Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Theatre and television designer best known for Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland and the book Elizabeth R.
On the island
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:06What was your first ambition? Was it designing?
Oh, yes, always to be a designer. I knew from a very early age that I wished to enter that particular field.
Presenter asks
1:16Where did you study?
I was at the Royal College of Art, where I studied under Sir Hugh Castle, and I was extremely happy there.
Presenter asks
1:23Was it the theatre you were aiming at from the start?
I had always been tremendously interested in the theatre, but I find it very difficult to say that I am specifically more interested in the theatre than I am in films or in books, or you see, I'm interested in life in general and how designing relates to life, and so therefore I am interested in any project that is given to me. But of course the theatre is terribly, terribly important.
Presenter asks
1:52What happened when you left the Royal College of Art?
I went straight to the BBC and became first a television assistant designer and later on worked up to being a designer and then a senior designer.
Presenter asks
2:26What was the most rewarding job you did [at the BBC]?
I suppose really Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland, which was a tremendously happy period in my life. And also Patrick Garland's famous Gossips.
Presenter asks
2:39How do you look back on that eleven and a half years [at the BBC]? Was it sort of salt mines period?
I was very happy at times. I was very unhappy at times. But that's inevitable. I look back at it very gratefully because I think it taught one a discipline which one always will have with one. It taught one the value of paperwork which so many people in the arts think can be forgotten, but it's something which I know one's got to work with. Designing today is a business … you can't just forget about the cash, and therefore paperwork which one learnt through the BBC taught one a great deal of things which one will never forget.
Presenter asks
3:31What inspired you to venture out of the BBC after eleven and a half years?
I was very fortunate. I won the Designer of the Year award for the design of Alice in Wonderland. And from that I got film offers and I went to The Charge of the Light Brigade, which was an extremely happy experience, working all over England with this film, also visiting Turkey.
“I think it's terribly important to make people look more closely. I don't see why one should try to kid people with using bad materials or using something that's not absolutely true. I think truth is important.”
“My camera is like a constant diary. Probably somebody who's writing descriptive books would write endless little notes, whereas I take endless photographs from which I can reconstruct and then rebuild up my picture. I assemble my material, and build up what I require and take out the essence.”
“It [working on Brief Lives] was the strange details, like suddenly finding chicken bones down by the fire, how the man had thrown them out from his pots and pans. It was building up that type of thing which I found important.”
“I just feel I could never live without the London Library. I think it's one of the most important institutions in London.”
“Everything is designed just looking around the room. That appalling speaker over there with an awful black hole in the middle … frankly, something much better could have been made of it.”