Dowbload Part 3 - size: 2.7mb - Screen Africa

More documents

Recommendations

Info

N R INDUSTRY CR A SCREENAFRICA Y N I V E R S A Twenty-one years in the industry The May 2009 issue of Screen Africa celebrated our 21st anniversary. Here we continue the special feature on key players who have been around for a similar number of years and who have each made a unique contribution to the South African film and television industry. TONY BOYERS The name Tony Boyers has been synonymous with South Africa’s film laboratory for decades and he himself will joke that he’s been “in the same job” for over 40 years. “I’d always been interested in photography and as a kid spent many hours processing and printing photos in a makeshift dark room in my bedroom,” says Boyers. “While at boarding school I set up a little darkroom to print motor racing photos and school sports photos, which we would then sell to the boys at Jeppe. “In 1967 I joined Killarney Film Studios as a printing operator and worked on weekly newsreels like African Mirror, Ons Nuus, British Movietone and Pathé. Two years later the studios merged with, and moved to, Irene Film Studios, which in those days was the middle of nowhere. I spent many years doing optical effects and titles.” Boyers describes those early days as an exciting time as lab staff would be involved in Killarney Studios’ production process. One of the early movies Boyers worked on was Escape Route Cape Town with international star Jacqueline Bisset. He would also often go out with news reel cameramen, thus learning all aspects of filmmaking. In 1981 Boyers was involved in setting up a laboratory in Johannesburg to focus on the commercial business. “We opened an optical facility but had to move it back to Irene because of the feature boom of the 1980s. At one stage we had 30 features going through the labs, all requiring titles and special effects.” Eleven years later Boyers was made manager of the Optical & Camera Effects Department and was sent to London for training in Soho and at Pinewood Studios. Stress levels in a job where you are working with clients’ orginal film are high. Says Boyers: “You only have one shot at it. No retakes or ‘delete’ and starting again. We spend a huge amount of time and effort preparing and testing machines before putting any client’s material on a machine but sometimes it still goes wrong. That’s the one thing I hate about this job and then, that phone call to the client to try and explain what went wrong.” In 1998 the Film Lab became only the second film laboratory in the world to achieve Kodak Imagecare status. Boyers became GM of Film Lab in 2001 and a year later was asked to take over management of Chris Fellows Sound Studios which was then, like the Film Lab, part of the Sasani Group. It was the only Dolby accredited mixing facility at the time in South Africa. Boyers notes that film processing technology itself hasn’t changed much over the years. “What has changed are the controls, which have become far stricter under the Kodak Imagecare Programme. The parameters that we are allowed to work between have got tighter and tighter. Fortunately temperature controllers and motors for processing and printing machines have improved.” For the last 35 years Boyers has consistently heard that film has only five years to live. “Digital has been fantastic in the post-production arena. It has allowed filmmakers to do things that they had never dreamed of before. Sure, the digital systems are creeping in and taking over, but film still has many strengths. It is still a great medium to originate on, it has extremely good latitude and it is still reasonably bullet proof and then, of course, it can be stored for many years. Not only is film an excellent capture medium, it’s a great storage medium. Digital is only a capture medium – there are still problems around storage for any length of time.” TIM ATKINSON Tim Atkinson with Mark Kaplan As someone who has worked since 1965 in the fields of audio, video, lighting, projection, production and servicing the electronic needs of production companies, Tim Atkinson says he got into the audio-visual (AV) industry by accident. “At school I had tinkered with electronics and at the University of Cape Town [while completing a BSc Electrical Engineering (Light Current) Degree] I did stage sound for concerts and recorded artists, so I just went on from one thing to another.” Atkinson’s introduction to South Africa in the 1970s of the Electrosonic multi-projector slide-tape system brought what the French called ‘Audio- Visuelle’ to South Africa. He says: “The concept of two slide projectors with automated dissolve and change triggered by silent control pulses on the associated soundtrack meant that slide shows now had the fluidity of 16mm movies, without the associated production costs and delays. This opened up a whole new dimension in business to business (B2B) communication at that time. “Electrosonic multi-screen