The granddaughter of Denys N Coop tells the cinematography pioneer’s story, from The Third Man to Richard Donner’s Superman.
This article first appeared in Film Stories #19 in October 2020.
In 1978, two movies were released that would have a profound effect on the four year old me, and which have stayed with me to this day. The first was Wombling Free, a cheerful family musical starring Bonnie Langford and the wonderful David Tomblinson that I, unwittingly and almost certainly unknowingly, stumbled into the background action of one afternoon on Gerrard’s Cross common. But perhaps more importantly there was also the movie that many would say paved the way for the modern superhero blockbuster. Namely, Richard Donner’s seminal Superman.
The poster tagline for Superman grandly and confidently exclaimed ‘you will believe a man can fly’. I believed. I think we all did. But I had good reason to, as one of the people who took Christopher Reeve to those dizzying heights was my grandfather, Denys N Coop BSC.
It occurred to me this summer, on the occasion of what would have been his 100th birthday, that his work as a camera operator and cinematographer had cast a long (and perfectly judged) shadow not only on my family, but also on the industry itself. From his iconic camerawork on The Third Man, to the beautiful shimmering silver-grey tones of his black and white cinematography on British classics like This Sporting Life to his later work in glorious, if somewhat creepy, Technicolor on 10 Rillington Place. He worked through the ‘golden era’ of British cinema with legends like Orson Welles, Carol Reed, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick, Marilyn Monroe, Laurence Olivier and many, many others before finally finding himself collecting his own Oscar from comedian Steve Martin for his ground-breaking work on the first two Superman movies. What I wouldn’t give for the opportunity to sit down with him for an afternoon and listen to his stories now.
Looking back, I only knew Denys as my Grandpa; a kind, softly spoken man with a love for cricket, paddling pools and gardening (these are entirely based on my memories and family photos, it’s possible that he didn’t love paddling pools quite as much as he let on). I vividly remember as a small child visiting him and my father Trevor at Pinewood Studios and seeing Superman gliding above the backlot, which to my five-year-old imagination was mind-blowing. The fact that Superman on that day was in fact legendary stuntman Vic Armstrong dangling from a 200 foot crane doesn’t matter now. It was still Superman, and he was flying – but more on that later.
Beginnings
Denys started his career in film in 1936, aged just 16, as apprentice and clapperboy to Freddie Young and under the tutelage of Georges Périnal. They were both already experienced cinematographers who would go on to great acclaim and Oscar success of their own. When the war came Denys was drafted into the Fleet Air Arm as a reconnaissance photographer, and then to the Army Kinema Corporation based at Wembley Park Studios where he met and struck up friendships with the likes of Roy Ward Baker, Freddie Francis BSC, Phyllis Crocker, Carol Reed and Ossie Morris OBE BSC (known as the Wembley Chindits), all of whom would go on to play a large part in his professional life.
When the war ended many of these now highly experienced young film technicians were quickly contracted to the various film studios around London, with Denys working under contract to British Lion Studios (Shepperton) until 1952. His creative eye and innovative use of the camera had brought him initially to the attention of producer Alexander Korda, and in turn to directors like Carol Reed, with whom he shot The Fallen Idol (1948) and then the stone cold classic noir The Third Man (1949). It was, in fact, Denys’ suggestion to Reed to utilise the now iconic ‘dutch’ angles to fully capture the eerily beautiful architecture of post-war Vienna, and the long shadows of Robert Krasker’s stunning black and white cinematography. This innovative approach to camerawork and lighting was to become something of a hallmark of his career.
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Denys’ first step in the role of cinematographer was The Girl On The Boat (1962), a madcap comedy with a young Norman Wisdom, but it was in the era-defining ‘kitchen sink’ dramas of the 1960s that he really came to prominence. He worked on classics of the British black and white era including A Kind Of Loving (1962), This Sporting Life (1963), Billy Liar (1963), King And Country (1964) and Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), a purple patch that saw Denys nominated for the BAFTA for Best Black And White Cinematography three years out of four, and ironically beaten in two of those years by friend and mentor Ossie Morris. As such, Denys was quite rightly regarded as one of the finest black and white cinematographers the British film industry has ever produced. His move into colour work is probably best exemplified by the creepy social-realism thrillers The Birthday Party (1968) and 10 Rillington Place (1971), as well as Amicus Horror classics such as Asylum (1972), And Now the Screaming Starts (1973), and The Vault Of Horror (1973), all with old friend and director Roy Ward Baker.
But it was his innovative and creative approach, his technical mastery of light and shadow, and his collaboration with esteemed cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth BSC that brought him to what is arguably the high point of his career.
