Page 11 - Fujifilm Exposure_44 Damned United_ok

FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE •
OLUCKY MAN!
ANINTERVIEWWITH
TOMTOWNEND
uses Tom Townend, “if any- Mone had told me, that 10
years after leaving film school, I’d be where I was now, I don’t think I would re-
ally believe them.” The fact is that even after some intensive years of high-profile commercials and music promos punctuated by a BAFTA award-winning short and, most re- cently, his first feature - Samantha Morton’s writer-director debut, The Unloved - Townend still can’t quite believe his luck.
What he also admits to with dis- arming alacrity is the “ridiculous” debt he owes down the years to fel- low cinematographer Alwin Küchler going right back to the time when, while still studying photography at university in Edinburgh, Townend was asked to work on a short film being made in nearby Glasgow.
“It just so happened that the di- rector, the DP, production designer and editor were all people about to graduate from the National Film & Television School. The guy handling focus on that film was Alwin and I sort of ended up staying in touch with him on and off after that.”
This initially led to him doing unit stills on Ratcatcher, Küchler and Lynne Ramsay’s first feature collabo- ration as DP and director. “During shooting,” Townend recalls, “they needed the odd pick-up shot and with no-one else apparently suitable at hand, I was kindly asked if I’d go off for a morning and try and grab
these shots - which seemed to work. Then, when they did their follow-up, Morvern Callar, I was asked back to operate on some stuff.
“Alwin would - and I’d really love to know why - consistently ask me back on things. Of course, we got on, and I very much liked what he did. If asked to emulate what he did, that didn’t ever bother me in the slightest.
“The first music promo I ever worked on was shot by Alwin. At the very last minute - which is the na- ture of these things - they decided to shoot with two cameras all day. So he rang me up and asked if I could come along ‘tomorrow’.
“On the strength of that I worked with him again on the follow-up with the same director and when he was- n’t available to complete a day’s lo- cation shooting on that one, I was asked to do it. Even when it came to start doing some 2nd Unit - which can cover all kinds of stuff - it was also down to Alwin when he got me involved on Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. Yes, almost every serendipi- tous break I’ve had has been through him.”
Townend, meanwhile, had gradu- ated himself some years earlier from the NFTS where he’d applied to do the cinematography course because “it was, I guess, the only one for which could claim for some eligibil- ity. It seemed as good a discipline as any other.
“After I left [a contemporary was David Katznelson], I wasn’t quite ➤
THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 9