Terrence Malick's Badlands

[Robin R Probyn]

5 hours ago, Dermot McDermot said:

I had nothing to do with Badlands other than as an admirer! I agree that it's by a long way, Malik's best film.

I was fortunate to work both under and above Brian Probyn some long time ago in several roles.

Did you work with the old man in Australia ..?

[Dermot McDermot]

Yes of course. It was a slightly bizarre situation where I had been working as a director/cameraman on commercials  for some years and wanted to get some experience on features so took a job as clapper-loader using an early and quite awful Arri 35Bl. It was a troubled shoot and I tried to resign on a few occasions but Brian talked me out of it.

Those of us who worked closely with Brian were really impressed with his abilities but also his sensibilities. At that stage,  feature productions were just taking off over here. I'd written a script which we asked Brian to direct. Unfortunately, it didn't get up. Following that, Brian worked for me as a DOP with me directing. Complicated eh?

Later, I worked with a few DOPs and I don't think one of them had the artistic and organisational abilities of Brian and it formed a lot of my attitude to the organisation of the crew on a feature. All too often, you hear about shoots going wrong and someone taking over etc. and I think a lot of it is due to the lack of a leader within each department - with an everyone for themselves culture taking over.

As I mentioned earlier, Brian ran the camera department as a tight, disciplined unit where if we had our own internal problems, we kept them within the unit and tried to behave professionally - at least until the whole unit went on strike! Wasn't Brian a tank captain or something like that at Alamein or Tobruk?

[Robin R Probyn]

1 hour ago, Dermot McDermot said:

Yes of course. It was a slightly bizarre situation where I had been working as a director/cameraman on commercials  for some years and wanted to get some experience on features so took a job as clapper-loader using an early and quite awful Arri 35Bl. It was a troubled shoot and I tried to resign on a few occasions but Brian talked me out of it.

Those of us who worked closely with Brian were really impressed with his abilities but also his sensibilities. At that stage,  feature productions were just taking off over here. I'd written a script which we asked Brian to direct. Unfortunately, it didn't get up. Following that, Brian worked for me as a DOP with me directing. Complicated eh?

Later, I worked with a few DOPs and I don't think one of them had the artistic and organisational abilities of Brian and it formed a lot of my attitude to the organisation of the crew on a feature. All too often, you hear about shoots going wrong and someone taking over etc. and I think a lot of it is due to the lack of a leader within each department - with an everyone for themselves culture taking over.

As I mentioned earlier, Brian ran the camera department as a tight, disciplined unit where if we had our own internal problems, we kept them within the unit and tried to behave professionally - at least until the whole unit went on strike! Wasn't Brian a tank captain or something like that at Alamein or Tobruk?

Yes in the Desert Rats, captured at the siege of Tobruk .. being assigned "navigator" as a kid, on long car trips in the UK in the 70,s was not a walk in the park ..    and quite similar to the movement of a tank battalion ..  ?