Page 21 - Fujifilm Exposure_19 Spider_ok

THE TEAM PL
THE TEAM PL
AYER
AYER
An interview with Riki Butland
A lthough there are no film- makers in his family, cine-
matography was some- how in Riki Butland’s genes. The son of a suc- cessful photographer and an electrical engineer, he
showed an early talent for the art and the science, and in the course of 20 years has enjoyed a varied career applying both.
After working as a gaffer on crews around Europe he got his big break in 1992 as DP on Middleton’s Changeling for director Marcus Thompson. Then came M.I.A. and now he’s added a third feature – Redemption Road – to his CV.
Meanwhile, Butland has accumu- lated a long list of pop promo and commercials credits, learning his craft and putting into practice the lessons instilled in him early on.
“My mother, Sheila, worked for Life magazine,” says Butland, 40. “She took fantastic pictures but was a real taskmas- ter. Of course cameras were always around the house when I grew up and I began to take an interest. My mother was very strict, she said they weren’t toys, but if I wanted then she would show me how to use them properly.
“Then from about eight or nine years old I started taking pictures. She didn’t believe in playing. At ten I can remember going off to the dark room that had been made up for me, making prints and she’d go through them, look at them and tell me to go back and do them properly.
“I said I knew they weren’t quite right and she said ‘if you knew, then why did you show them to me?’. I’d go back and re-do these black and white prints, getting the inky blacks just right.”
The paternal influence helped steer the young Riki to excel at maths and physics at school. After his A lev-
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