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THE DP VIEW
SUE GIBSON BSC
Mrs Caldicot starts off being a run-down suburban housewife who gets moved to a desolate place and then leads her troops into a promised land that’s all lovely and glowing. Hopefully the lighting will reflect that transformation.
Interestingly enough, when I read it, I thought this old folks’ home was a bit grim, maybe I should make it look a bit gloomy. But at the end of the day it didn’t work, because it would have made it appear too extreme a situa- tion. I just wanted it to look normal.
Shooting in November, on loca- tion in one of the wettest autumns we’ve had, was a challenge. Getting the light to match was tricky, but you can only do your best and if you don’t get it right you have to hold your hand up. I used 250 daylight and 500 Tungsten. I shot a lot of interiors on the 250 daylight, because most of it was location, and a lot of the time was spent balancing what little daylight we had with the interiors. I knew I needed the fastest possible daylight stock I could get, to make the most of that.
For the change in Pauline’s char- acter and appearance, the hair and make-up departments obviously helped enormously. We also used dif- ferent filters and softer lights on her.
I wasn’t trying to turn her into a glamour model, but I did want her to look like she’d come alive. Hopefully that’s conveyed quite subtly by lighting, and also in the performance. Pauline’s only got to give you a little wink and it’s just magic. She’s wonderful. ■
STAND STAND
in production
comedy. It’s not an issue film, but en route we have a sideways glance about how we treat old people and how we cope with old age. From that point of view it is a fairly spiky look at a situa- tion that actually exists.”
Working in close collaboration with Sharp is cinematographer Sue Gibson BSC, who is charged with over- seeing Mrs Caldicot’s transformation from downtrodden mouse to a woman in full possession of herself.
“It’s nice to see her transforma- tion from being a downtrodden house-
wife to the heroine at the end,” she adds, “but it’s done in a very humor- ous way, which is the main thing that appealed to me really.
“This was one of those scripts which, when you picked it up, you really enjoyed reading. Sometimes you read things and think they could be alright, but you’re not sure about one thing or another.”
“The first time I read the script I immediately thought of Pauline Collins in the lead role,”
adds the director,
“and maybe that’s
something to do
with seeing her as
Shirley Valentine
at the back of
your mind. I think
she’s a real star.”
Adapted by
Malcolm Stone from
Vernon Coleman’s novel, the film was shot over five weeks in the Home Counties late last year. And it appears to mark something of a departure for Ian Sharp, coming after high profile film and TV work notably in the action genre.
“It’s curious,” he says with a smile, “because I came out of BBC Music & Arts and suddenly became an action director. I think the only reason for that was because the first thing I did was Minder and that had a big fight in it. And it was a quite a success.
“Then I got into The Professionals on the back of that, and I had a script that had a ton of action in it. Who Dares Wins followed on from that, so – to my astonishment – I became known as an action director.
“But I always felt I should be able to do anything really. The next thing after that was Robin Hood, and the most recent things I’ve done have been second unit on GoldenEye, and making Tess Of The D’Urbervilles. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag, which I like. I’ve tried
to do all things really, and it’s especial- ly nice to be doing a comedy now.”
Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War will receive its first major screenings at Cannes this year, where Sharp hopes it will be picked up for inter- national distribution.
“Where we’ve gone wrong so often in this country is in trying to do something that attempts to appeal to the world-wide audience. Why not just tell your own story, and
they’ll tell you whether it’s inter- esting or not?
“Nine times out of ten they’ll find
something they can identify with. These things often have a
universal quality
about them, so why not concentrate on
that instead of trying to manufacture something utterly false.
“Making the film ourselves has allowed us to do that, to get on with it and make the film we wanted to make. To tell the story. We haven’t got some studio executives saying ‘Hey, we’d like to see her smiling more’, or asking to see more close ups, because everything is shot in bloody close up these days.
“I really do regret my colleagues not insisting on seeing their rushes projected on to a big screen if they’re making it for cinema. I’ve insisted on that here, and we have looked at the rushes on a screen so we can see them as the audience will see them. That’s terribly important.” ■ ANWAR BRETT
Photos top: Director Ian Sharp; montage and scenes from Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War starring Pauline Collins, John Alderton, Peter Capaldi and Paul Freeman