Page 8 - Fujifilm Exposure_28 Michael Winner_ok

ALEX MELMAN
“Lord Rochester drank and shagged himself to death by the age of 30. We wanted the film to reflect that in its darkness and rawness.”
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Adapted from a Stephen Jeffreys’ play, originally mounted by Malkovich’s Steppenwolf Theatre com- pany, the film is produced by the actor’s Mr Mudd production outfit. The story is set in 17th century London and tells of the 2nd Earl of Rochester (played by Johnny Depp) whose life of hedonism and excess was brief but eventful.
Central to it was an obsession with a young lady named Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton), groomed by Rochester to be one of the first female stars of the stage just as women were allowed to tread the boards for the first time.
Shot on a combination of Fuji stocks, the look of the film was crucial to convey the magic of the theatre which contrasts with the grim, gritty reality of the everyday world outside.
“We mixed and matched the stocks,” Melman continues, “our whole aim was to not have a really clean looking film. We wanted to do the opposite of most period drama, going for the dirtiest, grungiest look that we could get. So we’ve got a lot of mud in there, a lot of smoke. Rochester drank and shagged himself to death by the age of 30. We wanted the film to reflect that in its darkness and rawness.
“So we were trying to do the oppo- site of something like The Girl With A Pearl Earring, which used the art of the period to capture its look. Our closest reference was Hieronymus Bosch. I think he captured the feel we wanted more than the portrait painters of that period. We show it warts and all, and while Johnny Depp starts off looking pretty, from there it’s a rapid demise.”
The connection with Laurence Dunmore goes back a long way, with the director giving Melman his break as a Director of Photography a decade ago on a pop promo.
Prior to that Melman gradually developed a childhood passion for photography into a career, moving on from assisting fashion photographers like Clive Arrowsmith, to advertising jobs, to working with Bo and John Derek on – naked stills aside - the exe- crable Bolero.
“I went off for three months and worked as John Derek’s personal assis- tant,” he recalls. “I shot all the stills. I was full of youthful bravado, where I thought I could do it all. After that I went to New York. That’s where I did my growing up and that’s where I real- ly started working on feature films. And that’s where I started loading.
“The first film I worked on was as an art department runner. But within a couple of days, me and the friend I was working with blagged our way into doing all the set construction on the film. God knows how.
“And when it started shooting I asked if they needed someone to do the stills, and I shot those. I continued doing that on the next film I went on to, a Cannon film called Rappin’, with Mario Van Peebles as this rapper.
“Then they had a big dispute in the middle of the night and half the crew left, so they got in another crew from New York but didn’t have a clap- per loader. I was doing the stills, I was 20 years old, and they asked if I want- ed to learn that. I said ‘fine’, and the next day I was loading a feature film.
“After I came back from the States I worked for three years as an assis-
6 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video