A Tribute to Trevor Steele

I met Trevor in the mid-80s. At that time, I was mainly working in Super 16 and my assistant, Martin Gonthié, was accustomed to ordering the 10.4-52mm Cooke zoom lens, lens hood, filters and lens control system from EMIT. As I was very pleased with this, she suggested I should perhaps take the time to meet the people who worked in that company.
Quite the judicious suggestion !
So, I first met Trevor, and later his two sons, Andrew and Benjamin, and all of the rest of the EMIT team. After, I couldn’t imagine beginning a film or a project without first asking them for their advice.

Trevor was one of those people who changed my career : he was able to show me, with humor and intelligence, that “I didn’t know that I didn’t know”.
I mean that he suggested that I learn and open myself to the theory and analysis of the tools. He helped me understand that if one lacks a minimum of training (and information), it is difficult to progress. He was able to guide me in my research and open essential doors for me, in particular in the field of lenses.

I cannot count the number of hours we spent examining the new and old lenses on his workbench together, during which time I was able to benefit from his opinion and his methodology.
There was a sort of ceremonial when you gained access to Trevor’s workbench and I felt it a privilege to listen to him and understand how the analysis of those mires could lead to well-focused tests on the ground and, ultimately, to the correct choice of lens for the storytelling.
Of course, there were other serious workbenches in Paris, but they hardly made themselves as available as Trevor did.

When Trevor used to describe the “Cooke Look” it was a deep dive into the structure and ideology of British lenses : modulation, bokeh, focus curve, MTF*… everything was precisely described and explained. He was truly passionate about the subject and was always curious to disocver a new Angénieux zoom lens or an old Leitz lens. His sessions were captivating, and each of them deeply influenced me.

But Trevor also had a passion for camera ergonomics. It’s clear that his years spent at Éclair** as a trainer on NPR Coutant and ACL cameras played a decisive role in EMIT’s history. He was one of the first to understand that camera accessorizing played an important role in the effectiveness of camera crews on the ground. I spent many long hours with him studying the best camera configurations for specific uses on films of very different budgets.

When I began to work as a supervisor, I naturally turned to Trevor and his sons. They connected me to their amazing network in Europe and further afield to identify solutions to complex problems. Without them, I would never have met the engineers responsible for designing Zeiss lenses, or Gerhard Baier, the director of Bandpro and I think that many films I participated in wouldn’t have been able to benefit from the combined expertise of highly diverse crews and talents located in many different countries.

Océans, directed by Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, is a great example of the work that executive producer Olli Barbé and I did with EMIT. All of the people Trevor put us in contact with allowed us to properly analyze the problems that we were facing, whether that be for the cameras, the lenses or the grip equipment.

* MTF : Modulation Transfer Function allows for the estimation of the resolution of a lens
** See Jon Fauer’s excellent article on Trevor and EMIT

One of the things Trevor was most proud of was creating the underwater dolly used for shooting in New Caledonia. The two directors had requested a dolly at the height of a crab’s eyes that could move along the sea floor alongside to a coral reef.

Moving a camera on a dolly is one thing ; bringing a 45 kg case to the sea floor at a depth of 6 meters with strong currents is a challenge that Trevor and Patrice Diebolt tackled with great determination.

They came up with the solution of an articulated tube that enabled them to precisely adjust the height of the camera, so that the main actor could be followed during the coral reef scene.

Later on, EMIT invited me and François Paturel, the cameraman I was working with, to Leicester to visit Cooke’s headquarters, which was directed at that time by Les Zellan. It was extremely interesting and moving to hear Trevor commenting and explaining the various manufacturing processes for the lenses in each workshop.

Naturally, over the years, Ben and Andrew have inherited their father’s availability and ability to help cinematographers, cameramen, “Steadicamers” and grips, and it’s hard for me to say who exactly has helped me the most on the last films I have worked on. What I remember most is the amazing passion, humor and generosity that seems written in that family’s DNA.