Page 26 - Fujifilm Exposure_16 Bob The Builder_ok

SEAN BOBBITT
continued from page 22
rewarding or even chal-
lenging it proved a brilliant introduction to the indus-
try. I got to meet a lot of
cameramen and travel
round the world first class. Unfortunately I did tend to fall over and on one occasion, at an OPEC meeting, I managed to get the umbili- cal wrapped round the throat of a Nigerian prince. Cable management was never my strong point.”
If there was a career ‘game plan’ it was certainly not to remain a sound man. Still harbouring a desire to direct and plagued then as now by a low boredom threshold, Bobbitt finally managed to switch to news camera- man via corporates. From days out- side Downing Street to nights at The Ministry of Defence during the Falklands War, it was a short if decid- edly hazardous leap into frontline duty in later war zones like Beirut.
“Looking back on it now, it seems difficult to believe we used to do what we actually did. If you go to a war zone, and espe-
cially if you’re
working for a
US network, the
one thing they
want from you
is ‘bang bang’.
To get ‘bang
bang’ you have
to be where
people are
shooting and to
get the best
‘bang bang’ you
have to get
where the shooting is worst. At the time it didn’t seem to be a strange thing to be doing... until people start- ed dying round you.
“On a purely technical level it taught you the importance of speed and accuracy which are things I’ve
tried to maintain throughout my career. The average news spot was 30 seconds to a minute-and-a-half maxi- mum. In that you’d often have to tell an extremely complicated story, so it really honed your story-telling skills.”
This form of news-gathering took its inevitable toll “physically and emo- tionally. I always told myself that once I stopped crying, that was the time to get out of the game.”
Following an extremely fertile peri- od of long-form documentaries, Bobbitt finally got his feature ‘break’ with Wonderland, Michael Winterbottom’s gritty and quite bleak ensemble tale of extended family life over a long weekend in South London.
“Michael was specifically looking for a documentary cameraman. It was an amazing experience and the steep-
“This was probably the perfect film with which to make the transition. It was all shot in existing locations with the public around. And there were very strict rules, such as no visi- ble lights in a public place. So all we did was to uprate the existing lighting and heighten things like Kinoflos which, if they appeared in shot, should look just like a fixture.
“There was no slate. Shots would begin and end with Michael just saying ‘Okay’. The camera was free to move where it wanted as were the actors in a kind of huge
multi-dimen-
sional jigsaw
puzzle.”
Bobbitt used mainly
the Fuji 500 on
Wonderland
(shot on
Super16 then
blown to 35mm)
– “what it gave
was a fairly
unique texture and grain structure which I think added to the dramatic content of the film” – as he did later, along with other Fuji stocks, on Nicholas Nickleby.
“The idea was to be ‘true to the original Dickens’ so we were going for a classic look. Fuji does have a roman- tic feel to it, the stocks in general are slightly softer than other people’s. The ideas of the designer were primarily painterly, specifically Chardin and Vermeer; chiaroscuro lighting with dark muted backgrounds, a brownish- reddish tonal range.
“I mixed and matched individual stocks for circumstance and situation.
Given the time and the budget we didn’t want on, say, night-time exteriors, to do an
awful lot of big lighting. The 500 works fantastically well in low-light situations and in underexposing also handles itself well. Even when it starts to break down, it does so in an interesting way.
“For daylight exteriors, I wanted to differentiate Yorkshire from London so shot a lot of that with the 125. In the end, I guess we used just about all the stocks, depending on the location and its emotional content.”
Ever keen to make feature films, Bobbitt is also talking to artist Steve
ness of the learning curve was mind- boggling. But I was ready for it by then. You can spend only so many years being reactive to events. I found I wanted to be more creative, to try and have some control over what was going on.
McQueen about collaborating on a new installation. If he’s not working – and when he’s not, he switches off completely - you’ll probably find him travelling or fly fishing.
As far as he’s concerned, a river runs through it. “Always,” he laughed. ■ QUENTIN FALK
Nicholas Nickleby, to be aired on ITV at Easter, was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative; Wonderland was partly originated on Fuji
Photos: Nicholas Nickleby; Bobbitt with a bigun; Chunky Monkey; Josephine Butler and Douglas Henshaw in The Lawless Heart; (both photos Nick Wall)
EXPOSURE • 24