Rachel Portman & Dan MacRae

February saw The Space kick-starting the creative new year with a truly golden Hollywood glow on its post-festive stuffed cheeks, with our very special guests, Oscar winning film composer Rachel Portman and Dan MacRae, the man responsible for the purse strings of Studio Canal, the film distribution house who have backed Oscar winning The Hurt Locker and Oscar nominated Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Presented by Lisa Holloway and sponsored by the Brighton Film School, an informative night of melody and industry insight befell our cosy congregation at Brighton’s Komedia.

Rachel Portman: An ear for music

For an Oscar winner, Rachel Portman, OBE, gives a first impression of pure personable warmth, both on and off stage. When asked by an audience member about working with musicians, she recounted being asked to work on a track with Elvis Costello for the film One Day: “I had nightmares about it, I was so worried I was going to mess it up”.

Starting to compose music at the tender age of just fourteen, you could say that the art of beat, coda and cadenza was born into her. While discouraged from averting her musical gaze outside of the rigid training of classical composition however, it wasn’t until her days at university that Rachel got to experience the world of film, where her love of ‘the moving canvas’ as she so beautifully put it, was truly awoken:  “There’s much more scope in screen than there is in theatre. I was just struck, watching the wonderful images against my music (watch Kieron Butler’s wonderful montage here), how it’s the most powerful thing you can do.”

The Craft

But diversity also holds a key to perhaps where she stands in the grand scheme of the upper echelon of musical figureheads, trying her hand at other mediums, learning and honing the many elements required to produce heart-wrenching and expressive scores: “The wonderful thing about television in this country is that it is so close to film; so it was a really good way for me to learn on smaller scale projects…I tried to break into the Television scene just as Channel 4 started, it was terribly exciting. They made these series of really good films called ‘First Love’; it was a great way for me to learn my craft.”

Bittersweet Symphony

But what makes a good composer? Obviously a good ear is paramount, but Rachel explained to us working on operas to a musical, television to soundtracks, a good dose of empathic aptitude is just as sacrosanct:  “Everything you write as a composer is all based on your own instinctive intuition, your own response to the material. I think it’s very important not to overload the emotion. I’m interested in the bittersweet and scores that have a musical voice of their own, not necessarily about just what the scene is saying visually. I personally thought Never Let Me Go was extraordinarily well made and just beautiful; one of the most inspiring films I’ve worked on in years. It’s a very dark film. They had huge problems trying to find the right composer for it as the strange scientific side to it is that it appears quite a cold story when first read – but it’s actually not and never was to me; it always had a big, beating heart and was about love and how much time we have here; so I connected to it on that level.”

Parts of the process

Rachel had the incredible achievement of being the first woman composer to receive an Oscar, which she won for Emma. So from the world of glamour and glitz to the day-to-day, Rachel elaborated on the routine involved in comprising the likes of an Academy Award winning score: “Every film is of its own world.  I start working on a film when it has been shot and already edited to its near final stage, so I’m working on the last 2-3 months of the making of a film’s life. I get a copy of it and sit and watch it; I talk to the director and discuss where the music is going to go in a combined discussion. Then it takes about 2 weeks before I come up with any real good ideas because you have to take a film on board, enter its world until you are living and breathing it and you become part of it in a way, and the ideas start flowing. I feel I know what the music should be, like an answer; whereas at the beginning you can’t possibly know that. Like writers, once they know the world, it just flows.”

Sound of the underground

Stepping out from the giant shadows cast by the actor, director and producer categories, it seems 2012 has so far been the year for bringing the world’s attention to the importance of sound in film, or more the importance of the amount of it used, with The Artist sweeping the awards boards as a modern approach to a silent film (ironically nominated for a BAFTA in sound, which I still can’t quite fathom). I found Rachel’s personal yet professional take on the matter very veracious: “I think there’s a tendency to over use music now and it’s getting worse, especially in American studio films. There’s this insecurity to have anything without music and it’s so strong when you see a film like A Separation which has no music in it at all; it’s just so refreshing and a relief as we are bombarded with music everywhere.  I’ve often told people I work with ‘Let’s have less music, or something really quiet, just not so much’ as it’s very wearing for us as the viewer to have constant music. If you take music out, people’s attention is put immediately back in to the film again. Often where I take a cue out has as much a powerful effect as when it comes in.”

I urge you all to nip over to Rachel’s IMDB profile to see just how many astounding scores she is responsible for. Many a period drama such as The Duchess and Mona Lisa Smile, to modern pieces such as romantic drama The Vow and mystery thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Speaking of which, Rachel gave a wonderful anecdote about working with directors and the importance of communication to get the desired result: “A little knowledge can be a mixed blessing, it depends on the personality of the director and how good they are at explaining what they want. Roman Polanski was very good; he’s confident working with composers as he trusts them and knows what to expect when listening to your demos. But really you want a director who is happy to talk about a scene and to tell you what they want to feel.  Just words can set things off. On The Manchurian Candidate, Jon Demme originally asked me for a Hitchcock film style; an intellectualised type of fear. So I was busy writing and he came back and said he said to me that it needs to be ‘viscerally frightening’ – that was all I needed to know. I had a litmus test of ‘am I frightened by what I’m writing?’ It’s about directors being able to give you the key to unlock what to write.”

