Hi Nigel, thanks for taking the time to do this interview for the Reelshow.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you started in the business. Did you always want to be a cinematographer?

I’m not one of those people who had a burning desire to be a cinematographer from the age of 5, though looking back on my career path, I suppose there is a sort of sense to it. From an early age I wanted to be a “commercial artist” and drew all the time. On leaving school I got on to a graphic design degree course at what was then Newcastle Upon Tyne Polytechnic. The college ran all sort of projects during our first year, including, for some reason, making a 16mm short. It was during that project that I discovered they had a Neilson Hordell rostrum camera and over the next few years, with the help of a brilliant tutor (Peter Leake, RA) we more or less turned my degree into a film course. From this period in the late 1970s I concentrated on film exclusively, particularly with animation.

I did buy a stills camera when I was about 15 years old, a second hand Praktica, with a shutter mechanism that sounded like a filing cabinet being dropped. That was a good way to start learning a lot about the basics of photography, even if all the wildlife pictures of birds I tried to take, seemed to feature startled animals due to the clatter of the shutter. I was always fascinated by film and was a regular cinema-goer, starting as a small child at the Wolverhampton Odeon Saturday Club. (My mother thought the children who went to the ABC Minors were too rowdy.)

Were there any lucky breaks along the way in your career or was it just hard work?

Somebody once said that “your first lucky break is luck – the ones that follow aren’t.” A crucial break for me was going on film set visits and work experience from the National Film School. It was during these visits that I met VFX Oscar winners Roy Field, BSC and Derek Meddings and most important of all, Paul Wilson, BSC. I watched them first on “Superman II” at Pinewood Studios, filming the massive brass model of the Eiffel Tower and a little later, became an extra pair of hands on the model unit of Jim Henson’s “Dark Crystal” during my summer recess. It was meeting this crew and keeping in touch with them, that led to me being asked to join them as a clapper loader on “Krull” (1982) and starting, what in effect, became my third Film School phase.

These guys were at the top of their game and seemed to go seamlessly from one film to the next. Despite my Film School graduation, it was one big learning curve for me and hard work. In those days we did a lot of effects in camera, involving frame-marking filmstock in the camera gate, exposing many times at varying film speeds and sometimes developing and printing test strips to confirm exposure or matte allignments. There was so much to do, that on my first few days I wondered when the other person was starting?

After that initial break, any that follow I think come as a result of your own application;  from your dedication, enthusiasm, interests, reliability and curiosity; from your ability to get on with and work with other people and all on top of any talent you may have been blessed with. Hopefully you begin to build up a CV, work through the grades of your chosen department and start to reap some rewards for your efforts, especially as you get to know a wider circle of people in the business.

There’s the old theatrical joke that goes something along the lines of, “It’s taken me 25 years to become an overnight success.”   

I believe you went to Film school. Can you tell us about the school and why you decided to go there?

I went to the National Film School ( now the National Film & Television School ) at Beaconsfield, outside London, England. I found out about the place almost by accident and quickly realised that if I could get in, it would offer me 3 years of specialised film training, to build on what I had only just scratched the surface of at Newcastle. In those days (1979-82) the course was structured differently to the present NFTS – in the first year we all had to work in the different departments of the industry on in-house projects, prior to specialising in years 2-3. Looking back, I realise how important to me that first year was, gaining a good broad feel for the business - art directing, editing, sound recording, directing and so on.

At that time there was also the “Catch-22” of the film union (then ACTT) in the UK. You needed to work to get a union ticket and you couldn’t work unless you had a ticket. The NFS was then one of the few courses recognised by the union and on graduation you were accepted as a member, though still had to get a signed application form completed. At the time, people who tried to get a ticket, or probationary ticket in the industry, were often badly taken advantage of – promised an application would be signed in the future, if they just worked for a piitance for a few months longer. The Film School, on top of all its benefits, avoided this scenario.

Do you think attending a film school is the best option for someone who wants to enter the film industry?

For me, I felt it was the right move: coming from the industrial Midlands of the UK, I didn’t know anybody in the film business. Looking back I think it was a great time to learn and experiment without the commercial or professional pressures of being outside in the industry from the off. It allowed you to question and perhaps look at things slightly differently than if you had gone straight into a film department as a trainee or runner. We would watch hundreds of films a year and discuss them, have visiting tutors who were leaders in their field and have the opportunity to visiit actual productions. The school, then under the great Colin Young who had assembled an extraordinary experienced staff of tutors, was very well equipped.

