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BRITISH GAS COMMUNICATIONS
AGENCY: BMP DDB PRODUCTION COMPANY: STARK FILMS DIRECTOR:DOMINIC SAVAGE
I’ve worked with Dominic quite a lot before; in fact, he comes from documen- taries which is my
background too. Our brief was to make the commercials look as realistic as possible, so
“Dominic employed a kind of low-key look. But you have to be aware that when you’re doing a commercial, a low key look shouldn’t be too low-key.
I chose the F-500 stock
because I wanted a bit more
contrast than you might nor-
mally get, and I liked how it
looked. Our big challenge on
this was working with some
very young children, three and
four year olds, who obviously
have a very short attention span. I’d have to light the scene and then let them loose, turning over as much footage as I could, waiting for those special moments when they do some- thing incredible.
In a way, it’s the simplest approach, and that’s what I think I’m good at. But rather than leaving things completely to chance, we lit it through the windows from outside, and kept the equipment down to a minimum. It was very simple really.
We did three commercials. One was with three little girls together in a
Barry Ackroyd BSC tells Anwar Brett
room, one used some exteriors and the other involved a night shoot. They were very simple ads. In the first one the kids were given telephones, and they had to pretend to talk into them.
There was one girl in particular who was fantastic, her nickname was Baba, and she was the one who just gossiped away in that kind of mock adult way on the phone. It was fantas- tic. In the end I just wanted it to look bright, in a kind of commercial way, but also believable and real.
Technically there was nothing else to do really, just to observe, and I sup- pose that’s what I do a lot of on what-
ever I do, whether I’m working with Ken Loach or anyone else; it’s about observing what’s going on and not over-anticipating it.
My job is to prepare the situation with enough light to get the effect and capture the right mood, and not miss anything important. That’s my technique, basically. You’re often ful- filling so many briefs on a commercial that it can be quite tricky. But
it worked out for us here, and they’re nice little commercials because the performances are exceptional. ■
EXPOSURE • 23
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