Page 23 - Fujifilm Exposure_17 Africa_ok

behind the camera
THE PROBLEM
SOLVER An interview with Damian Bromley
T he bit I hate is the run-up to a film and all the planning. I’m happiest once I’m
on set and we’re shooting. It’s only then that I feel at home,” says Damian Bromley. “I know the lead up to a film is part of the job but I have to say I find it boring. I would always rather turn up
and do it. I think I am very grounded once I’m on a film set. Sometimes there is a location which I haven’t seen and you have to walk in and do it. It’s instant problem-solving, which is perhaps more of a documentary thing.”
He was talking a week before he was due to step behind the camera on a drama series for Hallmark TV, and since it entailed a 17-week shoot he should be kept happy for a while. The American company is making Hidden City, a story about homeless people in London with a cast that includes The Full Monty’s Paul Barber, for satellite TV.
The Liverpool-born cinematographer had recently finished filming the comedy-drama, Reinventing Eddie, on the Wirral, his second fea- ture collaboration with director Jim Doyle.
It was at Plymouth College of Art where Bromley started out in 1988 by taking an HND in film and TV, directing, shooting and editing sever- al short films. His second year film, A Killing, won the Arriflex Award for Best Cinematography and the Steenbeck Award for Editing at the 1990 Fujifilm Scholarship Awards.
He then worked in London as a camera assis-
tant for three or four years on a variety of produc- tions, including the infamous George Michael Freedom 90 video, a largely forgotten film by Ken Russell, Prisoners of Honour, featuring Richard Dreyfuss and Oliver Reed, the Juliette Binoche- Ralph Fiennes version of Wuthering Heights, and two months in America on Slaughter Of The Innocents, starring Scott Glenn.
“I was very lucky because I was working for a supremely talented cinematographer, Mike Southon, from whom I learned a lot. It was the best thing that could have happened to me,” says Bromley.
Then in 1993 he started an MA in Film and TV at the Royal College of Art, specialising in cine- matography. Bromley thought it would provide a fast track towards fulfilling his ambitions of becoming a DP, but in retrospect it didn’t quite work out that way.
“I just didn’t want to spend the next 10 or 15 years working my way up the ladder. At the time I couldn’t see it was going to happen for me if I had to work through the ranks. But I feel the RCA did- n’t deliver for me, for the person I was. Basically there was a lack of control - which I think has been addressed now - and I think it was two years I could have put to better use.”
Thelegacywasthat afterwardshehada quiet period where nothing very much happened before he turned to corporate work, such as Quantel Editbox and Sony Playstation.
“That led me to meet Jim Doyle and we worked together on corporate jobs for about a
continued over