Victor Louis Alexander Margutti

Obituary - Vic Margutti

Vic Margutti, Fellow of the British Kinematograph, Sound and Television Society, member of the Cinema Veterans Association, and a founder member of the Association of Cinematograph Technicians died on May 22 1980 aged 67 after three years of retirement, the last two spent at Fairlight, near Hastings.

He was educated at Merchant Taylors and was a student at the Cinematography School, Regent Street Polytechnic with Wall Veevers in 1933.

His film career started at Denham Studios where he worked as part of a team of George Perinal, Bob Krasker and Henti Cryer. Vic and Henti became very close friends, and Vic was overjoyed when in recent years the real facts of Henti's naval miniature submarine services came to light.

In 1938 Vic went to the Sudan, working on the second unit as a camera assistant on the 'Four Feathers' with Jack Cardiff, Wilkie Cooper and Wally Veevers. He was always a great communicator and quickly mastered the language of Swahili.

A long war time army service in the Pioneer Corps started, after he was commissioned, at the building of the Ordnance Depot at Donnington, Shropshire - a place at which I was later stationed - and continued with service over most of North Africa where his fluent Swahili was of the utmost value. He reached the rank of Major by the end of the war.

After demob he returned to Bert Easy's Denham camera department, then moved over to Pinewood Special Effects, joining Les Bowie and Bert Marshall. He worked on many productions there including the model work on 'Reach For The Sky'.

In 1952 he and Les Bowie formed Bowie Margutti Ltd in Stoke Poges, offering special effects including matte paintings, models, and later a newly patented system of black and white travelling matte using single strip colour negative to record foreground and matte simultaneously.

In October 1956 Vic re-joined the Rank Organisation as head of the Travelling Matte department of which I was then part. Vic's colleague Roy Field joining us shortly afterwards. Vic built up a department, including Peter Swinson, who supervised our optical side, of which he was especially proud. After lots of thought and research, he instigated the clean through air and humidity control technique that has proved to be essential in optical operations.

Vic developed and patented a single strip colour travelling matte process called 'The Direct Matte System' and was an additional service offered by Rank Laboratories.

After a 21 year working association with Vic in the world of travelling matte, I am in no doubt that he contributed an enormous amount to the development of our industry.

He leaves a very close family in his widow Ann, married son and daughter Simon and Judith, and son Guy. Our sympathies and best wishes go to them all.