But is this the best option for somebody today? When I graduated there was still a lot of prejudice against people coming out of Film Schools. Thankfully this has now more or less gone, especially as so much of the studio system training has fallen by the wayside in the UK and elsewhere. I do not think there is a single golden pathway into the industry. It really does differ from person to person. Some thrive in an academic, Film School environment, others find a more suited path via starting at an industry facility or rental house for example, or ploughing away doing their own thing. The forums on the internet (such as Reelshow) and the proliferation of film festivals somewhere in the world every day, offer opportunities to show work that didn’t exist when I was at college.The “fire-in-the-belly” has to come from you though and the fact that it can be so hard to get a break does help to put off the less keen competitors at the first few set backs. We all get set backs – it’s how you react to them that matters.

The British Society of Cinematographers, the Guild of British Camera Technicians, Sklillset, the industry union BECTU, the National Training Courses in the UK all try to give students and industry members a helping hand. From my own experiences I think placements teach visitors an awful lot and the role of camera trainee is a huge benefit all round – to the camera crew and the trainee.

What does alarm me today are three things:
1) The huge number of media-related courses that seem to have evolved in recent years, especially ones that appear to be stitched onto several other almost unrelated subjects. I fear that many of these courses won’t give a student a realistic chance of a film industry career.
2) Productions that see trainees as cheap labour, to even replace a crew member, rather than as an additional, learning hand and future valuable technician.
3) Runners or trainees being expected to work for nothing, or below the minimum wage. Not only is this illegal, it also tends to bias intake towards the affluent. 

Do any contacts you made at film school still keep in touch and have you been able to help each other during your careers.

As you see above, keeping in touch on those first few placements from Film School helped me get my start. The year I was at Beaconsfield produced some talented people who have gone on to do great things. Also, three of our intake are now BSC members, Martin Fuhrer, myself and Sue Gibson, who was the first female BSC member and now our first female President. Sue has been tireless in her work for the BSC and with helping students. I was very pleased that she could bring some of her classes along to look at the VFX work we were doing on “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”.

What attracted you to visual effects

I think, right from my college days, it seemed to be the logical area to aim for. There was a sort of sensible progression from graphics, to animation and crucially mastering the rostrum camera. When I began rostrums were hand operated -  then came computerisation. From that point it was only a short step to motion control camera work. A lot of people of my era in VFX started out with rostrum, printer or aerial image backgrounds. I was very lucky when I began because I would work on the floor with a model unit and then often work for an optical effects house immediately afterwards, helping put together things we had previously shot – a chance to see two facets of visual effects on the same film. I alternated in this way for several years.

An attention to detail is a key common thread here too. It’s the accumilation of the little things that can make a special effect work. I think for me it was the area of the business that was most akin to the very first days of cinema, the magic, the sleight of hand, that appealed. Derek Meddings used to say that the best compliment somebody could ever pay you after seeing a movie was, “What special effects?” In many ways he was right, except on big, in-your-face sequences, the satisfaction for me, and I know it was the same for Paul Wilson, is to pull off an effect that nobody notices or questions. This is why I have a fondness for the work we did on “Entrapment” on the then tallest building in the world, the Petronas Towers.

The field is also a constantly evolving one, adding new tools and tricks to the toolbox every year, which makes it an exciting area to be involved with.

You have such a massive credit list, what particular effect has given you the most professional satisfaction?

It’s very hard to pick one project. I think I am most proud of our involvment in all the “Harry Potter” movies so far (1-6 at the time of writing). This has involved the best part of a decade of my life. The books are so popular and fondly thought of that there was a huge pressure on us all to be faithfull to the spirit of the novels and not disappoint anybody. It was down to us to make Hogwarts school seem like a real place, growing from the mountainside besides the loch. I think the dragon chase sequence in “Goblet of Fire” pushed us pretty far in showing what a model can achieve.

I personally like the pirotechnics we did at the end of “V For Vendetta”, destroying the Houses of Parliament. At the other end of the scale, almost in documentary style in places, the work for the BBC/HBO “Band of Brothers” series. For the BBC series “Gormenghast” we had a tiny budget and tiny scale models to cope with and I am very proud of the results on that.

What size studio do you prefer to work in?

It really does depend on what you are having to film. Height can always be an issue as the hardest effect to pull off on model shots are bright, sunny days shot on a stage. A model often has to look like it has been hit by infinity lighting to work, so too little throw-space can be an issue. On the stage/ hangar we had to use on the first Harry Potter, there was very little gap between the tallest tower and the roof supports, which made life difficult. I also like to have room around the model if we can, so we can relight a bit easier. It’s easy to forget that the world doesn’t necessarily end where your model does. You can work on a table top one minute, while the “Charlie & the Chocolate Factory” streets and factory complex set took up the bulk of one of Shepperton’s largest sound stages.