Next on the agenda

With Patrick O’Connor as Director, Rachel is currently working on the film adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s book called Private Peaceful, who also wrote War Horse. But versatility is part of where she is today, and expressed with pep that she’s relish the opportunity to get her hands on an action film or a big western. So any Hollywoods bods – take heed and snap up one of the best of British composers our  little nation has to offer.

Dan MacRae

As presenter Lisa introduces Dan on stage, she gets it spot on by describing Dan as a ‘film buff with a business acumen’. As she continues to read out Dan’s curriculum vitae, many an impressive film he’s been connected with causes many an ear to prick up; Attack The Block, Brighton Rock, Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, Carnage, Kill List to name a very mere few from film distribution house Studio Canal. Currently the Head of Development of Studio Canal, its Dan MacRae’s keen sense of what makes a good film from both sides of the screen that has him sitting in front of us this very evening. Both an avid film lover and evidently confident at making multi-million pound decisions, it’s a rare treat to have Dan allow us a peek in to the inner workings of the immensely yielding cinematic monopoly.

Education for the film-making nation

Conviction is a characteristic that has played a vital part in Dan’s charted professional success, starting out as a grass roots film fan, working his influence on the Scottish audiences as an Art-house cinema programmer: “For 6 years I imposed my tastes on other people. I offered a broad overview of contemporary, classic and art-house cinema as I have a real passion for them; and a sense of audience. One of the most important things about programming a cinema is thinking about what people want to see. You can’t impose your tastes all the time – you have to be very careful about the type and diversity of audiences out there, who want to see a whole range of different material. You get a chance to share some of your enthusiasm and perspective and the kind of repertory programming you can do.”

But it was Dan’s nurturing mettle for home-grown talent that sew the seed of his development expertise. Working in the public sector, Dan has been Deputy Head of the Development Fund & UK Film Council and played a green-fingered hand heading up various short-film making and writer-producer training schemes on his Scottish home soil: “It was like a golden age in short film making in Scotland in the 90s where schemes from anything up to £60000 were given to make a short film dependant on the production value… We fostered many new talent TV directors including Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire) and Andy Goddard  (Downton Abbey, Torchwood, Doctor Who) who made their first shorts and all came through this huge buzz in Scottish cinema. One of the first short films we made won an Oscar; Franz Kafka’s/ Peter Capaldi’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It was so exciting – people from Scotland were getting global attention; people built careers on these short films… There’s clearly a film education that’s an important part in trying to nurture and foster an industry. It’s not just about the practicalities of making movies and the mechanics of storytelling; it’s very important to give people a sense of what cinema can do. You can only build on the past.”

Speculate To Accumulate

The financial onus is an equally generous ingredient in Dan’s day to day, having built up a proven track record from the positions mentioned above, as well as shouldering the responsibility for Working Title Films as Development Executive, on films such as Atonement and Hot Fuzz. Dan continued to explain to us in more detail just what it is that Studio Canal does, along with other elements his role as Head of Development entails: “I now find projects that will find a big audience. We are a financing and development body, but we are fundamentally a distribution company. Essentially we are making sure we deliver something to an audience to enjoy. From the financial point of view, the films we finance ourselves like Attack The Block and Brighton Rock, they cost millions and one of my jobs is to make sure that those films justify those millions to be spent on them. You try and make those decisions based on what you believe an audience is going to respond to and what will bring an audience into a cinema. This is a balancing act of the talent that’s involved, the brand recognition of the kind of film you are making (sometimes that’s simply by genre), a balance between what the film costs and therefore the kinds of talent you have in it. The more expensive the film, the more you need stars. Brighton Rock for example, neither Sam Riley nor Andrea Riseborough were household names, so it became important to get someone like Helen Mirren in the film… Being a distribution company, you need to release material films that will punch above its weight; you have big American movies out there every week and even if they are not narratively or emotionally satisfying, they’ll offer spectacle. It costs the same to go and see Inception as it does Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank. It doesn’t matter which is the better film, so you have to be clever finding ways around that to allow an experience that will stand up to that.”

