Page 9 - Fujifilm Exposure_16 Bob The Builder_ok

THE DP VIEW
We have a lot of night scenes, both interiors and exteriors, on this extraor- dinary location and I especially wanted to get away from the usual moonlight thing where everything’s blue.
Instead of that I’ve been using lights from ground level giving the effect of sodium floodlights. When we see windows at night - and there are quite a few scenes where there aren’t any lights on in the building – there’s this nice low orange glow feel to it. Which is, if you like, at the totally opposite end of the spectrum from blue moonlight.
Also instead of lighting inside the building, we have often been lighting from outside. Normally you’d have an 18k, HMI or MSR to match daylight or, if you use one of them high up at night on a cherrypicker, it gives you the effect of moonlight.
So I’m doing it the opposite way. When we’re near the building, which is the case with a lot of the exteriors, I’ve been using Chrome Orange – a coloured gel you put on the lights which gives everything a warm glow at night in contrast with the cold, eerie starkness of the building. I like to think it looks pretty classy.” ■
PETER THORNTON
KEY
in production
KEY
“This piece first started when somebody approached me and asked if I had ‘an idea for a really low budget script?’ I said I was no longer interested in com- missions or options and would only write a script if the money was in place. Of course, the money wasn’t in place, but I liked the resulting script which, in fact, contains a germ of the story Peter Walker first optioned
– so nothing’s ever wasted.
“I then had three option offers on
this, but since I had a little bit of money to give me a breathing space,
I thought I’d try and uncover some of the mystery about not getting things produced. Once I’d finally managed to get the ball rolling, my co-producers The Spice Factory, said they’d help me, taking advantage of the tax breaks that are now in place.
“I still had to raise the money and found most of it myself. After that I simply couldn’t bear the idea that hav- ing also written the project I’d then have to hand it over to someone else to direct.
“As far as selling myself was con- cerned, I had, I believe, two aces: the first was the script and, though I say it myself, it’s a cracking thriller, with lots of twists. The other is that there aren’t a lot of films like it being made – certainly not one with such good roles for actresses.
“Of course, I fell on my feet with the casting. Sophie Ward is just breath- taking and Sophia Myles (Nicholas Nickleby, Mansfield Park, From Hell, The Abduction Club), though only 20, is already on her way to stardom.”
Ward admits that the whole enter- prise has been “a massive learning curve. It’s made me very interested in the producing side, along with financ- ing and sales. I’ve worked so hard to put this all together I’m never going back to just touting myself as a director and/or writer.
“Having so many nearly things happening is just not satisfying. Getting this going was a huge boost. Waiting around for other people to do things for you is simply no longer what I’m prepared to do,” he says, defiantly. ■ QUENTIN FALK
For his part, Thornton, who recently re-located to near London from his long-time home in South Wales, is delighted to be entrusted with such responsibility. “I think I can say this is the first time that I’ve been
director of photography in the truest sense of the words. As it’s his first film, Merlin is concentrating on his script and the performances so leav- ing much of the technical side to me.”
Operating as well as lighting on Super 16mm (to be blown later to 35mm), Thornton, an award-winning veteran of films and TV (notably Mind To Kill), has the added bonus of extra friendly faces round him – like his gaffer son Mark and daughter Emma on video assist.
Finally getting on to the floor as a director is in some ways coming full circle for Merlin Ward, who’d started out as an actor. His screen work ranged from the old Crossroads to The Stud before he finally called it a day in 1984 before the camera after playing, ironi- cally, a film director opposite Trevor Howard in ABC TV’s The Love Boat.
He’d always tried to write scripts and his big break seemed to materi- alise when he had a piece of work optioned by then-prolific British film- maker Peter Walker who also then commissioned Ward to pen an adapta-
tion of a James Hadley Chase novel. Sadly for Ward and his immediate prospects, Walker suddenly decided to quit mak- ing movies.
“It was particularly disap- pointing,” Ward recalls, “because I’d spent more than three years working with him. So I then had to start earning my bread-and-butter as an advertising copywriter.”
By the turn of the 90s, Ward had begun again to focus on a screenwriting
career: “In some ways I’ve been very lucky because virtually every script I’ve written has either been optioned or commissioned. Unfortunately noth- ing’s been actually produced which is incredibly frustrating.