A Burning Desire

Anyone who doubts Roger Bonnici's passion for his craft has clearly never met the man. Certainly Paul Hills, the director of his feature debut Boston Kickout as well as a friend and frequent collaborator in the seven years since, was quickly acquainted with his DP-to-be's enthusiasm very early on.

"He's said that I threatened to burn his house down unless he let me light the film," Bonnici chuckles. "He was so moved - or perhaps terrified! - by that comment, that he could tell I was as passionate about the script as he was. But I thought it was a great script and I really wanted to make it."

Shooting Boston Kickout in 1996, a guerrilla style film shot on the mean streets of Stevenage, was the making of both Hills and Bonnici. But as specific, and indeed personal, as the story was for writer-director Hills the virtue of that tale of disaffected youth was the universal themes that it articulately explored. "I read the script and really empathised with the characters, "Bonnici agrees. "To me that was so much like the people I knew growing up, but Paul told me much later that it was about the people he knew when he was at school. I thought it was a story we could all identify with.

"Shooting it, though, was a real rollercoaster ride. At the time Paul was being interviewed in the local press and on the local television network, and Stevenage councillors were trying to prevent him shooting where he wanted, or restrict parking our technical vehicles where we wanted.

"I don't think the story shows Stevenage in a bad light at all, it just highlights the difficulties of teenage life in a New Town."

The irony of this story is that as a teenager himself, Bonnici was not pursuing a life of crime so much as a career in the theatre. Initially the opportunity arose to light productions at his local, the Royal Hippodrome in Eastbourne before chancing his luck and getting a job at the Drury Lane Theatre in London. After several years there, Bonnici had gained a very useful grounding in lighting techniques that were beginning to stretch into the realm of film.

"When they staged TV productions at Drury Lane they would bring in all these different lights, studio lights that were quite different from the theatre ones we'd been using. And after I left Drury Lane, I joined the National Coal Board Film Unit and started using red-heads, blondes and HMI's, lights that were rarely used in the theatre.

"But over the years it's changed. Theatre lights are so infinitely adjustable that film people have started using luminaires like Leko lights, and profile spots with internal cutters. They're always used on the stage and now we can see them used more and more in commercials and films.

"From the National Coal Board Film Unit, an institution that seems to consign 43-year-old Bonnici to an altogether earlier vintage of cinematography, he resolved to work his way through the ranks on UK film productions wherever the opportunity arose.

"I thought it was important to do that," he explains, "because although most gaffers can light scenes, I felt that I must fully understand the camera equipment, lenses, grip equipment and all their limitations. Lighting a scene is only part of the jigsaw. How you achieve the shots logistically and whether they cut together are other parts and so is your rapport with actors. Some technicians have a natural ability with actors and directors, and some don't."

So from theatre lighting man, to gaffer and swiftly to clapper loader and beyond, the progression seems simple and straightforward. Since he has been a DP he has worked on features as diverse as Boston Kickout, La Passione and Sunset Heights.

Bonnici admits he draws his inspiration fromthe very best in the business.

"As a technician I worked on so many commercials, and worked with so many DPs like Freddie Young, Dougie Slocombe, Norman Warwick, Billy Williams, Freddie Francis that it was great to see how they worked. All those guys are consummate pros, and to watch them at work was an education in itself. One of the most important lessons learnt was not over lighting, that's the beauty of it.

"What you do is just hope you can do something similarly wondrous yourself. Even watching John de Borman on Death Machine, where I shot second unit, we were shooting pick up shots for scenes they'd shot two days before and it was great to see their rushes and go onto the set and watch John at work. He's got a great sense of humour and a great rapport with his crew. I hope I've the same with my crews. I always like to have a laugh, you have to enjoy what you do otherwise it can be hellish."

When Paul Hills hired Bonnici to shoot Boston Kickout he began a long-standing collaboration that has culminated in their latest film together, The Poet. Shot on Fuji 500T and 125T, this is a noirish tale of a Chechnya veteran(Dougray Scott) who makes a living as an assassin-for-hire, but finds his professionalism compromised when he falls in love.

"The film looks quite glossy even though it has a very European style to it. One film that we referred to quite a lot was Louis Malle's Les Amants. We studied it carefully, together with lots of other references, but Paul had a distinct look in mind mostly in the way we shoot it rather than the `overall look'.

"We shot in Munich, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Vienna, Grunau in the Austrian Alps and Paris. I wanted everything in Vienna, Munich, Paris, Dusseldorf and Cologne to feel nice and warm so I shot everything with an 85B correction filter and Pola where possible, and various diffusion which achieved that.

"The sequences that were meant to be set in London we shot with an 81EF, so they were a lot cooler. The story starts in London and that has a definite cooler feel before it moves on.

"I actually considered that I'd be able to shoot the whole film on the one stock, with the tight schedule really governing how many different stocks I could use. The schedule was so tight that the last thing I wanted was delays when having to change stocks, so I thought if I could keep the majority of stuff in Europe on the 500 - when we went into the Alps we shot everything on the 125 - and then come back out on to the 500 afterwards. That was great, it meant we could keep the pace up and keep on schedule.

"Obviously the decision for the stock used was also based on the results of the conversion to anamorphic, because we shot it Super 35 format. I certainly wasn't going to stick my neck out and say the 500 would be great even for the conversion. But Bavaria Film Labs in Munich did a variety of tests for us and they were blown away by it. They thought it was great."

Shooting the 125 stock in the Alpine scenes, Bonnici reports that they gave the film a cleaner, slightly crisper image with less grain. He credits his operator Martin Parry too, with the skilful framing on the film, and given the fact that Parry started out on Boston Kickout also gives The Poet a pleasing symmetry. Bonnici, for one, is not complaining.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't envious of every cameraman who is involved in a film," he shrugs, "just for the sheer love of being able to shoot a movie. But I've got plenty of enthusiasm and I think it comes across. To me it's not just a job for job's sake, it's what I want to be doing for the rest of my working life."