EXCLUSIVE - Taking the Mike

Vera Brozzoni caught up with celebrated director Mike Figgis to get the lowdown on his latest book and pioneering tools for filmmaking in a digital age.

With movies including Leaving Las Vegas and Timecode, Mike Figgis is well known for his skill in producing compelling, emotive and inspiring work. But not so many people realize that he's actually a real pioneer in digital film-making, and at the forefront of what is fast becoming a new and exciting period for movies.

Last week, he spoke to an enraptured audience at the National Film Theatre about his latest book.

And he's also invented a revolutionary tool, the FigRig, a sort of steering wheel on which the digital camera is fixed up, that cuts out shakiness and makes digital shooting much simpler and more direct.

"You can shoot very intense scenes with it", "just the actors and you; no others. The result is more intimate and emotional, because without a crew there are no filters between you and the actors," he explains.

It sounds like an adventurous way of filming: quality images, smooth camera movements combined with a renewed sense of closeness to the subject.

"Exactly, when I'm behind the camera I'm not a director anymore but a voyeur. Photographer Diane Arbus used to say that taking photos was something perverse to her. I feel the same about my filming, I am ready now to cross this line towards perversity. Since I have been shooting with the FigRig everything is more direct, but it also becomes more uncanny: the borders between reality and fiction are blurred." Does this mean that your next works will be hyper-realistic?

"From an emotional point of view they will, but not from an aesthetic one: I'm not obsessed with realism, I want to go back to what I call visual poetry, where it's clear that the film is not real, yet the compelling nature of the story leads you to the suspension of disbelief. It's a relief that David Lynch has shot Inland Empire,one of the few films I liked recently, in bad definition video, it looks more murky and abstract, just like a dream".

Still, the FigRig sounds perfect to gain realism in pictures.

"Yes, it would also be perfect to shoot videos for the TV news. It's a tool: you decide how to use it".

Then Figgis looks away, lost in his mind and I wish that I could see into it. Who knows what his volcanic intelligence will come up with next?

Digital Filmmaking is available at www.amazon.co.uk

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