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while” where he worked in the world of Community Video. He’d even been an apprentice electrician for some years “doing up factories, shops and houses.”
He said that the NFS was a “revela- tion” and although he claimed he knew nothing about cinematography when he arrived, with the help of mentors like cameraman-turned-director David McDonald, managed to leave with an impressive showreel featuring bits of some 12 films he’d shot in his three years at the school.
Returning to the real world, it was a good time for freelance DPs, he said, with the advent of not just of music pro- mos but also a new TV network in the shape of Channel 4. With another NFS alumnus, director Sandy Johnson, he shot one of the C4’s opening night pro- grammes in 1982.
Since his feature film break in 1986 with Ian Emes’ interracial romantic drama Knights And Emeralds, Greatrex has moved seamlessly between cinema and television although, he averred, he didn’t really regard them as different mediums.
More recently he has become increasingly in demand by American filmmakers – Matt Williams’ Where The Heart Is, with Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd, Brian Helgeland’s rollicking A Knight’s Tale, which took him back to a topographically kinder corner of the Czech Republic and, more recently, Connie And Carla, directed by Friends’ veteran Michael Lembeck.
The last, which used Vancouver to double for Los Angeles, seemed to have been a particular labour of love for Greatrex who sang the praises of the film’s two co-stars, Toni Collette and Nia Vardalos – she of My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame – who play a couple of song-and-dance girls hiding out from killers in an LA drag club.
He was equally upbeat about Mike Binder’s screenplay which first drew him to The Upside Of Anger: “It’s a tremendous script, very funny at times and it has some of the best dialogue I’ve ever come across.”
The film has also marked his return to using Fuji stock since using it abor- tively about 15 years ago. He explained why he had now chosen to use the 35mm Fujicolor F-500T 8572.
“I had got rather disillusioned with the way film stocks have been going recently. They had got more and more contrasty. The print stocks had become more uniform and more uniformly con- trasty as well. You’d get these whole areas of dark darkness where you’d think, ‘Surely that will expose a bit...’ and it didn’t. Also, those contrasty stocks didn’t suit the slightly older woman because any line that’s a fake grey will be dark and so it makes them look less glamorous.
“So, I wanted a change and I’d heard from others DPs that Fuji did a stock that was much less contrasty. I’ve been very pleased with the F-500T and use it for everything. I’d still like it to be a tiny touch gentler and, if I had my way on another film, I’d use the F-400T.
“Yes, I’m very pleased and I’ll use Fuji again. The thing you can’t handle in
film grading is contrast: that’s the way it is. I try to make my lighting invisible, and to do that you have to light simply, with a minimum number of lamps. I’ve got into that more and more over the years even though the stock has got away from me somewhat. It’s a great relief to find a stock where I can go back to what I know so well – that is, making it look natural without having to compensate with extra fill on top of it.”
Is there a Greatrex ‘style’? “I hope not,” he replied firmly. “Some DPs have. For me, and I know it’s a cliché, the DP is there to serve the story.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
The Upside Of Anger
was originated on 35mm Fujicolor F-500T 8572
“It’s a great relief to find
a stock where Icangobackto what I know so well – that is, making it look natural without having to compensate with extra
fill on top of it.”
Photos: On the set of The Upside Of Anger with Writer & Director Mike Binder (photos courtesy Paul Chedlow)
As well as John Madden with whom he also made TV’s Truth Or Dare and Shakespeare In Love, he has also had multi- collaborations with directors Tim Fywell (The Woman In White and
I Capture The Castle) and the late Stephen Whittaker (Rocket Post and Sons And Lovers).
Much earlier in his career, he regular- ly teamed up with fellow National Film School graduates like Julien Temple, with whom he worked in the then pioneering world of music promos.
Greatrex had arrived at NFS at the back end of the 70s after what he described as “many twists and turns in my life, including living in America for a
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