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IN THE LINE OF FIRE
AN INTERVIEW WITH
ROGER CHAPMAN
C
apturing moving images on film, Roger Chapman can be excused one of those ‘pinch me, this can’t be real’ moments. Unfortunately, the one that comes to mind,
award-winner, describes the daunting experience of dealing with members of the drugs gangs in person.
“I was standing on the street with one of the guys; he had one of those great big silver guns and he was always playing with it. I didn’t think any more of it until I noticed the translator had stopped talking. I asked why, and she said, ‘I don’t want to tell you what they’re saying because it might upset you’.
“I told her that this was actually a really important time to tell me, and it turns out they were asking why they shouldn’t just kill me there and then. Now, I don’t really like dangerous situ- ations, and there I was in one. So I started shouting at this bloke, in English obviously. He couldn’t understand a word I was saying, but it confused him enough to allow us to walk away.”
while doing the job he loves, is not inspired by the delirium of joy so much as a feeling that he’d made a terrible mistake.
“We were doing a series called Cocaine for Channel 4,” he recalls, “and I was putting on this bullet-proof vest before we went on a police raid. I said to the director, ‘Why am I putting this on?’ He said it was in case
I got hit. I said ‘No, no, why am I doing it at all?’”
The bulletproof vest proved useful, as the raid did end in a fierce gun battle. On another occasion, Chapman, a BAFTA nominee and Camera Guild
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