Mixed Reviews

Studio Canal has many arms to it for generating revenue. Dan explained how they influence where a film ends up from many angles. They finance and make 4-5 films a year themselves, then back approximately a further 28 titles for theatrical release in cinemas, and have an extensive DVD arm for home viewing. Alas however, they can’t all be as successful as each other and Dan admitted there were educated decisions made that they couldn’t have predicted the real-world outcome for, including that of Madonna’s ill-fated, much criticised W.E. The 2010 remake of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock is another title that came up, and I was fascinated to hear the thought process behind choosing the creative steer in a film and how it can be used to escalate the chances of it being made: “With films like Brighton Rock there’s often a sense that you shouldn’t remake something that’s perceived to be a classic film. I think some people felt that the appropriation of Quadrophenia wasn’t entirely successful, but the motivation of doing it that way from us was evocative and interesting. There’s a number of decisions you can make; do you do a remake of the same period, or is that too repetitive? Would it be perceived as slightly drab? Or you could make a contemporary version, which could be very unattractive as it would be very close to the gangs being knife-gangs and the crime is too prevalent. So you look to the 60s, with the opportunity to fetishize the period and a chance to re-write history with a gangster entrepreneur coming into the city buying up property. So that part of the story about old and new gangs is very much in Graham Greene’s book, so made that decision the best possible one.”

The future of film distribution

On a thoughtful leap into the realms of the relationship between film and technology, Dan highlighted where he thought our viewing experiences may end up: “There’s a future perceived that will break down the window between theatrical distribution, DVD, video on-demand, live streaming etc. whereby films are premiered internationally worldwide for one week, beamed directly and digitally into cinemas, and are then able to buy a week later. Cinema started out as an individual experience; peep shows, zoetropes etc. then somebody had the great idea of putting everybody into one big room to watch collectively. What has happened 100 years later is it’s gone back to a solitary experience; people mostly seeing films at home, perhaps with 2-3 other people, but are generally viewing on their own. It could well be that the cycle comes round again… I think cinema will survive because people like that collective experience. The studios are all about summer tent pole movies, so spectacle will continue to exist. Digital film making is creating more opportunities to make small scale films that can be released individually and distributed online, which I’m sure will continue to grow. There is so much money surrounding the blockbuster, so cinemas and big screens will always be there, along with a diversity of audiences; the audience for Kill List is different to Atonement.”

So there you have it – with a combination of mindful mediation and a darn good knack for believing in the right people and ideas for the right audiences, we have been lucky enough that Studio Canal, with the very capable help of Dan MacRae, have produced for our eyes and ears and imaginations, titles of pure grit, to that of the whimsy fantastical. I’ll be keeping an excited watch on their future releases…

Dark Crystal 30th Anniversary Event

February the 12th will see a special event to mark the thirtieth anniversary of The Dark Crystal, held at Brighton’s Duke of York’s cinema.

Duke of York’s Picturehouse, Brighton, 5pm
£12

Released in 1982, The Dark Crystal is a much-loved fantasy film from the legendary Jim Henson, best known as the creator of the Muppets. Marking thirty years since its release, The Space presents a special event with guests who will be interviewed, providing an exclusive insight into the making of the film, following a screening. We are pleased to welcome Producer Gary Kurtz and Art Director Terry Ackland-Snow.

As well as producing The Dark Crystal, Gary Kurtz’s other credits include producing Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Terry Ackland-Snow was also the Art Director on Batman, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Superman 2, Aliens, Labyrinth and The Living Daylights.

TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE! BUY NOW >>>

February’s Event – Let’s start 2012 with a bang!

RACHEL PORTMAN & DAN MACRAE
Sponsored by Brighton Film School

Komedia Studio Bar, Brighton, 7.30pm
£8.50 / £5.50

Ahead of the 2012 film awards season, The Space (Southern Performance and Creative Energies) marks Oscar winning composer Rachel Portman’s thirty years of acclaimed and award winning scores. In an exclusive interview on February 9th, Rachel will provide an insight into her work as one of Britain’s leading film composers. The event, held at Komedia, will also include an appearance from Dan McRae, head of development of film distribution and production company, Studio Canal.

We also have a raffle draw with some great prizes.

TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE! BUY NOW >>>

Skin & Brian Tufano

What a corker of a night. Yes, we returned to the heart of Brighton for our October installment of The Space. We welcomed along BAFTA winning cinematographer Brian Tufano and cult femme fatale, Skin.

• Here is a live recording of Skin’s Q&A >>

Skin Deep
Where do I start with Skin? Struck first by those menacing fire-starter eyes we have all grown accustomed to seeing in those dark, dynamic videos of band Skunk Anansie, this first lady of misfit-rock stands with regal Amazonian attitude, posing calmly and composed for photos with fans after a very frank and lively getting-to-know-you. Dressed all in black with sheer blouse and elongating skyscraper wedged shoes to remind us of her Athenian shape, as put to use on the catwalks by the likes of fashion houses Alexander McQueen and Gucci; I can only surmise that meeting her does not disappoint.

