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“Cinematography is a lifelong pre-occupation. I still learn a lot every time I go into a new project whether it’sTVora feature film.”
in documentary. It was a seven month shoot and it threw me in at the deep end. I had to be fast and precise yet the idea was to try and film it with the discipline of a feature film. It helped me establish a working pattern that I’ve used ever since,” he explained.
Fox was the first of some five col- laborations with Goddard which had theirvariousups-and-downs.The “downs” included the notorious antics of volatile newlyweds Madonna and Sean Penn on the feature Shanghai Surprise – “it was meant to be a come- dy and our stars tried to do drama which was to the detriment of the genre,” Vincze recalled, diplomatically
– while the most significant “up” had to be Kennedy, which went on to win the Best Drama Series BAFTA award.
Tracing JFK’s story from the begin- ning of his Presidential campaign to that fateful day in Dallas (recreated brilliantly in Richmond, Virginia), it was an epic of 80s British television.
Yet, said Vincze, “when Jim first phonedmeuptoaskmetodoit,I turned it down. I told him that, emo- tionally, I didn’t think I was ready to do it. I was still in Hungary at the time of his death and I remember it affect- ing me hugely. Jim said, ‘Oh, bull- shit...’ and after he rang again the next day, I said, ‘Yes’.
“I think I grew up during that series. I had to deal with a highly unionised New York crew and we had a con- siderable budget. I was still learning my craft and the experience matured me immensely.
“We had a great responsibility to the subject matter which is why Jim and I did a huge amount of research going through all the archive material and pictures relating to everything from the inside of the White House to the character
of Hoover. Jim, typically methodical and thorough, influenced me in a very big way. I owe a great deal to him; he is part of my life.”
Along with the fictitious UK flip- side of Kennedy in the gritty political miniseries A Very British Coup, Vincze’s work has run the gamut of comedy (Jeeves & Wooster, Heavy Weather) to drama (Scrubbers, Shooting The Past) via classy soap (The Camomile Lawn, A Woman of Substance).
As soon as he’d finished filming the satirically comic The Mystic Masseur, set on Trinidad in the 50s and co-starring Om Puri, Aasif Mandvi, Jimi Mistry, Sanjeev Bhaskar, James Fox and Ayesha Dharker, it was back to Beaconsfield where, over the past 18 months, and with careful re-thinking, restructuring and re-writing, he has helped formulate a proper post-gradu- ate MA course. Thanks to his active encouragement, he is particularly proud that the NFTS is now so widely embraced by the industry as a whole.
“No longer is it so possible to makeyourwayupthroughthe grades, therefore film education is an increasingly important part of film life,” he emphasised.
But can you really teach cine- matography? Aren’t you simply born with it?
“It’s somewhere in the middle,”
said Vincze. “ You can teach cine- matographers just as much as you can teach painters. Yes, it has to be in their blood but they must also be able to look at life through a zoom lens, as it were. They must also have a story- telling ability.
“Cinematography is a lifelong pre- occupation. I still learn a lot every time I go into a new project whether it’s TV or a feature film. I try to approach it as if I’dneverdoneitbeforesothere’sa constant freshness. What I say to my students is, ‘You may finish the course after two years but your learning curve never stops.’” ■ QUENTIN FALK
The Mystic Masseur
was originated on Fujicolor
Photos top: Madonna and Sean Penn in Shanghai Surprise (courtesy Moviestore Collection); above: Ernest Vincze on location with The Mystic Masseur