Billy Williams - Actors' demands on the set of 'Voyage of the Damned'(88/172)
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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Born in London in 1929, cinematographer Billy Williams shot more than 40 high profile films throughout his career, being nominated for an Oscar for ‘On Golden Pond’ and ‘Women in Love’, then winning the Oscar for ‘Gandhi’ in 1983. He received an OBE in 2009. [Listener: Neil Binney]
TRANSCRIPT: Now, we had another artist on the... on the movie called Lee Grant and she had previously said to me, ‘You know, I've got to have lots of fill light, you've got to give me lots of fill light because these lines are beginning to come rather pronounced’. Well I'd got Faye Dunaway to look after, who... who, you know, was the leading lady in the picture and was getting constant attention with makeup and... and I was, you know, lighting the picture in a certain way but, you know, taking as good care of the ladies as I could, but obviously Lee... Lee Grant felt that she ought to do a bit on her own and so... after we'd started - and she was in quite a number of scenes - she started coming on with white lines painted in here. And I again, I called the makeup and I said, ’What... what's happened with Lee's makeup? They said, ‘Oh, she's done that herself’. It’s funny isn't it? Anyway, the cast list... I say I'd never seen anything like it. Now, as you probably know, when you have the, you know, influential actors and actors above a certain category on a picture, in their contract they get a trailer or a caravan or a Winnebago -whatever you like to call it - for themselves to go and relax in and change and so on. And I remember when we were in Barcelona, we were using Barcelona to double for Havana and there was this long line of trailers, all for the actors. And I counted them, there were 34. There were 34 star actors in that film, each one with a trailer. It cost a fortune. All the same length? Hmm? All the same length? Yes, yeah all identical.
But we had some wonder... there were some wonderful scenes, a very moving picture. It’s a tragic film, a very sad film, and I think it's weakness is it doesn't have enough humour and it's very even paced, and I've seen it on television; I think it works better on television than it did in the cinema, but it was a marvellous story, and we had wonderful sets. At Elstree we had a production designer called Wilfred Shingleton, and he built the whole of the bridge area on stage. Now, in Barcelona we'd already shot scenes on the ship, both at day, at night under steam, but now we'd got these lengthy dialogue scenes on the bridge and on the wings of the bridge, which had to be done in the studio. And when we got out onto the wing of the bridge, which is exposed, I said to the director, ‘Well, you know, we've got to have some wind on this because the ship's under sail and we're cutting with material where we've seen wind blowing and all that’. He said, ’Oh no, no’, he said, ’We can't have wind; I've got to get direct sound’. So I said, ’Well look I... let me try the smallest wind machine’ which was a Mole Richardson, small job. And I said ‘Let... let me try that’ and I put that on and he'd got the headphones there and he said, ’No, no. No, I can hear it. No’. So we shot all these scenes without wind. And when you see it, it's obvious that the ship's not moving! And, you know, it was such a disappointment, I thought, you know, you can easily take out a bit of wind noise, there's no problem in the mix, I'm sure, to do that. But no. No wind.
All these clips are priceless...thank you!
Williams’ comfortable delivery is without parallel.
Great career, great stories.
My only problem with these Billy Williams clips is that I'm so interested in seeing the next one that I forget to hit "like"
What an elegant man.
Classic stuff. Film making is meant to be a calabrative effort (joke). Nearly all of the best cinematographers came from the UK, and Billy Williams was without exception.
Obviously his mic was not functioning, so they took his audio off the interviewer's audio. Thus the echo and distant sound....
I think they did this interview in a men's room.
Yes sound quality for this segment is bad compared to the other videos.
what is he- in a cave?? doesnt anyone monitor the audio on these when recording? the off cam interviewer is on mic but not Billy Williams??
the questions, and the answers, may not necessarily have been taped at the same time and location but edited together.
The previous 87 segments have both the interviewer and interviewee mics. On this, number 88, there is only the interviewer's mic.
It goes on like this for a couple of episodes and is back to normal in 91/172. Either the mic failed for a while or the editor muted the wrong audio track.
Take out the fan noise? No. Not at all easy at that time. They would have had to loop every single line.
Add some atmos, engine noise, sea, what have you and you could cover it. Not the best sounding movie as it is anyway, probably would have sounded better with ADR and better ambience.