As a fervent fan of Skunk Anansie’s second studio album Stoosh, this album saw me through my teens with the externalised angst I could only dream of letting explode out, as I traipsed from the four walls of my bedroom to the four walls of my secondary classroom. Their music encapsulated the inert energy of anyone who found themselves wishing to scream at the top of their lungs, with a jagged galvanised edge, wipe-clean leather trouser, with a fairy dust delicate voice of pure emotion and soul.

Skin is honest. Not scared, nor PR conditioned to be bubble-gum pop innocent, she tells it how she sees it, making her one of the most entertaining guests I feel exceptionally lucky to have met. Despite her reputation and fame, we learn that under that layer of obvious presented beauty, is a virtuous, self-deprecating strength; the truest evidence of why Skunk Anansie are not back, but really have never been away.

Sing For Your Supper

Far from the processed musical standard of Stepford-reality shows littering the music industry today, Skin and the rest of Skunk Anansie were incubated from that old fashioned ethic of hard graft: “The first few Skunk Anansie gigs were just outside London in back yard places. We knew we were rubbish; we didn’t want to be rubbish in front of the NME crowd, so we were rubbish to one man and his dog, and his rope. And he left half way through the first song! (Laughter) There was definitely a vibe of ‘we have something’. You have to start with ‘something’ to build on. A good voice for instance. When we did our first rehearsal together, after 30 seconds playing we just stopped and started laughing; because it was really f***ing good. We’d probably just played the worst song that no one had ever heard. The energy and the chemistry when we played together was just, there. Then we just worked and worked and worked, tour after tour. We did 5 tours before we had any success at all. It was really just down to just rehearsing and playing non-stop and working.”

Getting Signed

“The first band we got together was me and Cass, which we were in for 2 years. We had an amazing guitarist, I liked to call him Jimi Hendrix, but an absolute c*** of a person (laughter). He was so good for those two years, but eventually we were talking about deals and I told my manager ‘I cannot be in a band with this man anymore.’ And I just mashed the band up and said to Cass ‘let’s start something else’. So we brought Skunk Anansie together; it was like a super group, with Cass Lewis who was in Terence Trent D’Arby’s band, big dreadlocks; beautiful man. Then we stole Ace from another band, who started the Water Rats Theatre in London. We went up to him and said ‘we’re starting a band’, and he said ‘you are?’, and then said ‘I want to be your guitarist!’ and that was all we needed to hear. It was the three of us. We did one gig, and because Cass and I were from the band Mama Wild, and Ace was in Big Life Casino, the place was rammed, we did the gig of our lives. Then we did another gig which was rammed again, but full of A&R people – this was back in the day when they used to go to gigs (laughter). It was that horrible day that Kurt Cobain died. So we went on stage, and Rick Lennox who worked as A&R at One Little Indian records was in the audience. Rick was a massive Nirvana fan, who wasn’t initially going to come to the gig. But he came down, and told us, ‘you took me away from thinking about Kurt Cobain’; and so we got signed off that.”

Rise to Fame

“The thing about success in a band is that you go do a fantastic gig, and then you leave that place, onto the next town, and  all that ‘oh my God weren’t they amazing’ excitement is all back there. So it took a few years for it to catch up with us, for us to realise that we were actually doing all right. Especially if you are from a working class background, you always feel like you are surviving; you’ve got to keep going, it’s all going to fall apart if you don’t. Then we stopped for a while and suddenly realised ‘oh, I’m kind of famous, that’s a bit weird’ (laughter). But it was quite hard to contain; we hadn’t been trained by X Factor, we had no skills at all; we were just drunk all the time (laughter).”

Clit-Rock

Google Skunk Anansie for their genre, and you will soon some across the term ‘clit-rock’. Self-invented, it was a way to find their feet in a lad-clad lager and fag led era of British music: “It was weird – there was this massive Britpop and Britrock scene, and then there was Skunk Anansie. We weren’t allowed on any of those TV shows; we were doing our own thing over here. We were asked one day what we thought of this Britpop scene, and we just turned and said ‘well, we’re our own scene; we’re ‘Clit-rock’. And that was it. There were scenes being made up everywhere to sell more copies of NME or whatever, and I was totally taking the p***; yet people still ask me to this day in interviews (Skin puts on mock Euro-trash voice): “So zis zene that you ‘ave cre-a-tid in ze 90s,‘clit-rrrock’.” Skin exclaims: “For the life of me, it was just a joke!”

“The Americans tried to pigeon hole us; we were an RnB band in America, I kid you not! (At this point the audience erupts with amused chortles) We’d see our albums in the RnB sections every time we went into a record shop. On a plane over there once, one of the  American record execs from one of the labels we were going to see was on it, and asked us if we were in a band, and told us (Skin puts on an American accent) ‘When we get back I’m going to introduce you to the Head of the Black Music Department’, and stunned, we were like, ‘why?’ We’re a rock band. It went straight over his head. And true enough we went there and got introduced to him. It was just hard back then for Americans to look at me, and understand that I’m not an RnB singer, and I can’t rap! It was very segregated; there were no white rappers or black rockers. Of course there actually were, but they weren’t taking us seriously. There was a whole scene of black rock music going on at that time, bands like Living Colour. They had to try and club together and knock on the door of the big radio stations. It was very difficult for us all out there.”

