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SCULPTING WITH LIGHT An interview with John de Borman BSC
O n John de Borman’s latest film Hideous Kinky, it was the sensual North Africa reflected by Matisse which helped determine the eventual “look.” For Photographing Fairies, German Expressionism and a lighting
effect perfected in an earli- er period by Vermeer provided a two- fold inspiration. Both Small Faces and Trojan Eddie are also shamelessly
infused with painterly references.
A comparative latecomer to the ranks of feature film cameraman, de Borman, 44, is making up for lost time with a series of quite striking assign- ments which perhaps help betray his art school background and an earlier career which saw him professionally
sculpting until he was almost thirty. Ironically, his most successful film to date - and he has a small percentage to prove it - has been The Full Monty, “perhaps the least visual film I’ve done. Purposely.” he admits. “Unlike some of my other films, The Full Monty was truly about the characters and not
about the look of the place they were at. We felt that side of it should be very underplayed. We put some colour into it where they were practicing but otherwise it was quite classically shot without cin- ematography intruding in any way, shape or form.
“I have to confess there were times when I had to pull myself back after thinking ‘wouldn’t this be a wonderful wide shot?’ Yes, I had to restrain myself and make sure I just kept with the characters,” he smiles.
Born in Paris but raised in England, bilingual de Borman inherited his father’s keen interest in home moviemaking. “I started from an early age doing Super 8 films - just the usual stuff, family, holidays and so on - and had my little splicing machine so I could do things in the editing. I also tried to flare the lens and put filters in front.” At Stowe, he and friends built a dark room and formed a society while in the holidays he’d earn
cash assisting photographers which gave him, he reckons “a good early understanding of emul- sions, lighting and photography generally.”
But perhaps the greatest influence on the teenager was Stowe’s art school which deter- mined him on a path which eventually led to
series. First there was Music In Time which took him to the Eastern bloc and then, more spectacu- larly, Spice Of Life which proved a passport to everywhere from China to South America.
“They were wonderful experiences,” de Borman recalls happily. “One week you’d be living with the Maharajah of Jaipur, eating his food and sleeping in ruby-encrusted beds. The next week, you’d get up at four in the morning and sleep on dung floors in a remote fishing village. I was a focus puller by the end of all that and they even let me do some operating on
the second unit.”
When de Borman finally returned
to England from his extensive travels, he felt he was ready to be a camera- man. As well as having a huge folio of photographs, he got jobs doing com- mercials, promos and television series but his primary interest was now to break into features.
“Of course I found it was very cliquey. I was slightly older than most, I came from art school so didn’t have the conventional industry background.
There was no nepotism possible because I really didn’t know anybody,” he explains.
Time then for a little DIY. With Anders Palm, an aspiring writer-director friend who had £30,000 to spare, the pair decided to make their own horror movie using hand-me-down stuff from Hellraiser as well some of that film’s lowlier personnel who now could also enjoy a bump up in grade, albeit in very modest circumstances. The result was The Hand Of Death, aka Unmasked Part 25, aka Jackson’s Back before finally being titled Friday The 14th in which incarnation it scooped first prize at the rather prestigious Avoriaz Festival.
According to de Borman it made a bit of money with which the team made another film Deadline followed by New Souls by which time their budget had soared to almost a $1 million. “With those and another film I made called Medium Rare I had at least done enough to show
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Chelsea Art School where he earned a BA (Hons) in sculpture. “I modelled, carved and did things on glass trying to make a living, had exhibitions but began to discover, from my point of view anyway, that fine art wasn’t what people seemed to appre- ciate so much anymore. The plastic arts appeared to be the best art form to be ‘heard’ or in which to tell stories. I now found that while on the one hand I wanted to tell stories, I also wanted to photo- graph them.”
So he decided to quit the seclusion of the art studio for the wide-open spaces of the film indus- try, starting first at an optical house in Wardour Street moving on into rostrum work. It was, how- ever, genuinely wide-open spaces which properly sparked de Borman’s new career path. Still single and anxious to travel widely, the fledgling clapper- loader embarked on a colourful three-year odyssey thanks to two television documentary
Photo: On location in North Africa shooting Hideous Kinky