Page 26 - Fujifilm Exposure_44 Damned United_ok

FESTIVALS & EVENTS
ODDJOBS: ASPECTSOFREALITY
FROMUNCOMPROMISINGRECREATIONS OFTHETHATCHERYEARSANDTHE DISMANTLINGOFAPARTHEIDTOA FICTIONALDRAMASETAGAINSTWAR-TORN BASRA, IT’SALLINAYEAR’STVWORK FORDPDAVIDODDBSC
Photo above: DP David Odd BSC
“REALA 500D FOR DAY, NIGHT, INTERIORS, EXTERIORS... EVERYTHING, JUST BEAUTIFUL.”
hen a bomb exploded at WBrighton’s Grand Hotel dur-
ing the Tory Party Confer- ence in 1984, David Odd was a news cameraman
within spitting distance of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
A quarter of a century on he was shooting her again - or at least her latest incarnation, actress Lindsay Duncan - for the BBC drama, Mar- garet, which mostly concentrated on the period leading up to her resigna- tion in 1990.
According to director James Kent: “I didn’t want acute realism or the feel of a drama-documentary. I wanted something slightly theatri- cal (a Downing Street more epic than the real Downing Street and camerawork that didn’t evoke gritty hand held) in order to take the viewer away from the narrowness of the story and allow other elements such as humour, farce, absurdity and in a few instances magical real- ism to intrude.
“To film two hours of drama in 25 days meant that I had to know everything about the purpose of the scene in order to quickly brief the actors. Without Lindsay’s enormous professionalism and my cinematog-
rapher’s experience we would never have made the schedule.”
Attempting to convey something visually as different as possible from the usual coverage of Thatcher, which ranged “from Parliamentary Question Time to Spitting Image,” Odd said he had in his mind some- thing more “Tudorish, like Shake- speare”. Shooting on 3-perf 35mm, he was also able to put into practice his philosophy of “keep it simple” by shooting on just one stock through- out - REALA 500D. “Day, night, interi- ors, exteriors... everything, just beautiful. It was very Vermeer in terms of the lighting.
“One of the things I wanted to do was to shoot hand-held with the Op- timo lens and a 1000ft mag.” Using a rebuilt chair and a specially designed stretcher so that the mighty new rig could be moved around, Odd was thrilled with the result. As for the rig, it was quickly nicknamed ‘The Beast’.
There were, for Odd, distinct echoes of his past when he also came to shoot Pete Travis’s Endgame which, set between London and South Africa, traces, from 1985, the story be- hind the ending of majority white rule in the sanctions-hit republic and the bid to avoid a bloody civil war.
24 • EXPOSURE • THE MAGAZINE • FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE
Photos main and top: Lindsay Duncan stars in the BBC drama, Margaret
above: a scene from Occupation starring James Nesbitt, Stephen Graham and Warren Brown