Skunk Anansie have headlined many a festival in their time, and asked about being at festivals and whether they actually got to enjoy them, Skin replied: “A little bit too much (audience laughter). Our first album is called Paranoid & Sunburnt, because the first time we played Glastonbury was at 12noon on the first day; a Friday. We only did four songs as we had the wrong passes to get in, so we jumped out the bus, ran on stage and did four songs. Then we came off stage, we remained for the weekend. I don’t really remember much, but we did call our album Paranoid & Sunburnt because of the experience – so you can fill in your own jokes there (laughter).”

Trust in your fans

Not averse to getting caught up in the moment whilst performing, Skin is known for stage diving at their gigs. Presenter Briggy asked about the inherent risks that go hand in hand, if such an expressive trust in your fans were to go wrong: “Touch wood, I’ve never been dropped (Skin quickly starts earches for wood to touch while seated, eventually settling her hand on the stage floor). You have to tell people you’re coming”. At this point, Skin stands up and starts animatedly gesturing to an imaginary crowd; “And they get it. You have to warn people.”

Models Own

Skin isn’t just a pretty voice. She’s also a black swan of a runway icon, with a side-line of modelling in her repertoire. The audience was warmed by her self-disparaging approach to the glitz of the supermodel sway: “It feels uncomfortable. I can’t take myself seriously. I’m a singer-writer, and because of that people ask me to model their clothes. It is really good fun, a laugh.” Briggy asks about Skin’s skills in the sashay: “Shall I do it for you?” With audience encouragement, Skin walks towards one end of the stage and floats with elegance, but simmering with ferocity. “That’s my ‘taking the p***’ walk that everyone does.”

Soundtracks

Skunk Anansie have produced a menagerie of feisty numbers, and its no surprise to hear that they have featured on film soundtracks too. Most recently in 2011 they featured on Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch with their track Search & Destroy: “It is like an hour and a half music video, a beautiful movie.”

They also featured on  Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days:  “It was funny as we’d just been a band for six months…We got asked to go to Hollywood to write music for this film, and we soon realised that this is some big s*** right here. They aren’t kidding around. So we write a song, and we were in the film singing Selling Jesus – and it was possibly the hardest we have ever worked. We had to do this for 8 hours non-stop without a break, full steam jumping – it was mind-bogglingly exhausting. Imagine doing an eight hour Skunk Anansie gig. We didn’t eat, we didn’t rest; we just went on and on. The movie was fantastic, and incredible to be part of; a lot of people in America still love Skunk Anansie because of that film.”

Splitting Up Is Hard To Do

After a successful run in the charts from 1994 to 2001,Skunk Anansie split up, coming back for more reforming in 2009. Asked what it was that led to the disbanding, Skin explained: “Lots of small reasons, but  I think the main feeling is that we just grew apart because we were just exhausted. We’d done a lot of work in a short space of time; through our own doing – we wanted to work that hard, no one made us do it. You just get a brain fog, you get Yoko Ono in the band; weird things start happening. Skunk Anansie have always been this ball of amazing chemistry, a circle of energy – and that just dissipated because we were all in little worlds doing our own thing. There’s lots of different reasons why that happened, there wasn’t any one major thing; which is the reason why we’re still such good friends. We didn’t have any beef with each other. No one slept with anyone else’s girlfriend, no one slagged any one off to the press, and there were no horrible stories of hate in the press. We just grew apart; I think we all just wanted to do something else for a while.”

Going Solo

During the split, Skin went on to establish a successful solo career, releasing solo albums Fleshwounds and Fake Chemical State, along with becoming a name as a DJ. But it wasn’t all plain sailing: “In the end I don’t think I’m narcissistic enough for it. I love doing different things, different kinds of music, and doing the solo thing was really amazing as it really honed in my song writing skills, and it really taught me a lot about the other parts of the band. I’d really only been a lead singer and a played a bit of guitar, but I really got to understand the bass, the guitars, the drums. I had to go and buy gear, amps and stuff, and I really learnt and had a more respect for what everyone else in the band was doing in Skunk Anansie, as I was having to do it all for myself. Being solo is like being in a tree and you’re at the top, and everyone else does what you say as they want to keep their position in that tree. You have to be right, a lot. Whereas in a band we argue, we challenge each other…everyone’s throwing ideas in the pot. When you are solo you have to be coming up with it all. You need a huge dose of healthy narcissism to deal with that. Which I think is good and why some people are amazing at that; but I prefer being in a band.”

