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CHRIS SEAGER BSC
“As a DP you’re bound to make mistakes every day but that’s how you begin to learn – and then to push the limits”
continued from previous
Eventually, Seager made it back to TV Centre on one of the 18 camera crews there and, as film made a comeback and rapid- ly expanded, he got, after four years or so, his longed-for attach- ment to the film department.
In 1984 he was “made up” to DP on one of the 65 film crews operating out of the BBC with his first “big break” in Light Entertainment shooting inserts for popular comedy shows like Only Fools And Horses, Ever Decreasing Circles and Just Good Friends. Drama soon followed with work on a whole range of series and one- off dramas, from Bergerac and Truckers to Ashenden and They Never Slept.
Now, seven years after his final exit from the BBC – accelerated by what he, as many others of his ilk, considered the stultifying notion of Producer Choice – he couldn’t be happier.
He is currently bubbling with delight at his current collaboration with Gormenghast director Andy Wilson on the ITV two-parter, Lenny Blue, sequel to the acclaimed drama Tough Love.
“At first, I thought, ‘Oh no, not another cop thing...’ but, like me, Andy had just come off a big period thing and for both of us the idea of doing something contemporary was brilliant.
“Then Andy said to me, ‘let’s try and do something completely different with it... I don’t want to see a track or a dolly on the set. Let’s look at Soderbergh – you know, The Limey, that sort of thing.’ Just have a tripod, camera and a set of lenses and see if we can do it
with just that.’
So we have no
cranes and no
Steadicam,
just the basic
kit. And that’s
very exciting.”
Part of the excitement
was trying to come up with the film equivalent of miniDV, achieved in this case by “bastardising” a small Aaton camera, which included, among other things, attaching a monitor to the side and adding extending bars above and below for extra stability.
“We are shooting per-
haps 50 per cent of the film on it and hardly ever
using a camera head. I’m oper- ating too so it’s very exciting and, yes, very tiring too,” smiles Seager.
Although he has been strictly TV of late, Seager cer- tainly hasn’t given up on the idea of theatrical films in the future and indeed hopes to make one next year with his The Way We Live Now director, David Yates.
By way of a temporary substitute for the big screen, he and Yates kept themselves amused by creating a lot of cinematic in-jokes when they were filming the Trollope, which co-stars David Suchet, Shirley Henderson and
Matthew McFadyen.
Seager recalls: “Every day we
were doing an homage to a director or a particular film. There is, after all, no copyright on shots.” So look out for “our Godfather shot, with David Suchet. It just fitted perfectly what we wanted to do.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
The Biographer
was partly originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
Photos top l-r: Paul McGann as The Biographer; Chris Seager behind the camera; David Suchet in The The Way We Live Now
above l-r: Ruth Gemmell and Colin Firth in Fever Pitch, Lorna Doone (courtesy BBC TV) and Ian McKellen in Cold Comfort Farm (courtesy Moviestore Collection)
EXPOSURE • 14