Commercial and feature film director of photography Tim Maurice-Jones—represented by United Talent Agency (UTA), Beverly Hills, Calif.—recalls a seminal moment in the development of his craft: "I was lighting a set for a music video," he recounts. "I had switched some lights on, but I hadn’t done anything to them at all. They were just pointing at the wall. The director walked in and said, ‘That looks incredible. It looks like one of those old films. I love the fact that there’s no window shape or anything,’ and I was just about to put a window shape in."
When Maurice-Jones looked at the abstract shapes that the mix of spots and floods formed on the set, he began to appreciate the observation. "I realized that if you look at some old movies," he explains, "look at the back wall—there are the most weird abstract shapes in them, light and dark, shades of contrast. I thought, ‘That’s right, you don’t need to put … in a diagonal stripe of light. It’s better if it’s abstract.’ My style kind of developed from there."
It’s a style—with many permutations—that has made Maurice-Jones one of the most sought-after cinematographers in commercials today. Current work includes the worldwide adidas campaign "Footballitis," tied to the 2002 soccer World Cup, from 180/TBWA, Amsterdam, and helmed by the directing collective Traktor of bicoastal/international Partizan. On the feature side, he was the cinematographer on the Guy Ritchie films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998, and Snatch in ’00. He also did DP duties on Michel Gondry’s recently released feature debut, Human Nature; Gondry directs commercials via Partizan.
Although his awakening to abstract lighting was an important development for him, Maurice-Jones says that today he doesn’t have a particular style. "If anything, it’s avoiding the obvious," he observes. "Shooting a night exterior, a lot of Hollywood DPs backlight the street blue. I hate blue moonlight at night. I try to find another justification for the light, like streetlights, or light from shops. And I don’t really like to use backlight very much. It’s an easy way out. Whenever I take a job, the first thing that comes to mind is, ‘What else can I do to be more clever than that?’ Making things look good is easy. Making things look different is harder."
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The goal in "Footballitis"—which comprises the spots "Booked," "Celebration," "Compulsion," "Institute," "Net," "Round Peg," and "Turf"—was definitely not to make things look good, notes Maurice-Jones. The spots are shot in a gym-like atmosphere where scientists are looking into cases of "footballitis" among a group of European soccer stars. A sufferer of "footballitis" will exhibit mannerisms commonly found on a soccer field, such as kicking at a ball, or blocking a shot, even in his sleep. "It’s supposed to be like a seventies training film, as flat and as miserable looking as possible," explains Maurice-Jones of the campaign. "We shot on 35mm reversal because that’s what training films were shot with in the seventies. I lit it completely flat, so it [would have that look.]"
On the feature side, it was a gritty look that Maurice-Jones and Ritchie wanted for Snatch, the film about small-time hoodlums. "Snatch was a gangster movie, so that was supposed to look tough," Maurice-Jones states. "Whatever the story is, the DP has to enhance the emotion of that particular scene or film with the photography. If it’s a brutal gangster film, you light it to try to bring out the aggression or misery of the piece.
Maurice-Jones took an opposite approach for Human Nature, shooting the film in a more flattering light. "Human Nature is a bit of a fairy tale," he explains, "so there was much more cosmetic photography. I had Patricia Arquette, and I was determined to make her look as gorgeous as possible."
Maurice-Jones’ discussions of the DP’s art centers on lighting techniques, and he says that 90 percent of his work is in artificial light. "Growing up in England, it’s miserable—you don’t go outside to shoot," he points out. "If you’re a Los Angeles DP, you generally start off on the beach, with cute girls in bikinis. In England, you don’t have any experience outside, so you start in a studio having to light stuff. It took me a long time to learn to shoot outside in the sunshine."
Maurice-Jones was an animator for the BBC in London when he was first bit by the film bug. "One day I saw a film crew and thought, ‘Oh, that looks like fun.’ Everybody was running around and there was a guy sitting on a crane, ordering everybody around," he recalls. "I thought, ‘That looks good, what’s his job? He’s the cameraman. Oh, I know what I’ll do.’ From that point on, at age twenty-one, I was one-hundred percent focused on being a cameraman."
Maurice-Jones is a self-taught DP. He worked first as a clapper loader and focus puller for film companies doing documentaries, commercials and music videos. He eventually worked his way up to camera operator, then DP, with a short detour into directing.
He’s been a DP now for about 12 years, and harbors no desire to direct again. "I was a horrible director," he says. "I got voted worst video of the year by the U.K. magazine Promo News for a video I did for Rod Stewart, called ‘Lady Luck.’ It wasn’t the best video ever made, but the worst of the year—I don’t think so."
Maurice-Jones shoots about 30 spot jobs annually, mostly in Europe. He works with a broad variety of directors, but is a regular with Traktor, Gondry and Ritchie. "I’ve probably shot about a third of everything Traktor has done—maybe fifty or sixty jobs," he reckons.
His latest Traktor-helmed effort is a British campaign for Pot Noodles, out of London agency Mother. "Traktor’s style is usually quite flat," notes Maurice-Jones. "A lot of people had started doing that, so this time I convinced them it was time to change—let’s make things colorful and bright."
Today, he shoots commercials himself, but uses a camera operator on features. "It’s too big a job to light and operate a feature," he explains, adding, "Shooting a feature is miserable. It’s three months of really hard work. The first thing you think of when you get up in the morning and the last thing you think of when you go to sleep is what’s happening in this film. I don’t see how people do more than one a year. But at the end you sit in a cinema and watch people laughing or crying at your work, and it’s an exceptional experience. Commercials are great—two- or three-week shoots at the most. [Then] you’re off it and people see it on TV and say, ‘Oh, you did that. It’s quite good.’ Making a good commercial is great, but it doesn’t have the emotional feeling that turning in a great film has."
