GERRY TURPIN BSC

Turpin began his career in 1945 at Ealing Studios as a camera assistant to Douglas Slocombe BSC and Stanley Pavey BSC. From 1953, he worked as a camera operator working with Pavey, Gordon Dines BSC, Desmond Dickinson BSC, Otto Heller BSC, Gilbert Taylor BSC, Reginald H. Wyer BSC and Harry Waxman BSC. He made his first film as director of photography, The Queen's Guards (1961) with director Michael Powell.

For his first collaboration with Bryan Forbes, Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), he received a nomination at the British Academy Film Awards in 1965. For a later film with Forbes, The Whisperers (1967), he received a BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography, and for Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Richard Attenborough's directorial debut, he received the 1969 BSC Best Cinematography Award and his second BAFTA.

On Attenborough's, Young Winston (1972), Turpin used a camera lens mounted device he had developed called The Turpin ColorFlex which represented an alternative to conventional pre-exposure (flashing) of negative film in the lab - a method of adding colour overlays to shadow areas of scenes without affecting highlights or flesh tones.

From 1973, Turpin developed his ColourFlex system into a comprehensive system called LightFlex which was used by cameramen such as Oswald Morris BSC (The Wiz, 1978), Freddie Francis BSC (Dune, 1984), Sven Nykvist (Swann in Love, 1984), Adam Greenberg (La Bamba, 1987) and Jost Vacano (Total Recall, 1990). At the 56th Academy Awards in 1984, Turpin received a technical Oscar (Scientific and Engineering Award) for the design, engineering and development of an on-camera device providing contrast control, sourceless fill light and special effects for motion picture photography.

In 1985 the system was purchased by Arriflex and later developed into the slimmer VariCon system.