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THE IMPORTANCE
OF ELEGANCE AN INTERVIEW WITH NIC MORRIS BSC
In the corner of Nic Morris’s living room, in his lovely north Dorset home, there stands a beautiful hand craft- ed 10x8 plate camera. Made for him by the late Frederick Gandolfi, it is testament to
both his love of the photographic image and his pursuit of a particular aesthetic in his work.
“Still photography remains an important part of my life,” the cinematographer explains. “I did one of the first degree courses in this country which covered both film and motion photography, in photograph- ic art at what is now the University of Westminster.
“The first year was common, both stills and film, so we studied the photographic art from both per- spectives, and then in the second year sort of peeled off towards film and filmmaking. But I continue to do both together.”
The feature credits Morris has since accumulated include Up On The Roof, the award-winning Firelight, The Criminal, Long Time Dead and Lewis Gilbert’s Before You Go, based on Shelagh Stephenson’s hit play,
The Memory Of Water. He also recent- ly shot Blue/Orange for BBC Four.
Even more recently, he completed Minotaur for director Jonathan English, combining HD with a combi- nation of Fuji Super F-500 and Super F-125 tungsten stocks for the effects sequences which he is pleased blended together well with the HD ele- ments. A re-telling of the Greek legend set in ye olde Crete, Minotaur co-stars Tom Hardy, Rutger Hauer and Tony Todd and was filmed in Luxembourg.
All this, along with occasional documentary work and odd bits of photo journalism, add up to a healthily mixed diet of work.
“I’ve found that doing a documen- tary occasionally really refreshes your eye, and refreshes your ideas. If you did a relentless diet of commercials or one film after another, you wouldn’t be able to avoid starting to run on automatic.
“At the same time, the thing with commercials and promos is that they’re relatively instant. You go in, hit the ground running and do it. What I like about feature films and good TV dramas is that period of reflection before you start where you explore all the possibilities.
“The instinctive reaction might be to do it one way, but what about taking it from another angle?
The pre-production period is a really enjoyable part of the process for me, getting the chance to try things out and also getting to know a director and getting to see some films with them. That way, you begin to develop a language so when you walk onto set with them it shows everybody else working on the film that you’re both in tune and have a clear vision of what the film is going to be.
“I think it’s very important. That’s the pleasure of long form film and TV over the shorter stuff. An hour and a half or two hour story can’t just be one note, it has to go up and down. You have to have some austere scenes to make the more lush scenes seem lush. There should be some lev- els of complexity there that you’re not able to achieve in shorter proj- ects because there isn’t time.
“But there should be a sense also that the visuals are important, that elegance should be allowed to come through too. In a documentary, if you can photograph it beautifully and pro- duce a single still image or a piece of
Photos above l-r: Gaffer Mick Durlacher; Nic Morris BSC in front of storyboard and behind the camera on Minotaur; poster image for Firelight
14 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture