Gerry Turpin

Gerald Leslie "Gerry" Turpin (born 1 September 1925 in Wandsworth, London; died 16 September 1997 in North Cotswold, Gloucestershire) was an English film cameraman and award-winning cinematographer.

Biography

Turpin began his career in 1945 at Ealing Studios as a camera assistant to Douglas Slocombe and Stanley Pavey. From 1953 he worked as a camera operator, and worked with the likes of Pavey, Gordon Dines, Desmond Dickinson, Otto Heller, Gilbert Taylor, Reginald H. Wyer and Harry Waxman. In 1961 he made his first film as director of photography, The Queen's Guards with director Michael Powell.

His first collaboration with Bryan Forbes in 1964, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, earned him a nomination at the 1965 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA). For his next film with Forbes, 1967's The Whisperers, he received a BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography. For his camera work in Richard Attenborough's directing debut Oh! What a Lovely War, Turpin received the 1969 BSC Best Cinematography Award^[1] and his second BAFTA.

For his second collaboration with Attenborough, Young Winston, Turpin developed before the camera lens mounted device called ColorFlex that represented an alternative to traditional pre-exposure (flashing) of the negative film in the lab. By pre-exposure of the film material and thus a Kontrastabflachung brightening dark portions is achieved in general. By ColorFlex Turpin was during filming selective portions of the image with colored flash pre-exposure and thus on the one hand control the Kontrastabflachung accurate and secondly shades targeted influence than through the use of filters.

From 1973 Turpin developed his ColorFlex system into a comprehensive system called Flex further that as a result among other things of cameramen as Oswald Morris (1978 in The Wiz), Freddie Francis (1984 Dune), Sven Nykvist (1984 Swann in Love), Adam Greenberg (1987 La Bamba) and Jost Vacano (1990 Total Recall). In the 56th Academy Awards (1984) received Turpin for Flex a technical Oscar (Scientific and Engineering Award). In 1985 the system was of Arriflex bought and later evolved into the slimmer VariCon system.

Filmography

As cinematographer

• The Queen's Guards (1961)
• Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) (photographed by)
• The Wrong Box (1966) (photographed by)
• Dutchman (1967)
• The Whisperers (1967) (photographed by)
• The Bobo (1967) (photographed by)
• Deadfall (1968)
• Diamonds for Breakfast (1968)
• Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)
• Hoffman (1970) (director of photography)
• The Man Who Had Power Over Women (1970)
• I Want What I Want (1972)
• What Became of Jack and Jill? (1972)
• Young Winston (1972) (director of photography)
• The Last of Sheila (1973) (director of photography)
• The Doctor and the Devils (1985)

Television

• The Human Jungle (1 episode, 1964)
  • "The Man Who Fell Apart" (1964)
• The Avengers (5 episodes, 1965)
  • "Death at Bargain Prices" (1965)
  • "The Master Minds" (1965)
  • "The Murder Market" (1965)
  • "Dial a Deadly Number" (1965)
  • "Too Many Christmas Trees" (1965)

References

External links

Gerry Turpin at the Internet Movie Database