up our own backsides with our ‘artis- tic values’.”
Intriguingly for someone who’d ideally like to operate all the time, too, he hasn’t actually done so since his debut feature: “I think my time is prob- ably better spent on just the lighting but I always keep a very close eye on the operator and want to be involved in the set-ups which are often the ones the director and I have set out. I don’t want to be left out of anything.”
Davis is currently shooting Stardust, again for Matthew Vaughn, on UK locations and at Pinewood. Adapted from Neil Gaiman’s novel by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, it stars Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller and Charlie Cox. Said Davis: “It’s a big visual effects movie, a fairytale adventure – at last something I can take the children to. After gangsters, rom-com, a teen movie
and psychological horror, this is some- thing else again. I’m really excited”
Citing his own cinematographic heroes as Gordon Willis (“especially for Manhattan and The Godfather”), Christopher Doyle, Roger Deakins and Dante Spinotti, Davis is quite adamant: “I think I have the best job on the unit by a long way. I love my work, can’t get enough of it. The more I do, the more I love it.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Stardust and Young Hannibal were partially originated on 35mm Reala 500D 8592
Fujifilm Motion Picture • The Magazine • Exposure • 5