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KATE STARK
“The old film noir look was probably the thing that had attracted me to the idea of how lighting really affects the mood of the film.”
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“I started Hardware, my first film, as a loader and ended up doing the last leg of the film in Morocco as a focus puller, all in six weeks! Quite nail-biting.” This ballsy behaviour clearly impressed her two mentors with whom she continued to collabo- rate for some years after.
As is her way, it wasn’t too long before Stark was lighting her own pro- mos, for such names as Tricky, Morcheeba, Leftfield and... Rolf Harris? “Oh God, I thought I’d man- aged to keep that one well under wraps. I remember the producer was too embarrassed to tell everybody what we were doing, so he told them that it was for a German techno
band called Harris Rolf. Hey,
we’ve all got bills to pay.”
This was quite a buzzy time when Brit promos were where the real innovation was; a lot of it got copied on commercials but with much bigger budgets.
Around this time, Stark also teamed up with her father, ad agency whiz-turned-director Jeff Stark in 1998, when she lit Desserts, starring Ewan MacGregor. “It was his first short film, which did quite well, I think it won the Soho Shorts.” In fact, the film did indeed win a number of awards, including a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1999.
“He’d been away since I was
20, living in the States and sail-
ing round the world with my
mum. So when my dad decided
he was going to come back to
England and direct, it was a bit
like treading on my turf. I’d
worked my way up the hard way. There’s so much nepotism in this industry – I just knew what it would look like. That said, he is a great direc- tor to work with, and we also have pretty similar tastes.”
In 2000, encouraged by Ricky Miller of ELC Lighting, she started up a rental business at Bow Studios, sadly short lived. “I’d owned gear with a business partner for quite a while and it got to the stage where if we bought any more we might as well start a camera rental company. So we did! It did pretty well but it wasn’t a
nice time to be in the industry. It was very competitive and everyone was trying to buy each other out. It’s all gone to Take 2 now, who did the film”
“The film” in question is Clubbed, born out of a collaboration started in 1997 when she first teamed up with director Neil Thompson on his short film My Stigmata Hurts, before recon- vening three years later on Taxi!, origi- nated on Fujifilm.
“I like Fujifilm, I’ve used it quite a lot”, says Stark, which may explain why she returned to this trusted stock for her first foray into feature films. It seems to have stood her in good stead for vari- ous issues that came up on Clubbed, an
If the feeling of deja vu started with the SR3s from Take 2, it contin- ued with a studio location spitting dis- tance from Stark’s former business residence. “We were filming in a ware- house just outside Three Mills Studios. I think they were demolishing it the day after we finished filming so there was absolutely no going back to get pick-ups or anything.”
Between 2001 and 2007, lighting only a few shorts and mainly working in commercials while concentrating on being Mum to a baby boy, she seemed unmoved by the task ahead, proving that those “flying by the seat of her pants” early days were not just a phase.
“They built a huge night- club set in there which was the art department’s piece de resist- ance. We had a huge disco rig with Mac 500s and an enor- mous mirror ball. It all had to be balanced as it was suspend- ed from the steel roof. We had to build a lot of lighting into the set. We used quite a range of stocks. It was mostly the ETERNA 500T for the nightclub and the Super F-64D for the exteriors. We were shooting on Super 16, then going the DI route blown up to 35mm.”
If her earlier dealings with lighting technicians were unpleasant - “I used to get com- ments like ‘you couldn’t lift that; you couldn’t even lift your own handbag” - she shows no hint of it now, having teamed up with trusted gaffer/friend Russell Farr whom she refers to affec- tionately as “a cheeky chappie”.
Then, of course, notes Stark, “there was the “gusseted wedge,
Russ’s improved version of the poly wedge and frame, which was a favourite soft directional key light.
It might even get a credit on the film if Russell gets his way.”
So after a hectic Nineties and a quieter Noughties, does Clubbed signal Stark’s return to the brouha- ha? “I’d love to do more films, maybe, but not for a little while, though. It’s a bit too difficult juggling that and a two-year-old, during Clubbed I hardly saw him at
Eighties-set crime thriller co-starring Shaun Parkes, Colin Salmon, Mel Raido, Neil Morrissey and Maxine Peake.
“One of the lead actors turned up with completely bleach-blond hair and it could have been quite tricky because another lead had jet black skin, one more mid-tone guy and one very pale chap - so we had a complete tonal range there. Shaun said to me afterwards, ‘Yes, there have been some films where I haven’t quite been there’, because he is so dark. And they had him head-to-toe in black leather gear as well.”
4 • Exposure • The Magazine• Fujifilm Motion Picture
all, so that was hard. I just want to spend a bit of time with him.”
Ever determined to follow her chosen path, Stark was last heard of far away from even a domestic work- light, camping out in the wilds with her young son. ■ NATASHA BLOCK
Clubbed, which was originated on 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8673 and Super F-64D 8622, will be released nationwide in Spring 2008