I gotta say David Lynch
was brilliant, he was so composed during the filming, I mean
I know we've spoken since and I think in a certain point in time he just
I think he just felt like
he was, you know, he'd entered the tunnel, but there
was no light yet at the end that he could see so he was just in a sort of period
of time that was
seem to go on forever, I mean you remember he was there almost two years
I think
I was there seven months
but they decided to do a lot of second unit and special effect shooting
there as well so he was there for at least year-and-a-half perhaps longer
We had the advantage of having a lot of pre-production
time out there doing tests
and so I was able to see all the sets being built, the development
of each set and stages of the movie
so we were ...
... we had a lot on board before we actually started filming more so than
any other film
normally we would get ... Freddie would get four weeks preparation,
I would get about a week testing
so you living the movie before you actually start
and all the departments are coming together
they were building the sets
and the special effects something like
two years before we started filming
it was huge.
David is such an artist that he lives in his little world
that never bothered him, you know, the 2,000 people in the back
he was worried about what was in front of his lense
and sometimes that's what we had problems with, because you know I would
have two thousand extras in suits in the desert
and he was trying to shoot the close up of Kyle's eye
I said David, you can shoot that eye
you know, in the studio anytime you want but we gotta shoot
you know, that's why we are here out in the desert
David never really worried himself about that.
David had wanted this black smoke, and the way to get the best look of the smoke
is to burn these tyres, which
I guess you can do in Mexico, you can't do in America
but if you caught any of this in your lungs as you were around
it froze your vocal chords or something or you couldn't ...
... you couldn't breathe, I mean it was of the strangest thing, so I remember doing a
sequence with Patrick Stewart where
you know, we come up and give each other big hug
and on one take I remember some of this the wind shifted and some of this
black smoke came right past us, and I remember going to speak to him
and I was like ... [mouths words] ... nothing's coming I could not get it to work
I thought Jesus, God
what have I just done!
We had our own ways of working
and we continued to work the English way
the British way
we wouldn't let the Americans take over.
I have a certain approach where
I stay very close to the director
and expect my operator to be at my side,
and in my mind, all the time
and this was the way I always operated
and its the way Gordon goes about it, so
we operate exactly the same way
I don't say "Put the camera here Gordon, put the camera there Gordon"
as a result of Gordon listening to the director and myself
he knows exactly what to do
so the moment we've finished discussing the shot with the director
he's getting a camera lined up
and everything connected with that
while I am getting all the lighting sorted out.
Freddie Francis, the DP, was a real character
he was helpful but he wasn't really sort of the warm cuddly friendly type
you know,
his First was Roy,
Roy Larner I think,
Freddie took perverse pleasure in sort of, you know
shouting out across the set to Roy you know, to fix something, you know
and Roy was, you know, piped up right away, you know, it's like
done, you know, and it was kind of like
what I would imagine, you know
turn of the century, or before, you know, they're on a ship
he's the captain his first mate could be that scenario
they could've been somewhere in India, you know, the relationship could certainly
it felt to me, military
in the best way, in that great English tradition.