SHOOT STORY | YARD I E
The crowd work was the hardest, getting that done, but that’s all in the prep. All your hard work is done in the prep really.” When asked whether any he’d have done anything differently with a bigger budget he says, “probably, but it wouldn’t necessarily have been better. It might have been worse.” With a crane being the only thing that came to mind as a want he sagely advises, “I’m not sure it’s a worthwhile exercise wondering ‘what if’.” Conroy manages to avoid a lot of ‘what ifs’ by taking a belt and braces approach to his shoots. Having shot with them on The Happy Prince , Conroy was confident in his choice of an ARRI Alexa Mini and Zeiss Master Prime Anamorphic lenses for his core kit knowing that they’d help him create the period look he was aiming for: “I like the anamorphic because it’s sharp but not too sharp.” But there was also an authenticity behind his camera choice, he explained. “I’m very loyal; when we were working on another short film we went to ARRI and they gave us the gear on a short loan for a really good deal and helped us, so we wanted to repay the favour with this. But also it’s a no- brainer – it’s a brilliant camera.” Alongside the Alexa Mini, Conroy also used another camera for shots that he considers the “connective tissue” in the edit. “I also used some Sigma lenses with the [Blackmagic] Ursa Mini for things like sunsets and sunrises; it’s so easy you just pick it up with a lightweight tripod and you’re off and away… I found it a very good single shooter camera… it blended very well with the rest of the stuff.” Conroy also used the Ursa Mini to shoot skies in case a flat sky later needed some extra detail adding in, but all of this shooting was in addition to his regular hours on set. “I’ll get up at four in the morning and drive somewhere
DIRECTOR IDRIS ELBA HAS AN IMDB B-CAMERA OPERATOR CREDIT FOR YARDIE.
IMAGES Clockwise from above left: John Conroy on set; Idris Elba with a young cast member on location in Jamaica; Aml Ameen in Jamaica.
to shoot the sunrise. I’ll shoot things on my day off or stay back late to get things, it’s something that I’ve done on every shoot… It’s very hard to have 60 or 70 people standing around shooting a sunrise or something that may or may not happen.” It’s likely his considerate but dedicated nature that’s got John Conroy so far in his career but it also plays into the advice that he’d impart to other aspiring DOPs. “Learn from the people you are working with. They have a lot more knowledge than you do. You might find a spark who’s working on the floor in his 50s or 60s and you might think he doesn’t have anything to offer but a lot of what they say is very clever and they’ve been there… When you talk to a focus puller who’s been doing it for 30 years and has worked in all these situations and tells you how they did this and that, that was a great learning curve for me. I think there’s a lot to miss if you haven’t come up through the ranks.” For Conroy, learning from others on the job was his film school and if his ‘education’ were summed up in one line on a report card it would be surely be: works well with others.
Yardie will be on release in the UK from 31 August 2018.
66 DEF I N I T ION | SEPTEMBER 20 1 8
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