JULY 2015
Vol 215
Cinematographer Action It was a cinematographers evening in aid of Nepal where David Paul told us about his impressive work life including being DOP on ‘Hillary’, an upcoming TV drama about Sir Ed’s life. There were some points David made that I thought “well, we can all learn something here.” Ed: David, I want to start with a scene that you showed from the movie Until Proven Innocent about David Dougherty that was in the prison when he was being first interviewed by his lawyer. I looked at that and I thought “is that all natural light or did he light it?” David: The prison scene where David was interviewed by Donna Chisholm was lit, but we worked quite hard to make it look natural light. It wasn’t a studio – there were no studios in Wellington we could use, so it was actually a warehouse, David – fully loaded – on location. which conveniently had huge diffused windows, and it was about putting lights out on David: No backlights, I went for that “single source” the footpath. We just massaged it and massaged it to go lighting and any other light was bounced – just a very for that real natural light look. I was really pleased with subtle bouncing of the light. the look in there and that’s my favourite scene. It’s still It was a big first step for me. For close ups we did bring one of my favourite films that I’ve shot as it was a very in subtle eye lights. Up to that point, I had used lots of consistent film for me photographically. smaller lights in a traditional way and that was because Ed: So all the light was from outside through those of the budget jobs that I was on. This was my first TV windows – there were no backlights? feature where, suddenly, I had a truck with bigger lights