Don’t forget, that sometimes filming a model outside is a good option.

What scale ratio do you work to?

Again, this depends on what you are trying to achieve either in prominence or action. A small scale, or even cut-outs might work for distant elements. Hogwarts and Charlie were 1/24th scale, for example, but the moment you need to move in very close, a scale jump is required. We often go to 1/10th or larger. When it comes to physical effects, explosions, collapsing buildings and so on, it is wise to go as big a scale as you can, particularly if water or fire are involved.  

What has been the trickiest/ most difficult effect you have been involved in.
Obviously most of your work has been enourmously successful but has any effect ever gone terribly wrong (that you can tell us about!).

“V For Vendetta”, working alongside my long time unit director José Granell, for its problems of timing, scale jumps, matching principal photography and the world-known night time look of the real buildings along the Thames. We were combining various camera speeds and using motion-control for high-speed photography and triggering the timing sequence of the explosions. For Big Ben’s clockface blowing out in particular, we were after a very specific choreography, pushing the elements out in a staggered order. In the finished film you can clearly see the glass, clock fascia and fingers come out towards you.

My favourite “going wrong” story is from some years ago when we were doing a few days of early R&D tests for “Lost In Space”. They were exploring the possibility of creating a 3D animated character and the fairly sensible idea was arrived at of using a small monkey in a skin-tight pale blue bodysuit. The suit was peppered with semi-spherical tracking markers on all the joints and key body points and the plan was to motion-capture the movements of the monkey for a starting point for the character animation. A circle of infra lights were set up and all the tracking equipment initiated.

The problem was, nobody had discussed the idea with the monkey. It hated the tight suit and kept tugging at the sleeves and hood, then it began to eat the tracking markers off the suit. Before our eyes on the monitors, the wire frame of the little monkey began to disappear. Then it ran out of frame – great animation data – but it was running to a nearby stage block and tackle. It scampered up the chains all the way to the apex of the stage roof and absolutely refused to come down again.

Do you use the same  film stock  and cameras as the main prodution crew?

This varies depending on what elements we are providing for the production. Sometimes we need to shoot on a faster stock than the main unit DoP, as we are at high-speed, or are chasing depth of field to make the model work. At the other end of the spectrum, with the advantages of motion control model work, we can often provide the luxury of filming on finer grain stock for these elements. Even today you may sometimes be asked to film a plate in VistaVision (8 perf) for example, if specific post-production work is required later.

As sound is not a concern, the usual camera we prefer using is the Arri 435. I am a big fan, as we can slave it to a motion-control rig at part of a frame a second, or shoot explosions at 150 fps, all from the same camera. We sometimes bring in PhotoSonics cameras for higher still frame rates.

Whatever stock we end up on, the crucial thing is to make anything we shoot look like the main unit DoP has filmed it.  

Where in the world do you most enjoy working?

When I first began we seemed to go on location more often – now I seem to spend much of my time in front of green screens indoors. Such is the change in VFX, especially with digital technology, that it becomes more unusual for a model unit to travel. In the mid-1980s I worked on “Willow”, mostly involved as a VistaVision technician helping get plates for ILM and spent a wonderful two months in New Zealand. My time on “Spies Like Us”, again doing VistaVision work, this time above the fijords of Norway, runs it a close second.

Do you work on productions as a DOP that have no special effects?.

The answer is rarely. I love the problems and challenges VFX throws up and it remains my field of choice. I have done 2nd Unit work on “Gormenghast” and “Quills” for example, numerous insert shots and really enjoyed this. However, in the film business, rather as can happen to an actor, it is easy to become type-cast. This can become a double-edged sword: both winning you, and loosing you opportunities of work.

Finally what are you working on at the moment (or recently) and do you have any remaining ambitions?

I’ve been working on “Prince of Persia – The Sands of Time” with Cinesite, providing some physical effects VFX elements for a sequence in the movie. On some days I suspect it simply seemed to be an excuse for people to tip tons of sand over us, or hurl rocks in our direction. Ah the glamour of the film business.

I just want to keep on trying to be involved in good work and films that make people glad they went to the cinema. I do carry a torch for the art of model photography. In recent years digital solutions have achieved great things, especially when I think of the cityscapes work in the “Spiderman” films, or the Chicago of “Dark Knight”. I do worry that some of the advantages of model work are being forgotten, but hopefully the art will not totally disappear.

The important thing is to try and keep learning – to paraphrase something I recall in an interview with the wise DoP Dougie Slocombe, BSC -  “The day you stop learning is the day you might as well pack it in.”

Nigel Stone, BSC, GBCT (28/9/2009) 
IMDb

A REELSHOW INTERNATIONAL INTERVIEW 2009

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