Bakerlite.co.uk
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Bakerlite.co.uk
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Cyprus 2000 Continued Tuesday
…..dawned bright and warm. But then it usually does for about 360 days each year. Introductions over, we got on with the biz. The room was packed, the ‘3 to 4 or up to 10’ trainees had turned into about 16! The best laid plans of me, mice and men were in the shredder. Not enough handouts, brochures or swatches to go round. Coffee and lunch break showed me just how many staff changes had occurred in recent years; the younger Cypriot females seemed to have a liking for tight, form revealing clothing. Indeed, I did a triple take when a Lara Croft real person look-alike walked in. Nothing virtual about this young lady! By 1800 I was on the way ‘home’ but decided to call in
for a beer at Romylos Bar, where, once again, nothing much had changed since
’86. The landlord was the same; he welcomed me with a handshake, a big smile
and a pint glass (real thing) of Keo. The old currency notes pinned to the wall
and the English football pennants were a little more faded, but the wonderful
feeling of being in my second home of that small, friendly city, Nicosia had
returned. Keo also appears in tins! This just across from former Archbishop Makarios's Palace I decide to eat at one of my all time favourite restaurants which is no more than a pleasant vine covered villa from the outside, but offers the most amazing selection of vegetarian dishes that you could ever wish for. It’s a few hundred yards outside the touristy bit of town, next door to the Peruvian Consulate! The cuisine is Byzantine and memorable for the incredible variety of flavours within the multi dish meze. Typically, you will get up to twenty different dishes between two people. When the bill arrived, I note that the £8 (Cyprus) was for my meal and ‘whine’. Not too sure about the lighting though, they seem to have eschewed the candle lighting of my last trip and put in a lot of low voltage halogen bubbles ‘on sticks’ which are all very well, but these just pointed randomly with not a lot of thought as to what they should actually do. (A bit like some studios I’ve been in!) Wednesday I found the promised DeskJet printer for which I had a driver on my laptop, plugged in and lo, printed the handouts of the day. Another minor miracle. I was not totally reliant on the techie stuff having printed out master copies of my handouts at home first.
The morning practical session on portraiture relied on everyone remembering yesterday’s chat and having read (?) the handout. I tried to get them working in two groups, but they seemed to want me to do a master class. This did not auger well as I wanted them to do the exercise and discover things for themselves. This could have been because their perception of training was to be shown the ‘correct’ (and only?) way to do something. I wanted to keep minds open to the thought that lighting is not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, its what you like or what somebody else likes. I like the idea of showing trainees the ‘rules’ and then showing the occasions when you can break them! The afternoon chat session revealed that nobody has ever used brushed silk or black wrap!! Now I was beginning to see that things that you and I take for granted just hadn’t got this far east. I was also beginning to realise that the course would be more even more effective for all the ‘new ideas’ that I could introduce. Numbers diminished after lunch, as some of the trainees had to work elsewhere. We did a review of the mornings efforts in the classroom, and then I launched the following days activities. In the smoke/tea breaks I was frantically phoning around trying to organise bits and pieces for the days ahead. I really needed two of me, one wasn’t doing enough in the time allocated! Just trying to find simple and universally used kit like magic arms and flag stands was proving impossible. Various leads that I had been given for such items had come to naught. Wading through treacle was a phrase that came to mind. Let me say that this was in no sense a reflection on my genial and hospitable Cypriot Hosts, but probably more one of the differences between Western Europe and the Middle East. My lack of knowledge of Greek didn’t help, either. My spirits lifted when on my way back to the Hotel that night, I found a photographic shop that sold Lastolites and had a Matthews’s flag stand in the window. Hallelujah! In I went, and the grovelling began. Please would they be prepared to lend me a few things to help with my training session? There was no money available, so I was praying for a freebie. The grovelling worked, I was in luck! The hotel porter looked at me strangely as I staggered in with a variety of strange shaped bags and boxes. No matter, I was a happier bunny. Thursday Still no magic arm, the photographic shop could order one specially, but that would take weeks. I didn’t have weeks, but resolved to bring my own next time, if there was a next time. One of the younger cameramen approached me with a request to come back to do a course specifically about lighting for single camera on location. Maybe there will be a next time! Friday Was a good day day; there was plenty of motivation, although numbers down a bit after lunch. This was the norm and had the unfortunate effect of more people trying to do the morning practical than had been briefed the previous day! This was at times like the blind leading the blind. The core group of trainees were not that much younger than I was, CyBC was training its senior employees, all well and good, but some of them are no longer actively involved in lighting. That is fine, as long as there is an intention to continue the training schedule to include all lighting staff. Back at the hotel, I prepared some handouts with
pictures I had taken with my digital camera of the guys working, along with a
few meaningful comments alongside. This proved to be a much-appreciated part of
the teaching package, even if it did take an hour or two extra in each day to
execute. (Thank you Tim Wallbank for the idea) The slowest bit was printing them
out in colour the following morning on the desk jet printer. HP consumables took
a bit of a hammering whilst I was there. That evening, I wandered round the old and interesting parts of Nicosia, near the green line, taking photographs where I shouldn’t. If ever you go, its worth a look, the nearer to the green line you get the more it’s like being in 1974 when the Turkish invasion took place. Away from the smart modern shopping streets and the tourist areas within the walls, the buildings are still sandbagged and pocked with shell and bullet holes. Traffic lights lean at crazy angles and young Cypriot conscripts stand with rifles in their khaki uniform. Boxes marked TNT form part of the barrier between Cyprus and the ‘Free Republic of Northern Cyprus’. At all points one can see the Turkish flag fluttering on flagpoles just a hundred metres or so away. I do hope that one day the last divided city in the world can once again be united in peace.
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