9 minute read
GAFFER’S CAFÉ •MARTIN SMITH
SHINING A LIGHT
Age// Born// Training// Early career// Lives// Hobby// 42 Brighton, UK City & Guilds - Full Electrical Apprenticeship Electrician at Sovereign Electrical Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex Flying
Selected Filmography (as gaffer unless otherwise indicated) Mission: Impossible 8 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One (2023) Top Gun: Maverick (additional photography) (2022) The Witches (2020) 6 Underground (2019) Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (second unit) (2016) Doctor Strange (second unit) (2016) The Brothers Grimsby (second unit) (2016) 13 Hours (2016) Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (second unit) (2015)
It’s all about teamwork
Lighting is all about building a team where everyone has a job to do and feels responsible for the end product. The aim is not about finding the most complicated, high-tech route to lighting a scene, but the simplest, best-suited and safest way. If we achieve that, then we’ve cracked it.
I’ve worked with best boy Lee Eldred since Harry
Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), and he is my No.1. I wouldn’t do any films without Lee and the minute he retires, so will I. Gary Owen is charge-hand on the floor for 7am and Joe Chapman charge-hand for 8am. My rigging gaffer, seasoned pro and mate, is Greg Thomas. The madness and constant changes of any film never seem to faze him. HoD scaffolder is
It’s great to try and stay half a beat ahead
the solid Steve Fell, and my practicals HoD, Joe Tooke, is the best in the industry, totally pioneering all the new technology.
Never has a position on a crew changed so much over the last five years as that of the desk op, and Dan Walters is without doubt the best programmer. He’s my connection to the world of lighting control. Colour science, lighting control and lighting design are at the forefront of everything I do, and Dan is the brains behind all of this. Without a good programmer these days, the gaffer is no-one.
Working with DP Fraser Taggart on Mission: Impossible movies
Fraser is the DP on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – the seventh and eighth films, shot backto-back. We have great chemistry, built-up over the course of more than ten second unit shoots together previously, all large units in their own right.
He’s simply the best DP I’ve ever worked with for these type of movies. I try to take the burden off the DP when it comes to lighting, which is much easier when you already have an established relationship. If I can get 80% of the work done it gives the DP time to work on the camera side and spend time with the director.
The Mission: Impossible look
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning is, without doubt a stylish, elegant, cool and powerful-looking movie. We have achieved this largely because of the open collaboration between MQ, Fraser, production designer Gary Freeman and all the main departments. Flat is something Fraser and I are both allergic to. We really try and create something, different and tasteful, but with excitement.
Shooting Mission: Impossible in Venice
Venice has never looked as good on-camera as in the sequences we shot for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. It meant a lot of sleepless nights, and an insane amount of planning. My rigging crew, headed-up by Greg Thomas and local gaffer Elvis Pascal, supported by a talented mix of UK and local Italian crew, worked tirelessly for weeks, moving tons of equipment by boats between districts.
We rigged a lot of different lights, all LED, positioning them around the rooftops, on people’s balconies and apartments to enable us to shine light into the canals and streets below. Our practicals department worked overtime, making replicas of the authentic Venetian street lights. We made the glass fixtures, brackets, 3D printed housings, and put them on our own scaffold poles so we could position them where we wanted them, all wireless-backed and fed by batteries. It was a massive effort done on an unprecedented scale.
Dan Walters and rigging desk op Simon Willett designed a system with a Grand MA2 console into a backpack, transmitting eight universes, running off a small 12v battery. This gave us full control on the iPad, fully-mapped to over 70 CRMX receivers, rigged across important buildings for instant control of all fixtures. Our shooting packages and generators were all moved around vast locations on boats. It was super-exciting to do, but without doubt was the most stressfully challenging location.
On working with Tom Cruise
Tom is the ultimate professional. He gives 100% and expects that from the crew. Tom and MQ have their own style of collaborating and at times things can change pretty quickly. Our lighting always needs to be totally adaptable and insanely fast. Basically I always try to think of the unimaginable as normally things do change and it’s great to try and stay just half a beat ahead.
