IEC
#1: From the doc "The Camera Man"
RICHARD GREATREX
Born: ?.
Education: National Film School [NFS], UK [graduated in 1980].
Career: 'I was brought up in industrial South Wales. School did me little favors, but I was always 'good with my hands'. An apprenticeship in the electrical contracting trade took six years and produced an electrician looking for pastures new. The year of 1968 found me working as a technician at the University of Sussex. This enlightened me. Coleg Harlech [Wales], a college for mature students, filled the holes left by school and led the way to the hallowed ground of PPE [Philosophy, Politics and Economics] at Balliol College, University of Oxford. A growing interest in film took me to the USA, creating material for the United Mine Workers of America and Anti-Strip Mining Projects in Tennessee. Now seriously interested in the process of making pictures, I went to the NFS in the UK and studied Cinematography for 3 years. Leaving the NFS in 1980, I began making drama for Channel 4, and pop promos and commercials.' [From his website.]
Ph numerous commercials dir by Brian Baderman, Tim Pope, John Madden, a.o.
Was a member [now honorary member] of the BSC.
From the doc "The Camera Man"
Now active as stills ph - 'I was a cinematographer for over thirty years, consequently stills photography was always a part-time romance. Now, it is a full blown love affair.' His photo exhibition [+ limited edition book and 17m stillfilm version] 'Resistance Re-imagined', a retelling of Owen Sheers' novel 'Resistance', opened in 2011.
Book: 'Cuba Noticed' [with 110 color pictures taken in 2007 and (self) published in 2011 via Lulu Press].
Appeared in the short doc 'The Camera Man' [2015, Sebastian Solberg; 5m].
Awards: BAFTA TV Award nom [1996] for 'Truth or Dare'; BAFTA TV Award [1997] & Royal Television Society 'Craft and Design: Photography' Award [1998] for 'The Woman in White'; 'Oscar' AA nom [1998], ASC Award nom [1999], BSC Award nom [1999], BAFTA Film Award nom [1998] & Golden Satellite Award nom [1999] for 'Shakespeare in Love'; BAFTA TV Award nom [2000] for 'Warriors'.
'A Knight's Tale' [2000]: 'The film was shot in the Super 35 format, to give it a wide screen look without the problems of anamorphic lenses. "I like practical lights to be quite bright in the shot, especially candles and oil lamps, and you just can't get the basic stop out of an anamorphic system," the DP explains. Plus, postproduction CGI houses prefer Super 35 for computer manipulation, which was a big factor on this film. Many shots of the stadiums required extensions of the crowds and the sets. "Even with all the resources we had in the Czech Republic - we had 1,200 extras on big days - it still would only quarter-fill the stadium," he says. "We had a number of jousting locations, but obviously we didn't build a separate one for each, so different backgrounds are put in to change those sets, to express this journey of the Grand Prix circuit."
Greatrex had a journey of his own. Including eight weeks of pre-production, he was in Prague for nearly six months. "It was a hard slog," he admits, "but I'm very keen on pre-production. I try to immerse myself, because I think if you can get input early, you can help things swing the right way. So often you come on late and things are decided, and a lot of the time you're just fighting the circumstances that people have created." He likes to participate in location scouting because "it's not very easy to sit down with a director across a table and say, 'Tell me the style of this film.' You have to spend time with your director and designer, just going to look at places, even if they're not right. You go and look and you say that's not right, because of this and that, and you build up this bank of what's in the director's head." [From article by Amy Slingerland in 'Lighting Dimensions', June 2001.]
| FILMS | |
|---|---|
|
1979 |
Smile Until I Tell You to Stop [Stephen Bayly] c; doc/20m; cph: Jonathan Roberts; prod NFS |
|
1980 |
Never Say Die! [Sandy Johnson] b&w; short/39m; cph: David Anderson & Aziz Yehia; prod NFS |
|
1980 |
A Stolen Portrait [Brian Ward] 16mm/c; short/39m; cph: Aziz Yehia & Belinda Parsons; prod NFS |
|
1980 |
Shadowplay [Oliver Stapleton] 16mm/b&w; 68m; prod NFS |
|
1980 |
Biceps of Steel [Julien Temple] c; mus short (with hard rock band SamSon)/12m; 2nd cam: Oliver Stapleton |
|
1981 |
Who Feels It... Knows It [Nicholas Pole] 16mm/c; doc/55m; co-addph; ph: Harriet Pacaud; prod NFS |
|
1981 |