technology advanced the concept by combining many pairs of slide projectors to form giant images on large screens, and controlling all of them by silent signals on an associated, (often multi-channel) sound track. This was the start of true multi-media presentations. In association with Johann Kruger and Multivisio, we launched almost every new car in the 1970s.” In 1978 Atkinson launched the first commercial colour TV studio in Cape Town. “We got into TV/ video because while slide/tape shows were doing a great job of assisting our clients to communicate B2B, it was time-consuming to make copies, and expensive to mount repeat shows. By converting the slide/ tape show to videotape, we solved both these problems and our clients could show their presentations using video cassette recorders and TV sets.” Together with Alan Joy (now 40 SCREENAFRICA – October 2009
N R CR A SCREENAFRICA Y INDUSTRY N I V E R S A contributing editor for Screen Africa), Selwyn Pogrund and others, Atkinson started the Cape Town Chapter of the ITVA and an annual videotape competition for non-broadcast producers. This later became the Artes Awards. Atkinson expanded his TV facilities to include video tape duplication, and a mobile multi-camera capture and edit system. “Quanta Graphics and Text was added and when BetacamSP became available, we were the first facility in Cape Town to install a full three-machine component edit suite. Not long after that we installed the first ADO in Cape Town and also the first Ultimatte,” notes Atkinson. A high point in his career was the 1989 production of Atkinson’s NTVA Award-winning company show reel Much ADO about nothing. Another highlight was providing editing facilities to the European Broadcasting Union TV stations at the time of Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990. A few years later Atkinson sold his broadcast TV facility and ended up with a number of U-Matic shuttlesearch recorders and monitors that had been off-line edit suites. “I discovered that the film industry used these machines for video-take-off, whereby a tiny video camera was placed in the film camera’s viewfinder, and what the camera saw was recorded on the U- matic tape for instant playback. It wasn’t long before we had several systems running. The film industry was in an explosive growth phase at that time in Cape Town. We developed better, lighter and faster VTO systems and also diversified into location sound recording equipment.” Formally recognised as an expert in the AV field, Atkinson has been called on to testify in a number of high profile court cases in South Africa where he has had to examine audio and video tape recordings to find inconsistencies, or to verify their authenticity and originality. RICHARD GREEN As a teenager Richard Green used to walk up and down the aisles of the Tria Cinema in Strand, selling ice creams from a tray attached to his chest. “As soon as the curtain went up I would kneel down at the back of the cinema and watch the film. It was the credits that fascinated me – I always wanted to be the person with the biggest credit.” Years later, intent on being a cameraman, Green went to see director Ashley Lazarus (E’Lollipop) armed with a speech. “But he didn’t ask the right questions so the interview went badly. I then came to Johannesburg and walked all the way from the station to Northcliff to see Jamie Uys (Crazy People) for the same reason. Jamie didn’t give me a job but kindly organised a chauffeur to take me back. When the SABC started up I managed to get a job there.” Disillusioned with apartheid, Green left South Africa in 1976 to attend the London International Film School. He made a few films in London and decided to come back to South Africa in 1980, to see if he could make a difference. It was then that he started working as a production manager for the late legendary filmmaker, Manie Van Rensburg, on productions such as Verspeelde Lente, Dr Con se Overberg and Die Perdesmous. Says Green: “Manie and I worked together for about five years and became close friends. I have fond memories of him and worked on his last film, Taxi to Soweto. Manie was one of those who went to visit the ANC in exile and then got blacklisted by the SABC. Several people who are now prominent in the industry worked with me in my Manie days, such as Birrie Le Roux, Diana Cilliers, Tai Krige and Keith Rose.” Green, who is primarily a producer, always wanted to direct and early in his career directed a film called Praise, based on the Nadine Gordimer book. Praise proved to be very successful and was screened on Channel 4. Green also directed the groundbreaking TV series, New Horizons. “We took white kids into Soweto to see why black kids were burning their schools as part of an anti-apartheid protest,” he explains. The film infrastructure in South Africa started developing in the late 1980s with the introduction of the now infamous tax subsidy scheme. For about four years Green worked backto-back