Page 26 - Fujifilm Exposure_19 Spider_ok

SERVING
SERVING
THE ACTORS
THE ACTORS
An interview with Lawrence Jones
Lawrence Jones does not care for flashy camera techniques, believing that anything that draws attention to the mechanics of the film detracts from the story. He
believes in giving the actors the room and the space to
bring the characters to life.
If his mission statement smacks of the old school, he
would be happy to own up to it, having spent 25 years at Granada before going freelance.
“It was the golden era of Granada film - the Seventies and the Eighties – and I got the sort of training people would die for now,” he says. “I have no formal training like the BBC, but it was the time to be there.”
He continues to be based in Manchester and although he has worked all over the world, has benefited from the boom in production in the North West.
This year has seen him filming My Beautiful Son for Granada Showtime on location in Manchester and Liverpool and six-part TV drama Heart of the Valley in the Clitheroe area of Lancashire.
Directed by Paul Seed, My Beautiful Son, or The Comfort Zone as it was origi- nally called, was shot on Fuji. It’s the story of a New York psychiatrist (Paul Reiser) devastated when he discovers
Liverpool, a stone edifice that looks out over the bay.
“We thought that with certain cam- era angles it could be New York,” says Jones. “All you see is background, an out-
of-focus Liver Building. By only looking down and the careful choice of lenses I think we’ve got away with it.
“I also filmed some shots without the actors in New York with a local crew. I was in the downtown area and it was only a couple of months before September 11. Fortunately we did- n’t use any of the landmarks which have since gone.
“The decision to use Fuji is interesting. I hadn’t used Fuji for a while. And there’s a history to that. Staff DPs at Granada could
use what stock they wanted but if you were working on World In Action you had to use Fuji. And you had to go along and draw a specific amount of stock for every programme. DPs didn’t like the idea of being told what to use so a stigma became attached to Fuji at Granada.
“Now the perception has changed. I had heard things about the new Fuji,
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he’s seriously ill and his subsequent quest to find a bone marrow donor. Also in the Anglo-American cast are Julie Walters, George Wendt, Olympia Dukakis and Ricky Tomlinson.
Even most of the American sequences were shot here including the main character’s apartment in New York which is actually Beetham Plaza in
Photo main: Lawrence Jones at work with Helen Baxendale on the set of In Suspicious Circumstances and inset: scrutinising the next shot
EXPOSURE • 24 & 25