The Cidermakers [David Vaughan-Thomas] c; comm doc/27m; cph: Nick Gifford; for the Taunton Cider Company |
|
1981 |
The Blues Band [Peter Sykes] c; mus doc/33m; cph: Christopher Morphet, Alistair Cameron, David Peat, a.o. |
|
1982 |
Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt [Nick May] 16mm/c; dram + perf + interv/52m; co-add camera; lighting camera: Oliver Stapleton |
|
1982 |
Gossip [Don Boyd] prod shut down after 3 weeks shooting; unfinished |
|
1984 |
The Man Who Shot Christmas [Diana Patrick] c; short/24m |
|
1985 |
Knights and Emeralds [Ian Emes] p/c |
|
1985 |
AC/DC - Fly on the Wall [Brian Ward] c/V; mus short/27m; 2nd cam: Mike Slovis; prod for Atlantic Records |
|
1987 |
For Queen and Country [Martin Stellman] c |
|
1988 |
Forbidden Sun/Bulldance [Zelda Barron] c |
|
1988 |
War Requiem [Derek Jarman] b&w-c |
|
1990 |
The Lunatic [Lol Creme] c |
|
1993 |
Deadly Advice [Mandie Fletcher] c |
|
1994 |
Blue Juice [Carl Prechezer] c; 2uc: James Welland |
|
1997 |
Stone Cold [Stephen Whittaker] c |
|
1998 |
Shakespeare in Love [John Madden] s35/c |
|
1998 |
Janice Beard 45 WPM [Clare Kilner] c; cph: Peter Thwaites |
|
1998 |
Big Day [Tom Cairns] c; short/12m |
|
1999 |
Where the Heart Is [Matt Williams] c; 2uc: Ralph Watson |
|
2000 |
A Knight's Tale [Brian Helgeland] s35/c; see above |
|
2000 |
Happy Now? [Philippa Cousins] c |
|
2001 |
The Rocket Post [Stephen Whittaker] c; 2uc: Jim Alloway |
|
2001 |
I Capture the Castle [Tim Fywell] c |
|
2003 |
Connie and Carla [Michael Lembeck] c |
|
2003 |
The Upside of Anger [Mike Binder] s35/c; 2uc: Robin Browne |
|
2004 |
Chaos [Tony Giglio] s35/c; ph UK: Danny Cohen; 2uc: Brian Pearson |
|
2005 |
The Detonator [Po-Chih Leong] c; 2uc: Tudor Lucaciu; addph 2u: Gabriel Kosuth |
|
2005 |
Big Nothing [Jean-Baptiste Andrea] s35/c |
|
2006 |
Alpha Numeric [Fiona MacKenzie] pre-production; status unknown (a concept/demo trailer - 3m25s - was made) |
|
2006 |
Flawless [Michael Radford] s35/c |
|
2006 |
Run, Fat Boy, Run [David Schwimmer] s35/c |
|
2007 |
Three and Out/A Deal Is a Deal [Jonathan Gershfield] s16-35bu/c |
|
2010 |
Resistance [Amit Gupta] announced as doph, but film was ph by John Pardue in October |
| TELEVISION | |
|---|---|
|
1982 |
Joni Jones [Stephen Bayly] 5-part miniseries; for Channel 4 Wales/Sianel Pedwar Cymru (S4/C) |
|
1982 |
The Comic Strip Presents [ep #5 (30m) 'Summer School' dir by Sandy Johnson] 35-part series, 1982-93 (+ specials/features); 1st season, 1982-83 |
|
1983 |
The Comic Strip Presents [ep #8 (31m) 'Dirty Movie' dir by Sandy Johnson] 2nd season, 1983-84; see 1982 |
|
1984 |
Aderyn Papur/...And Pigs Might Fly [Stephen Bayly] tvm; for S4/C |
|
1986 |
Brond [Michael Caton-Jones] 3-part miniseries |
|
1989 |
Goldeneye - The Secret Life of Ian Fleming/Spymaster [Don Boyd] tvm |
|
1989 |
Centrepoint [Piers Haggard] 4-part miniseries |
|
1991 |
Gone to the Dogs [Sandy Johnson (#1-3) & Tony Dow (#4-6)] 6-part miniseries |
|
1992 |
A Foreign Field/We Shall Meet Again [Charles Sturridge] tvm; ep BBC-tv series 'Screen One' |
|
1993 |
Dirtysomething [Carl Prechezer] tvm/60m; ep BBC-tv series 'Screen Two' |
|
1994 |
Meat [John Madden] tvm; ep BBC-tv series 'Screen One' |
|
1994 |
The Plant [Jonathan Lewis] tvm |
|
1995 |
It Might Be You [Christopher Morahan] tvm; ep BBC-tv series 'Screen One' |
|
1995 |
Truth or Dare [John Madden] tvm; ep BBC-tv series 'Screen One' |
|
1996 |
[Her Majesty,] Mrs. Brown [John Madden] tvm/s16; also released theatrically |
|
1996 |
True Tilda [Ross Devenish] 6-part miniseries |
|
1997 |
The Woman in White [Tim Fywell] 2-part tvm; in USA ep of PBS-tv 'Masterpiece Theatre' (1998) |
|
1997 |
Dalziel and Pascoe [ep #7 'Exit Lines' dir by Ross Devenish] 60-part series, 1996-2007; 2nd season, 1997 |
|
1997 |
Tess of the D'Urbervilles [Ian Sharp] 2-part tvm |
|
1997 |
Getting Hurt [Ben Bolt] tvm; replaced ph Brian Tufano |
|
1999 |
Warriors/Peacekeepers [Peter Kosminsky] 2-part tvm/s16; addph: Nicholas D. Knowland |
|
1999 |
The Last of the Blonde Bombshells [Gillies MacKinnon] tvm |
|
2002 |
Sons and Lovers [Stephen Whittaker] 2-part tvm |
|
2008 |
Sea Wolf/Der Seewolf [Mike Barker] 2-part tvm; 2uc: Christopher Ball |
|
2009 |
Moby Dick [Mike Barker] 2-part tvm; action unit ph: Simon Richards; filmed 2009-10 |
| TELEVISION AS DIRECTOR | |
|---|---|
|
1982 |
The Magnificent One [Sandy Johnson & (film) Richard Greatrex] tvm/45m; or only ph |
|
1996 |
The Stick [co-d: Deborah Gillingham] ep (10m/s16) of BBC2-tv series '10 x 10', 1989-2000; ph: Roger Bonnici; + co-scrpl |