on Avi Lerner films like Women of Desire, American Ninja 2 and Coast of Skeletons. In 1990 Green and Phillip Key formed the service company Moonlighting Films and began promoting South Africa abroad. Says Green: “Three years later I sold Moonlighting and formed my independent production company, Richard Green & Associates. My first slate of films was with UK company Peakviewing. “Together with Michael Chaise and John Stodel, I created the New Directions initiative for pay-TV channel M-Net, who wanted to do something to empower filmmakers. Over a period of 10 years I produced 32 short films and two feature films for New Directions, many of which picked up international awards. Through New Directions I worked all over Africa, which I absolutely loved. We shot in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Namibia, Ghana, Ethiopia and held scriptwriting workshops in Senegal and Uganda.” In 2003, Green produced the independent feature film, The Wooden Camera, which won multiple international awards, including the Crystal Bear at Berlin. Very recently Green worked as AD on the blockbuster District 9. “I also do a lot of line producing and will be doing that on the upcoming Spud. Basically I look for projects that interest me and am about to head off for Malaysia on another job.” ETTIE FELDMAN Ettie Feldman with Edward Fox As a 15-year old Ettie Feldman began working at Geva Film Studios, one of only two film studios in Israel at the time. Her interest in films had been sparked by going to matinees at a very young age. “I learnt on the job as there was no film school in Israel then,” says Feldman. “As a trainee you had to go through all the different departments – sound, negative matching etc. I got hooked on editing because you see the results of your work immediately. A film is never shot in sequence, so you look at miles of out-of-sequence material and from that you build a story. It’s magic.” Throughout her career, Feldman has worked in Israel, Germany, Holland, Ireland, England and the USA, yet chose to settle in South Africa. “I came to visit my brother in South Africa and fell in love with the country. At the beginning of my career here I did sound editing for Jamie Uys. Thereafter I joined Killarney Film Studios, editing commercials for a short while and then came the feature films and documentaries.” Feldman describes the most challenging job she has worked on as the local mini-series, Shaka Zulu, directed by the late Bill Faure. “When we finished the rough cut, which was 15 hours long, we had to take it to Germany for a producers’ viewing, as the Americans and the Germans were unwilling to come to South Africa. Shaka Zulu was the biggest production ever undertaken in South Africa at the time. “Towards the end of post-production I was occupying three sound studios in Johannesburg: one for ADR (automatic dialogue replacement), one for foley effects (ie. replacing the live recording of sound effects created by a foley artist working in sync to picture) and the third studio for sound mixing. The logistics were a nightmare, not to mention the post-production crew’s little fights.” Every single production she has ever worked on is special to Feldman. “Each has its own colour and they are all dear to my heart. Feature films are my first love, though.” As to format preference, if Feldman had her way, no-one would ever work on tape. “Film has such a degree of depth and warmth that the new technology is trying to achieve on tape without success. Will it ever? Directors seem to like offline editing as it is very easy to keep on changing the cut, and boy oh boy, we keep on changing! In the days of film, directors were forced to make up their minds not only in editing but in filming as well, because the producers kept an eye on the shooting ratio.” Asked to comment on how editing technology has changed since the days when she started out, Feldman responds: “Well, this subject has been done to death, so I’d rather tell you why I stopped smoking. Nobody in the industry could believe it because I smoked 80 Gitanes a day. It all happened while editing Bravo Two Zero for the BBC, when I was using the Avid Film Composer system. The smoke from the cigarettes used to clog the system and I was forever calling Kim Smith, the engineer, to clean the machine. I had to decide between smoking and editing: well, you know the answer. By the way, this would never have happened with linear editing systems. May be I should be grateful to the digital systems.” October 2009 – SCREENAFRICA 41
Page 1 and 2: Shoot Casting - great opportunity J
Page 3: Making Magic PUPPETMASTER - Rod Cam
Page 7 and 8: P R O D U C T I O N U P D A T E S I
Page 9 and 10: P R O D U C T I O N U P D A T E S D
Page 11 and 12: CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Piracy hits D
Page 13 and 14: A N SCREENAFRICA N I V E R S A R Y

Dowbload Part 3 - size: 2.7mb - Screen Africa

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?