Early Life and Career
Watkin was born in Margate, Kent, England, the fourth and youngest son of a Roman Catholic solicitor father and homemaker mother, and grew up within a well-to-do upper-middle class household. He gained an early enthusiasm for European classical music, which was left to be satisfied only as a passive listener when his father rejected his request for a piano and lessons; Watkin always contended that he would rather have been a professional musician than a cinematographer.
After a brief period in the Army during World War II, Watkin started work at the Southern Railway Film Unit in 1948 as a camera assistant. After the unit was absorbed into British Transport Films in 1950, he eventually climbed the ranks up to director of photography at BTF before going off to work freelance in commercials around 1960.
Before working in feature films "as a fully fledged cinematographer", he shot the title sequence of the James Bond film, Goldfinger (1964).
Read more about this topic: David Watkin (cinematographer)
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