SHOOT STORY | YARD I E
I also used some Sigma lenses with the Blackmagic Design URSA Mini for sunsets and sunrises.
RIGHT Idris Elba on the set of Yardie, which is his first film as director.
meet a person like Idris who actually really is as nice as he comes across. He’s a very genuine person and so for me it was all about him.” Fortunately, Conroy had some experience of working with first-time directors so this factor wasn’t a concern for him. “I’d shot Rupert Everett’s film The Happy Prince and he was a first-time director as well so it’s something I’d done before.” Conroy didn’t really see much risk in the collaboration with Elba. “Everyone has to start somewhere and I knew that Idris just knew the craft. He operated a B-camera as well, he’s got a great eye, a really good visual sense so I had no reservations whatsoever.” Over the course of the prep, eight to nine week shoot and post, Conroy’s working relationship grew even stronger. “It very often does,” he says. “I’m great friends with Rupert now as well. The DOP/Director relationship works very well and you can become lifelong friends just because of the stuff that you’re faced with. You go into battle together against everybody else and often when the clock’s running down… that’s the kind of stuff that makes you work together to come up with a solution.” It’s not just famous actors that Conroy builds lasting relationships with, but below- the-line crew members too. He assembled his team for Yardie with some of the best people he’d worked with previously. “My focus puller was Tom Taylor who actually was my camera trainee when I was a focus puller on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I’d worked with him as first assistant camera on some of the Silent Witness episodes. He’s the best focus puller in Britain now so I was very lucky to have him. And my gaffer was called Charley Cox – I worked with him on Rupert’s film and he came to Germany, Belgium and France with me on that so we just had a great relationship.” He also mentioned that those guys are actually best friends, adding to the sense of camaraderie in the crew: “ Yardie was good, I’m sorry it’s over.”
JOHN CONROY
LONDON TO JAMAICA While Conroy has many positive things to say about the film, like any production it had its moments and the dual shooting locations of London and Jamaica each brought their own challenges. “When you’re trying to do a tracking vehicle shot in London, you can’t shoot for more than 20 or 30 yards without hitting problems,” he says. Not only was the street furniture out of place for the period of the movie but also getting the streets clear to shoot was almost impossible. “When you’re doing street scenes and trying to get the streets clear so that we can put our old cars in, some people are just not interested in helping. Then you have to use your own cars to block their cars in and shoot along it to hide it… you can [fix] a lot of things in CG but everything like that costs money. When you don’t have a huge budget that’s when it’s difficult.” Indeed, the smaller budget contributed to one of the harder scenes to film over in Jamaica. “The night scene for the dance and initial shooting just logistically was very difficult to do… we had to be able to shoot very quickly as we only had two nights to do that whole scene and with the crowd there we were aware that we didn’t want them getting bored so we had to shoot quickly.
Check John Conroy’s IMDB entry and you’ll see he has worked on some big movies
clapper loading, focus pulling and camera operating amongst other disciplines. But he started to take the cinematographer role in the mid to late 2000s including on the prestigious shows Silent Witness (20 episodes), Upstairs Downstairs (two episodes), Mr Selfridge (three episodes), Silk and the brilliant Luther with Idris Elba (two episodes of the last series). He’s also shot The Smoke for Sky on the Alexa with Primo lenses. However it was Silent Witness that honed John’s skill as he had to interpret different Directors’ designs as they came on through the series. The first series that John worked on the team used the ARRI D-21 digital camera, their first stab at a digital camera design, then they went on to use the ubiquitous Alexa.
64 DEF I N I T ION | SEPTEMBER 20 1 8
Powered by FlippingBook