Tom and I have a mutual interest in flying. On-set I mentioned to him I’d got my pilot’s licence and he suggested a trip in his famous WWII fighter, the P-51 Mustang which appears in Top Gun. So far I’ve flown in helicopters and a C17 cargo plane with Tom, and I’ll hold him to that Mustang flight!
Best new lighting kit
Moving lights have come a long way and I use them a lot, when appropriate. The Ayrton range is IP-rated and programmable, with fantastic optics, good LED engines and great colour-mixing glass. You can do fantastic work with them when rigged from a distance. They are also fast and extremely controllable, like a Source Four lamp on steroids; a useful high quality addition to the toolbox.
Gaffers have generally adapted well to new LED technology, and I’m constantly trying-out new lights. We still use ARRI SkyPanels, but these have now been largely superseded with CreamSource products. I’m a big, big fan of the Vortex8 and Vortex4, which are low-power, high-output and have fantastic colour, as well as being IP-rated. We used them around Venice on Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning taking 100 to rig on rooftops, balconies, out of windows, on boats, up bell towers. We even paid for 20 of them to go up St Mark’s Campanile. This allowed us to light the roof on the adjacent Doge’s Palace for a beautiful scene.
I’m also a huge fan of Fiilex lights. Fraser was always on at me to give him a classic light with a lens. The Q range from Fiilex, headed-up by the Q10, gives us everything we need in terms of superb colour control, and satisfies Fraser’s need for an old-school Fresnel.
I’m most proud of…
… the growth of the International Cinema Lighting Society (ICLS). Founded during the first lockdown – by myself, Mike Bauman and Raffi Sanchez – and managed by our superb and tireless associate director, Bea Patten, the ICLS has grown into something quite formidable, and now represents a diverse and connected group of global technicians, dedicated to the promotion of the art and craft of film lighting.
Some solid advice!
It takes a long time to become a gaffer, at least if you want all the necessary knowledge to do a big movie. My advice is to take it slow – you’ll end up being more respected. I’d recommend becoming an electrical qualification, working as a trainee in a lighting rental house or with an experienced crew as a trainee for a few years. Work up through the ranks as a rigging electrician, then work on a few movies
as a shooting electrician before stepping up to best boy, so as to learn about logistics, budgeting, labour forecasts, risk assessments and equipment rental costings. It took me over ten years working as an electrician and best boy on features and commercials before accepting gaffer positions.
Director Christopher McQuarrie says:
I’ve known Martin since we worked together on Edge Of Tomorrow (2014, DP Dion Beebe ACS ASC). That film was particularly challenging, with 36 pages of pick-ups in just 12 days (essentially shooting a third
This page: Martin Smith pictured with Rob Hardy BSC ASC Opposite: Superstar Tom Cruise during production on the Mission: Impossible franchise.
of the film in one tenth of the schedule). There was simply no way the film would ever have been finished were it not for the combination of speed and talent we’ve come to count on from Martin and his team.
On Mission: Impossible – Fallout (DP Rob Hardy), Martin became an integral part of the core creative team and someone with whom I interacted as much as the cinematographer. He’s unflappably calm, gracious and fun to work with. He is also an exacting perfectionist with an impeccable sense of prediction.
There are simply no other movies more demanding or complex than those of the Mission: Impossible franchise, with scenes that are often improvised on the spot, regardless of their scale or complexity. Whatever we throw at them, Martin and his team are always ready – almost as if they knew what we were going to do before we did.
Cinematographer Fraser Taggart says:
I’ve put up with Martin Smith for over ten years, but I love working with him now, haha. We have the greatest working relationship, it’s just one of those chemistries that worked from day one. He thinks ahead, and always has a plan in place before we have even discussed a set or location. But beyond his skills as a gaffer, he is the greatest pleasure to spend the long days and months with, great humour and great care for everyone, which means that he draws in the best crew that a team could have.
Cinematographer Claudio Miranda ASC says:
I used Martin for London reshoots on Top Gun: Maverick. I sent him a drawing of what I had in mind and when I showed-up to the set, the rig was perfect. It was my first time working with him and he understood exactly what I needed. I had no hesitation asking him to gaff my next movie.
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