Skunk Anansie’s reformation album, Wonderlustre was released in 2010. So how did Skin feel, getting back into : “We’d all learnt volumes about our craft. Ace had gone away and produced 14 albums and had a radio show here in Brighton, so he came back with a huge amount of knowledge and information and excitement. Cass had been working with other people and had put bands together, teaching kids how to do music production and had a studio and rehearsal room. Mark had been in the band Feeder, among other things, and he was the one who had probably done the most emotional, internal work, and so brought that energy into the band. I think that when we came back together we were very much more solid as individuals, very excited about music, and very learned; old statesmen of ourselves. So it was great having all these different parts of the band;  Cass would do the studio music, Mark was doing all the videoing and the internet stuff, and Ace was helping with all the merchandising, and I was creative doing all the fashion, photography and the artwork. We did it all ourselves; it was so much easier to run and organise because we just talked to each other. There was no record company helping, no 20 people you had to refer to, to get permission from. What we learnt from being away from the band is that it’s supposed to be f***ing fun! If you’re worrying about this and worrying about that, with big ambition trying to get on this or that TV show, it squeezes out all the fun of everything you are doing. In the 2-3 years we’ve been back, we’re already in a bigger position than where we left off. And that is something to be very humble about (audience applauses).”

In August of this year, harrowing disaster struck the Belgian music festival Pukkelpop, with five people losing their lives during a freak storm that hit the festival causing a stage to collapse, injuring many others. Skin gave her account of this tragic happening: “Terrifying. I’d actually walked on stage with heat stroke; it was so hot; not one single cloud in the sky. We were doing press and I didn’t have a hat on, and I have no hair so got heatstroke.  People were saying there was going to be a bit of a storm and I was thinking ‘I don’t think so’. Then just before we went on stage the sky went dark. Really dark. We went on stage, and we were having a great gig, and it just got darker and darker, rainier and rainier, until just before the end, we were doing the last couple of songs, it just started vertical hail storming, with 5p size hailstones falling straight in to us. I was saying stupid things like ‘we’re going to carry on!’ because the more the weather was getting more atrocious, the more crazier the crowd was getting; ripping their shirts off. Then I just got blown backwards, and we were literally holding onto each other, walking at obtuse angles, trying to get off the stage as we really thought it was going to get blown off after what had happened previously in Indiana (a stage at The Indiana State Fair also collapsed resulting in fatalities) . So it was really, f***ing, scary. I’d never experienced anything like that, and never want to again. It just came from nowhere, within five minutes, and then it was gone twenty minutes later.”

Skin went on to give us a brief overview of all the charities she is involved in, more details of which you can find out about on her personal website: http://www.skinmusic.net/bio/skin

An advocate and fighter for the nonconformists, Skin and Skunk Anansie stand loud and proud, and long may they continue to Tear The Place Up: “We’ve always been outsiders.” But with a defiant smile, and to audience applause: “But we’ve lasted.”

• Skunk Anansie band website
• Skin’s own website, SkinMusic

And here are a couple of Skunk Anansie’s music videos:

BRIAN TUFANO: An Eye for Detail

The role of a cinematographer is not easily placed from the title, but plays a fundamental part to how a script is translated into the pixel perfect projection upon which our eyes feast at the multiplex.

Brian Tufano is quite possibly one of Britain’s national cinematic treasures, having been one of the creative minds behind such cult pieces as Trainspotting, Quadrophenia, Billy Elliot and East is East. A career spanning over four decades  in the industry, Brian still seeks satisfaction in a story with grit, helping realise some of the latest British emerging auteurs, working with the likes of Noel Clarke on Kidulthood (2006) and Slumdog Millionnaire director, Danny Boyle on his first feature film; Shallow Grave (1994).

One would say that he deserves a medal. But instead he has been recognised with both a BAFTA Award (for Outstanding Contribution to Film and Television 2001) and a Special Jury Award for Outstanding Contribution to Independent Film at the British Independent Film Awards (2002). Brian is jewel in the British celluloid crown methinks.

So when asked what it is Brian actually does, Brian had this to say: “I’m responsible for photography; I work closely with the director and decide how to interpret the script visually, then working with the crew to meet that end. It’s my job to work out the logistics to get that shot, and to keep on schedule.”

