Page 21 - Fujifilm Exposure_8 Wildlife John Downer_ok

ILY TRADITION
MILY TRADITION
behind the camera
that’s how I came up with the differ- ent colour palettes for each of the characters. It’s been very subtle, I don’t think it will be noticed by peo- ple who see the film, but I flashed the film stock and developed greens for the villains in south London, and cold blues for the West End, more upper middle class characters, and reds for the seedy nightclubs in Soho. I add these to the shadows, and it gives a really nice effect.”
Using older lenses that could, for all anyone knows, have even been used on Get Carter, and so achieving a purposefully dated look to a con- temporary film has to be an impres- sive achievement first time out. But it is quite in keeping with Adam Suschitzky’s quietly confident manner and seemingly unflappable approach to his work.
A regular visitor to film sets since he was a very young boy, it seems never to have been in too much doubt where his future lay. “I would much rather hang out with Chewbacca (on the set of The Empire Strikes back, lit by his father) then go to school.
“It was always assumed that I would become a cameraman from the age of eight,” he laughs. “But for a long time I tried to think very hard of doing something else. I did for a while have ambitions to be a war photographer of all things, and I did some reportage and had some stuff for Newsweek. But I soon realised that it was a very iso- lated, lonely career.
“But I got a job doing unit photog- raphy on a film that my father pho- tographed, Un Homme et deux femmes. I went with him to France for eight weeks, ate the finest food in Europe, drank the finest wines and took the pictures. I suddenly realised that I’d been kidding myself all those years, that of course I wanted to be
involved in cinema as a collaborator, not on my own as an isolated figure.
“So I began as a trainee and clapper loader, and began working my way up. I was a trainee on Naked Lunch for David Cronenberg. I went on to load on The Browning Version, and Immortal Beloved with Gary Oldman in Prague.
Then, after doing that for three years, I applied to the National Film & TV School.”
After graduation in 1997, Suschitzky went on to work on short films, commercials and documentaries including Holiday Romance, show- cased at last year’s prestigious Geneva
International Film Festival. Indeed, some of the shorts have been prize winners while one of the documen- taries, Lockerbie Remembered, drew plaudits when it was screened on Channel Four before Christmas.
“My fascination with documen- tary remains,” he adds. “I love interac- tion with real people in real environ- ments, and in contrast to working on a feature film with lots of people involved, you go in with a camera and a sound recordist and director, and you make a story out of the reality. That’s very challenging and it does inform, to a certain extent, what I do in feature films.”
His heroes among modern cam- eramen include fellow NFTS graduate Roger Deakins. “I also admire the likes of Juan Ruiz-Anchia, who did a superb film called Naked Tango. Very film noir, much harder light. I’m impressed by very different styles and approach- es. For example, Darius Khondji’s work on City of Lost Children and Delicatessen is superb, beautifully tex- tured.”
And then of course he will point to Wolfgang (Theatre Of Blood, The Horse’s Mouth, Ulysses etc) and Peter Suschitzky (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dead Ringers, Mars Attacks etc) arguably his two greatest influences. What will be his feelings when all three sit down to see Out of Depth for the first time?
“Funnily enough I’ll probably be least nervous of all when I watch it with them,” he smiles, “because they’ve both been so incredibly supportive and encouraging, and have been really excit- ed for me. I couldn’t have asked for more support from my family in what I’m doing.” ■ ANWAR BRETT
Out Of Depth was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
Photos: top: Suschitzky shoots Holiday Romance; above: A scene from Lockerbie Remembered