Mr Flibble Talks To... Flash Flibble
Mr Flibble's interview with cinematography legend Gil Taylor continues with a look at three more of his classic films - horror groundbreaker The Omen, camp sci-fi flick Flash Gordon and Beatles-fest A Hard Day's Night...

8 December, 2000

Did you use the same lenses and camera time and again?

There are many times when I use the same equipment from one film to another. If I have a batch of lenses, then I keep them. I always go to the same people for my things, and they give me the same camera with the same lenses. I had the camera kept for me. I had great friends in the camera department, and they used to keep it in a cupboard so nobody knew it was there.

Of the lenses, how many would you use on a movie?

The whole lot. In those days the longest lens would be six inch, there would be eight inch but there would be small apatures. Mostly you used the four inch, 75 mm, 50, 40, 35, 24, there later came a 28. And then any freak that you care to do yourself - put your glasses in front! (Laughs)

The reason I didn't need a meter, was because I had absolute faith in Kodak, because you were watched over by men like Dickie Mitchell. Dickie Mitchell would keep on getting in touch, and say, 'What's your next one?' He would know when the batches were coming off, and write funny numbers [on them] - 8 or 2 or 1,640.

But I never understood these numbers, didn't understand their ratings at all - so I didn't take any notice of them. I just used my own. Testing the film with the greyscale and the meter, I would get a densitometer under it to see where my highlights should be. And then once I'd done that I looked away.