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Member LoginDavid Wakeley ACS
David started in the industry at age 15 with documentary company Kingcroft Productions, then in Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney, and headed by John Kingsford Smith, Jack Gardiner ACS, with DoP Peter Menzies snr ACS. All were active at the time inaugurating the Australian Cinematographers Society. David joined as a student member, but didn't become active until later years.
David felt these first four years were the perfect introduction to the industry, with duties involving camera assisting, projection, 16mm contact printing, editing, neg matching, typing the commentaries & accounts, plus sweeping the floors & doing the boss's wife's shopping. The latter two being the most important part of the job! A bonus & pay rise was awarded for learning to type. Not appreciated at the time, but certainly handy now.
The first major project he was involved in was a continuing coverage of the building of the Gladesville Bridge in Sydney, over two or three years. David even got to shoot there in his first year, when no one else was available. Maybe this is where his love of the camera started, with a 16mm Cine Kodak Special.
Kingcroft moved to Cammeray and set up studios in a Chinese laundry, with a sloping floor where the lights followed you if you didn't remember to anchor them!
David then went to Fontana in Turella as an Optical Makeup editor. This lasted for three weeks until both parties felt this was not his true direction. From there, in the early '60s, to the camera department at Artransa Park Studios at French's Forest (later to become an Avon store, then the ABC studios until recently, now destined to be demolished for factories) where he spent five years working in a large department with camera assistants Graeme Wisken, John Lowry and Ross Nichols and DoP's Ted Taylor, Brendan Brown, Karl Kayser, Boris Janjic plus freelancers John Leake, Ron Horner and George Low, working with Arriflex 2Cs & 16ST/BLs, Mitchell BNCs and high speed Debries & Auricon 16s. This, again, was the perfect training ground, with a system where the assistant loaded and operated & the DoP pulled focus, as well as the regular focus pulling duties.
From Artransa to Ross Wood Productions for three years, operating for Ross Wood Senior, again learning more from the master himself. At this time he married Marianne MacMillan, who worked in the accounts department at Artransa. Then to Eric Porter's for another three years in a large camera department headed by Phil Pike ACS, starting as assistant for three weeks or so then moving on to three promised documentaries as DoP, the starting point, after a long apprenticeship, of a long career shooting commercials, documentaries, series, some feature work and developing his Ross Wood experience to a well used Visual Effects expertise. Both Phil Pike ACS and Ron Windon ACS played a big part in the leap forward at Eric Porters.
In the '70s David went into partnership for 12 years in a commercial production company, Camfilm, with editor John Hoskins and headed by director, the late John Bowen.
David left Camfilm to go freelance, starting his own company with wife Marianne and buying their own Arri 3 kit, updating the kit to the new Arriflex 435 kit. Today David is very active shooting commercials, and packaging visual effects live action shoots for CGI animation integration. He enjoys his involvement with the NSW ACS committee & is a Vice President in the national ACS body
from Australian Cinematographer - Issue 9 - June 2000
Further Information
- Wakeley Images
- Some production photos from David's Archive