The man of steel
That aforementioned poster promised that we’d believe a man could fly but until this point, to be perfectly honest, no one had actually managed to pull off that particular feat on the big screen. Visual effects were still in their infancy (Star Wars and Close Encounters Of the Third Kind both came out a year before). Whilst mechanical FX, miniatures, models, travelling mattes and process photography had long been employed on films as far back as Georges Méliès A Trip To The Moon in 1902, and to stunning effect in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Oddyssey, it was with Superman: The Movie that all the pieces seemingly fell into place.
Director Richard Donner had something of a reputation for being a taskmaster and a perfectionist, and he knew that the success of the film rested on the ability to make Superman’s flying totally believable. The film’s cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth BSC also knew they needed to bring someone in to photograph the flying unit that would not only create beautiful and iconic images, but would have the level of innovation, creativity and invention needed to quite literally get this endeavor off the ground. It took the brilliance of not just Denys, but some of the finest and most creative technicians of the day, working together to pull it off. These really were the men who made Superman fly.
It was often said that if you wanted something to fly on a film set, then Wally Veevers was your man. His SFX skills could be seen on everything from The Thief Of Baghdad to Battle Of Britain. Joining him were master modelmaker Derek Meddings, optical wizard Zoran Perisic, front projection expert Roy Moores, special FX supervisor Colin Chilvers and Les Bowie, one of the finest matte and composite SFX artists in the business. All working under the direction of Denys as creative director of process photography. Together this merry band pulled on their various areas of experience and expertise over the course of nearly 18 months filming, to pioneer an ingeniously clever system of front axial projection that enabled the demanding Richard Donner to get his shots.
‘Front axial projection’? It’s a combination of a lightweight projector mounted to the camera dolly (on the same axis as the camera, hence ‘front axial’), an ultra-reflective screen from 3M (similar to cats’ eyes in the road), Zoran Perisic’s Zoptic system of interconnected camera and projector lenses (so when the camera zoomed in past Superman, the background remained correctly scaled), intricate models of the Metropolis skyline combined with meticulously planned flying plate shots filmed from a helicopter in New York, and at the centre of it all a masterful performance from Christopher Reeve. It all created some of the finest in-camera flying effects that had ever been achieved. So good in fact, that both BAFTA and the Oscars created a Special Achievement Award that year just to recognise the leap forward in VFX that this represented – something that had never happened before or since.
Legacy
As Richard Donner said in an interview for American Cinematographer Magazine at the time, “Denys deserves as much credit as anyone in for bringing so much to the flight sequences of Superman. I mean, he’s just a genius. He conducted total experimentation day after day, trying and trying, until one day we sat in the theatre watching dailies and saw the final result. I nearly cried when I saw it. It was so exciting I just couldn’t believe it.”
And it didn’t end there. The DNA of what the team perfected can still be seen in movies, with a resurgence in filmmakers wanting to create complicated and breathtaking shots in-camera rather than with CGI and greenscreen. Many of the techniques and ideas that Denys, Zoran and the others honed and developed are still evident in cutting edge productions today. The technology may have evolved but the passion and imagination remains the same.
According to Oscar-winning visual FX supervisor Paul Franklin of renowned VFX company DNEG, director Christopher Nolan drew heavily on Superman as inspiration for both Batman Begins and Interstellar, creating some 180 in-camera shots on Interstellar alone. And more recently Oscar winner Damian Chazelle used a similar process of responsive front projection on his sci-fi epic First Man.
And further still, the development of large array LED backgrounds used for virtual production (as used in the Disney/Star Wars series The Mandalorian) takes the technology one step further, using an advanced system of ‘real time game engines’ to constantly update the background imagery in conjunction with even the tiniest change to camera position, focal length or composition. The ability to pull off intricate camera moves whilst retaining the look on the virtual backgrounds brings a realism not only to the actors and crew on set, but to the story and the final audience of the film.
After all, these tools are just that: tools to help tell a story. Chris Cox, head of virtual production and real-time solutions for MBS, added that the concept of virtual production has been around since the earliest days of cinema. Whether that’s Harold Lloyd hanging from a clock or Buster Keaton having a house fall on him, the notion of wanting things to be as real as possible ‘in the room’ is nothing new, it’s just been polished up and given a new name. And it’s not a one box solution, as Denys’ team proved back in 1978, it’s the combination of crafts and technologies, the collaboration of people and ideas that changes from film to film, from shot to shot, each time discovering something new and exciting, and ultimately helping to tell a compelling story.
As they say, there is nothing new under the sun, and whilst this astonishing technology will continue to revolutionise the way we both make and watch movies, its roots are clear to see. They stretch back to a darkened stage at Pinewood Studios in the late 1970s, where an ambitious and talented group of filmmakers really did come together to make us believe a man could fly. I believed then. I still do.
Amy Coop is a writer and director.
