Page 8 - Fujifilm Exposure_32 Aardman Studios_ok

ROGER LANSER
“I loved what Fuji did for the Australian Bush - the gum leaves are a softer, different green to here – and with Helena [Bonham Carter], who has a pale complexion, it did a wonderful job on the skin tones.”
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This was around the time of the so-called “New Wave” of Australian film-making, encouraged by govern- ment tax breaks and the establishment of a federal commission along with var- ious state bodies. Directors Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, George Miller and Fred Schepisi all came to the fore not to mention cinematographers such as Don McAlpine, Russell Boyd, Dean Semler, John Seale and David Eggby.
Said Lanser: “I tried to get into a high profile film and TV school but was rejected so I stayed in my day job until place opened up at the local college which offered a part-time one year course taught by professionals. I went there at the same time as Andrew Lesnie [The Lord Of The Rings trilogy etc] and after I’d completed it started at the ABC as a clapper loader.”
There he stayed for 14 years work- ing his way up the traditional ladder not just on local film drama but also numerous co-productions with the BBC and ITV. All the time he would hear about a bigger world of film out- side Australia, especially the UK, from various ex-pat Brit colleagues includ- ing focus puller John Shinerock, operator John Winbolt, a Bond film veteran, and DP Peter Hendry.
“After doing that journey of clapper loader, focus puller, 2nd unit and operator I was, with Peter’s retire- ment, just at that point in my career in the small bureaucracy of a TV national broadcaster of ‘it’s your turn’ to become a lighting cameraman.
“What actually happened was that ABC went into a different co- production deal with another compa- ny and brought in another cinematog- rapher and so I was asked to go
freelance – which I did as operator on a new Mission: Impossible series.
“The point is I was ready to jump into lighting and it just happened to be Ken who helped me jump. He’s kick-started so many careers.”
Lanser credits Much Ado About Nothing with “properly kicking off the Shakespeare thing. Americans saw us and said, ‘Shakespeare just made $40 million – are there any others?’” For him, though, it provided mixed mes- sages as he continued to ply his trade between Europe and the Antipodes.
“I had had no DP credits in Australia before working with Ken and then when you’ve done something like Much Ado, you have to wait a year before it’s out and reviewed. You’d tell people you’d just shot a film with Denzel Washington, Emma Thompson and Keanu Reeves. At home, they’d say things like, ‘well, we’re just shooting a little TV thing; your blood’s too rich for us.’” Not, fortunately, for too long.
When Branagh and Lanser’s later schedules didn’t happen to coincide – and Branagh returned pretty much full-time to a series of award-winning screen roles – Lanser continued his career on international films like Prince Valiant and Maybe Baby as well as a raft of Australian-produced product.
In fact, while shooting Maybe Baby in the
UK for debutant director Ben Elton, he was also pressed into service over three successive Sundays (in the woods near Ascot “on my day off”) to film the digital video short, Schneider’s Second Stage, featuring Branagh front-of-camera.
And so to As You Like It which was filmed on a tight five week schedule earlier this year on location in West Sussex (at Wakehurst Place) and at Shepperton studios.
Boasting a name-in-every-frame, the Anglo-American cast includes Kevin Kline, Bryce Dallas Howard, Romola Garai, Alfred Molina, Adrian Lester, Janet McTeer, Richard Briars, Brian Blessed and David Oyewolo.
Unlike his previous Shakespearean excursions as director (Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost), Branagh is staying firm- ly behind the camera this time round. “Quite a relief,” he notes.
As well as re-uniting with Branagh, Lanser has also linked up again with Fujifilm for this project. “I had used it on a contemporary urban movie in Australia and thought it was great. Then, for the same producers, I used it on a big, arty film called Till Human Voices Wake Us, with Helena Bonham Carter and Guy Pearce.
“It was set across two periods. The first part was during an idyllic Aussie
summer with family and children. Then it sort of jumped to a more con- temporary time, 30 years later, when Pearce is haunted by the loss of the woman in his life.
“I loved what Fuji did for the Australian Bush - the gum leaves are
a softer, different green to here – and with Helena, who has a pale complex- ion, it did a wonderful job on the skin tones. My prior knowledge of what the stocks could do in an urban setting helped too.
“On As You Like It, I used the Super F-500 and Super F-250 tungsten. The film looks lovely and rich with a lot of muted forest tones,” adds Lanser, who was also operating - “Ken likes to have me operate as it keeps the working relationship closer.”
As he grabbed a brief meal break during the frenetic schedule, Lanser mused on a rather different assignment he had once tackled back in Australia that was “totally the other end of the spectrum” from Shakespeare.
“It was The Matrix Re-Loaded and I came in for two-to-three weeks across the Christmas period to replace the existing 2nd unit cameraman who’d been bumped up.
“After doing medium-budget Australian movies and some of Ken’s lower-budget films, to walk in on a set where you could have anything you wanted was extraordinary. I’d never been on a film where you possibly spent all day doing just one shot,” sighed Lanser. ■ QUENTIN FALK
As You Like It was originated on 35mm Super F-500 8572 and Super F-250 8552
Photos l-r: scenes from: Much Ado About Nothing, Till Human Voices Wake Us poster image, In The Bleak Midwinter and Maybe Baby
6 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture