- the GBCT
- Dec 13, 2024
- 3 min read
It is with sadness that we learn of the passing of our friend and member, Mike Proudfoot ACO Assoc BSC.
Mike’s journey into film was complex as firstly, after leaving school, he trained as a car mechanic with Porsche. Falling into the film industry came about by accident; his friend’s wife worked at the Rank Organisation’s shorts and documentaries department and they told him they needed a mechanic to look after the camera cars.
After a year at the company he was offered the role of documentary assistant, this allowed him to go all over the world for over two years, the role of documentary assistant allowed him to try his hand in all the roles.
Following the closure of the department, Proudfoot got a job on the last season of The Avengers as a loader. From there he built his career up working his way through the ranks becoming a focus puller on a number of commercials before being employed to work on The Sweeney.
Proudfoot continued to move ahead, operating Scum (1979) and The Long Good Friday (1981) for Phil Méheux BSC before moving on to Absolute Beginners (1986, Oliver Stapleton BSC), Air America (1990, Roger Deakins ASC BSC), Batman (1989, Roger Pratt BSC) and more.
Proudfoot told British Cinematographer that “I like working with old fashioned directors. I call Edward Zwick an old fashioned director. I did Blood Diamond (2006) and Defiance with him. He was a real hands-on director. He didn’t want the finder, didn’t want to get involved with the set-up, he would just tell me what he expected to see. We would then go off and make it better than he thought it was going to be.”
Our thoughts go out to Mike’s family, including Miles his son (also a Camera Operator), at this sad time.
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Oliver Stapleton BSC also shared this tribute to Mike:
“Mike was a highly skilled Operator and, more than that, a kind and supportive person to those on set who knew less than him. This was not the “norm” in the early 80’s when us “film school brats” came on the scene in the late 70’s and early 80’s. At that time the UK industry was a highly traditional male-orientated post war/post army hierarchy. Generally speaking I encountered fierce resistance to the notion that I could be a DP without rising up through the ranks: so me and others decided to operate ourselves – so bypassing the tradition of the Director working with the Operator on the sets up … Some operators at that time would literally tell me to “eff off and light” if I dared to interfere with their relationship with the director.. hard to believe but true.
So when my fellow NFTS student Julien Temple and I were offered the chance to make the musical film Absolute Beginners in 1986 I realised that the pressure on me was going to be enormous, and I needed a Operator.. but Who? Julien and I had been working together for years and I had operated everything myself so it was with great reluctance that I accepted the logic from the producers that I should not operate.. it made sense. So this is how I met Mike Proudfoot and his magic team of Dave Morgan on focus and ace grip Colin Manning.
Mike was everything that I hoped for in an operator – we became a well-balanced triangle as we worked out the very complex shots along with Julien. Mike knew just how “green” Julien and I were to this kind of large scale movie, but there was never a moment where I felt anything from him but great respect for what we were doing.
Over the years I worked with Mike & Dave on three other films and every experience deepened my trust in the great work they did. We were not “friends” but colleagues with a deep understanding of each other’s contribution. I will be forever grateful for his kindness to me which manifested itself not in an obvious way, but in his ability to be a genuinely creative contributor with a silent understanding of the forces at work when he joined a Director/DP Duo: this is the unacknowledged skill of the great operators – an ability to just seamlessly step in and step out as required.
My condolences to his family – he will forever be an important part of my cinema journey.”
Excerpt provided by the BSC