Honestly, I still wasn’t overly clear about what this entailed on a day to day basis, so when Brian was pushed further by presenter Briggy on this, the haze soon transformed to sepia filtered crystal: “In my other life as Head of Cinematography at the National Film School, I try to convey to students, what I call the ‘visual subtext’, or there is another phrase for it; ‘seeing sideways’. In a cinema, you can take your audience anywhere, and I start thinking: ‘How do I interpret the script visually, in such a way that I am adding to what the writer has put on paper.’ You look for clues in the script. This sets me off thinking about what pictures I want on the screen. There is one scene in Billy Elliot where Billy’s father becomes a scab, a strike breaker, and attempts to go back to work. In the script it was quite a simple scene where he has to get on a coach with the other strike breakers to get to work.  We didn’t have a location for it initially – but my idea came from a moment in the future scene where Billy is excited and asking his dad about a future trip to London. His father admits he has never been, as “there are no mining pits”. He has only ever known this Northern English mining life – so it’s that back story you are looking for. You never see this back story but it’s what drives the characters. So it was my feeling that when this father character has to throw everything he knows away to earn money for his family, these people would not be catching a bus at the local bus stop; they’d be somewhere hidden away, where the pickets couldn’t get at them. The location manager had found us 5 different areas, and the one we chose was the only one that was one completely surrounded by coal. So by using that location from the moment he walks to the bus to the moment he breaks down, that is what I call ‘visual subtext’. Visually it’s very interesting. It’s what I am looking for.”

“After a research trip for Trainspotting, Danny told me that heroin addicts spend most of the time on the floor, so he wanted me to play with that and work out a way for the camera to reflect this. This is another case of ‘visual subtext’.”

But it’s not just imagination and theorising, the role of the cinematographer is a rather faceted, hands-on role. Speaking about that iconic toilet scene in Trainspotting (warning: step away from the Campbell’s before reading): “Ah yes, we got very intimate, Ewan (McGregor) and I, and the camera. It was a mix of soup; oxtail and mulligatawny. But I don’t want to put you off tinned soup! It’s a standard throughout the industry. Then the other scene where the character Spud doesn’t do too well in the night (a fair amount to excrement representation in said scene); it was not pleasant filming it. There’s a wonderful publicity photograph of me and Danny (Boyle) dressed in our rainproof clothing, with a lot of the substance coming straight at us. So oh yes; it was definitely soup.”

Not being entirely a film buff myself (but always learning), I always find it refreshing to hear how the guests we have at our events have ended up where they are; from serendipity to passion, to who they know and ‘falling into it’. With Brian, it was down to a mix of destiny and an unfazed youthful confidence: “When I started I’d never heard of the word cinematographer, it was just ‘a cameraman’. According to my mother, from the age of 9 in my school books, which she very thoughtfully kept, were drawings of men with cameras. It just fascinated me. Aged 11 I discovered amateur film clubs, and one in Shepherd’s Bush where I lived, knocked on their door, and they let me become a member. So at the age of 11 and a half I’d started on 16mm and 9.5 camera, and have been shooting film ever since then. However I couldn’t get into the film industry when I left school; I was told by the employment officer to become an apprentice in the engineering works, which looking back may have been a wise thing (laughter). I didn’t know anyone in the industry and had no family members in it. To get into it I discovered you had to be a member of the union. But to be in the union you had to be in the industry doing a job; which when you are 16 makes no sense at all. The only way in was through the BBC. So as a page boy (runner), I discovered the film department, I badgered the film crews to take me along to nightshifts and I went from there into BBC Sport.”

It’s no secret that a film can be an arduous adventure to get off the ground through to completion. And the buck stops with budget. A Life Less Ordinary was the highest budget film he has worked on: “It was a figment film for Danny (Boyle, director) and Andrew (McDonald, producer). It was an American film, shot in America with 20^th Century Fox money, which started out as $16 million; which is peanuts by today’s standards. But Danny and Andrew had made this pledge that they would have final say on the final cut of the film. But this isn’t the way American studios work; they always have the final cut. And so there was this continual backwards and forwards between Danny and Andrew and 20^th Century Fox. We were up in Salt Lake City getting ready, when they went back down to Hollywood for yet more meetings, and when they came back, the budget had been dropped down from $16 million to $10 million, so that they could keep final cut.”

Further budget challenges are part and parcel in the film industry. But you can have all the money in the world thrown at a film and it still turn out a train wreck. It is more the skills required and the minds behind the imaginative uses of the resources available to play with. The 1999 British identity comedy East is East is one film that Brian cites from his repertoire for having the budget limit his creativity (though it still turned out to be a corker): “There is an opening parade scene, the kids are running up a back alley, parallel with the road. I wanted to get a crane up over the top so you could see them running, with a contrast to the parents who were the other side of the parade above them, getting them all in the frame. There was a big time pressure due to the money. It would have needed half a day to get the timing right, and one of the biggest cranes in the industry requiring four men to operate; it could have proved lethally dangerous – acting as a giant catapult had it gone wrong! So I hate to use the word compromise, because what you are trying to achieve your vision with the material and money that you have got.”

