Page 14 - Fujifilm Exposure_17 Africa_ok

continued from page 10
ing for Granada’s chief cameraman Ray Goode on a six-part conspiracy thrillercalledWipeOut Igotthe chance to take over when he had a fortnight’s holiday. Happily everyone seemed pleased with my work. After that I still had to bite the bullet and go back to what I was doing before. But it made me realise what I really wanted to do in the future.
“This was also a time when the staff-based situation at many TV com- panies was beginning to fall apart. Freelance cameramen were constant competition – almost unfair competi- tion, in a way, because it was somehow felt that they were better than any staff man could be. Eventually I persuaded someone I could do a whole film and I finally got my chance on one of the Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes series. I had done three or four as an operator anddidthelastseveneverasDP.”
Possibly to prepare their staff for the brave new world of freelancing, Granada would let them work outside on a sort of loan-out basis. So Hallows travelled to the North East on a series of Catherine Cooksons.
The official break with Granada finally came when with Coronation Street about to undergo a major revamp, Hallows was asked to be part
of the new look.
“As a film cameraman I didn’t real-
ly see myself necessarily being the right person to be involved in multi-camera shooting. Funnily enough I had worked in the past on Corrie both in the studio and doing film inserts. It would have beenlikegoingbackwardsformeand this seemed the right moment to go freelance –although I was frightened to
death at the prospect.”
He needn’t have worried because,
as he admits, his feet didn’t touch the ground after that. He has worked on the first or subsequent series of end- less episodic TV like The Vice, Dalziel And Pascoe, Kavanagh QC, Badger, InspectorRebusandAtHomeWith The Braithwaites. The first time he originated a series and then had an
opportunity to return behind the cam- era has been on the BBC’s popular DownToEarth,nowinproductionon a second batch. Which, of course, brings us back to Pauline Quirke and that feature “break”.
“Shooting Arthur’s Dyke took me back a few years. In TV you used to shoot for a print. All your negative would be printed on to print stock and the print stock would then go through the Telecine machine. They’ve gone away from that now in TV and shoot for Telecine.
“Doing the feature was like going back to shooting for print. And I had to think quite differently. There’s a massive shorthand available to you in Telecine transfer that’s not available to you in print.
“I remember reading an inter- view with the DP of O Brother Where ArtThou? -thefirstfeature,I believe, to go the Telecine route - in which he said what a wonderful tool Telecine was for the cinematograph- er. I smiled because that tool’s been available in television for quite a few years,” said Hallows. ■ QUENTIN FALK
Arthur’s Dyke and At Home With The Braithwaites were originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
DOUG HALLOWS
“Doing the feature was like going back to shooting for print. And I had to think quite differently.”
Photos top: Doug Hallows on Badger; above (l-r): crew tracking the next shot; on the set of At Home With The Braithwaites; John Hannah in Inspector Rebus; a still and Hallows’ crew on Arthur’s Dyke
EXPOSURE • 12