Evidently in the thick of it, working on a film is a constant and delicate balancing act. But before filming comes the biggest decision of all; choosing which film is the right film: “The script is the most important part when choosing what film to work on next, if I think there is something I can do with it. Then the next step, if I get it, is to meet the director. They always think they are interviewing me, but if I don’t like them, I call up my manager to make up some diplomatic excuse, because I don’t want to spend the next 2 months of my life not seeing eye to eye with them. This was the case with Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – I set up all the shots but then we parted company simply because I didn’t think the director was doing Ian Drury’s character in the story justice. I thought Andy (Serkis) was brilliant in the role, which was what was bugging me; it was that the director was interested in shooting the film like one long music video, whereas I wanted to get inside Ian Drury’s head, because that’s where the story was. And because Andy is such a brilliant actor, I could see it going on before my very eyes, and I wasn’t able to get it on camera. Everybody sees it differently, but I can’t spend those weeks being frustrated; it’s just one of those things.”

Meticulous with his script choices to which colleagues he works with, Brian has a keen sense of direction and forethought. Despite over forty years in the show we like to call ‘biz’, Brian confessed that there is still al lot of energy and excitement to be found working with new talent in comparison to established directors: “I think I prefer working with first time directors, simply because they don’t bring any baggage with them, which is kind of wonderful. There is more freedom and an open mind, and to a great extent they use more imagination. I’m a bit off the wall with some of the things I suggest and they tend to listen to me, whereas the others don’t as they tend to get nervous (laughter).” Brian openly welcomed any budding artists in the audience to send him their scripts for visualisation (though don’t ask me how to get them to him, that’s your first challenge).

Not quite the norm for a cinematographer, Brian has even dabbled in casting: “There was one really interesting time in Trainspotting. Danny (Boyle) said ‘we’ve got to find the actress to play Diane in the next casting session tomorrow morning’. So the following morning we went into this rehearsal room, and had a succession of young actresses come in. As the queue left, I watched Kelly (Macdonald) from the window as she left the building and cross the road, and you just know. I said ‘Danny, Kelly’s the one, she has to be.’ And he said ‘you’re absolutely right; she’s just got it’.”

So, a talent spotter on a number or levels, Brian is still going strong, with an active creative eye and mind, helping raise a generation more of passionate and original storytellers. There is something very comforting in that thought for our British filmic future.

The Argus, event guide for October’s The Space

“My problem is that, in England, people applaud new bands, but they forget that new music can come from anywhere…If you’re just obsessed about new bands, you don’t give careers to rock musicians who get better and change with age like painters. We’re artists, we go through one period in our teens, then our 30s, 50s and 80s – it’s all vibrant and fantastic and it’s all necessary.” Skin from Skunk Anansie

• Click here for the full event guide from Brighton’s The Argus >>>

SKIN loves The Space

After another incredible event bringing Skunk Anansie frontwoman extraordinaire and Quadrophenia’s cinematographer together for an intimate night of questions and amusing answers, here’s what Skin posted on her Facebook page:

“Had fun at The Space tonight, thanks everyone for coming down and to the lovely staff who looked after me so well. Was great to meet & chat with cinematographer Brian Tufano, what an interesting man, told us some great stories.”

Thank you to Skin for her kind words, and to Brian Tufano for yet another wonderful event.

Check out Skin’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/SkinOfficial

Skunk Anansie’s Skin has confirmed for our October event

WE RETURN ON THURSDAY OCTOBER 6TH TO KOMEDIA WITH TWO MORE GREAT GUESTS INCLUDING ROCK SINGER, DJ AND ICON – SKIN

A groundbreaking presence, Skin is one of Britain’s leading female rock singers, having made a huge impact with Skunk Anansie. She is also a fashion icon, a renowned DJ, a charity activist, and an inspiring role model for different generations of fans.

After giving up her career as an interior designer to write songs and devote herself to music, she played in bands in the London indie scene before forming Skunk Anansie. Within a year after their first gig, they were voted Best New British Band by the readers of Kerrang! In 1997 they were nominated for Best Live Act and Best Group at the MTV Europe Music Awards. The latter 90s saw them dominating the UK album chart with their top twenty albums: Paranoid and Sunburnt, Stoosh and Post Orgasmic Chill. The decade saw them achieving ten top forty hit singles, including Weak and Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good). Skunk Anansie toured globally with such acts as U2, Aerosmith and Lenny Kravitz, and headlined Glastonbury in 1999. In 2001, however, they split up.

Skin later launched a solo career, releasing and touring the albums Fleshwounds in 2003 and Fake Chemical State in 2006. Spawning the hit single Trashed, Fleshwounds was a pared-down, soulful album. Skunk Anansie reformed in 2009 and the same year they released a greatest hits album. In 2010, they recorded their fourth album, the sensual and funky Wonderlustre.

As well as fronting one of the UK’s key rock bands, Skin is a multi-talented artist involved in varied projects. She is also an established DJ, playing house and rock. She has modelled for top fashion designers, such as Alexander McQueen and Gucci. Skin does a lot of charity work, from The Medical Foundation and the Baobab Foundation, charities that focus on torture victims and asylum seekers.

www.skinmusic.net

www.skunkanansie.net