Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
'Meadowland' was the reason I got 'The Handmaid's Tale,' and probably my experience in cinematography helped. Everything was like a stepping stone to the next thing.
Even in manipulating the images, I would like to do my dailies in a digital way because you can do so many things in that stage that I cannot do in real photography.
The first director who ever allowed me to shoot a film for him was a male. He was a gay male. My first feature also came from him. I worked for a lot of dudes at NYU.
I'm trying to make people understand: yes, women are oppressed in 'The Handmaid's Tale.' But the men are also oppressed, too. It's just a very scary world for anyone.
On 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' we started exploring shots that are longer, where the camera is moving around the actors, and there are no cuts, and you feel like you're there.
My advice for other female directors: don't think of your gender as a handicap. Don't think about it at all. Just tell the best story you can, and don't stop until you do.
It's really the best time to be a woman. And instead it can be an advantage. Think about what you can bring to the table that what you have to offer that makes you unique.
There are a lot of cameramen but not so many photographers. And a lot of cameramen attack from a technical approach without much imagination. They look, but they don't see.
I have a very healthy dream life. I dream a lot many, many, many nights a week. When I'm shooting, it's even more - I don't know if it has to do with stress or with creation.
After graduating, I was shooting as well as working as a key grip, and I often found myself the only female out of the whole crew, except for producers and the occasional AC.
The more tools we have directors and cinematographers will be able to express more and create different worlds and feelings. It's like having more instruments in an orchestra.
There are many legendary DPs that I admire, some of whom have a very strong signature, but I'm not sure I want to be the DP where you see my work and say 'Oh, Reed shot that.'
When I do a still picture, I'm doing it all by myself with no help. I'm designing everything. I am my own art director. I'm doing everything. I'm directing, editing, whatever.
I always like to do sound design, and in movies, you have more leeway with that, but I don't really notice that sound design is being used in TV other than just location sound.
I look at a picture like Scarecrow and think, 'Jesus, how could they have let us make that?' I mean, if you used technology that old nowadays, it would look like old Hollywood.
I think film is about images. Cinema needs good images. I think that if you don’t have good images, it’s not going to be a good film. I think all films should be really visual.
I don't think there is any advantage to digital unless it's in a case like Slumdog Millionaire, where you have to get a shot and a big bulky film camera is out of the question.
There are obviously issues in our industry. That starts at the top with studio execs who - not just men - don't believe a woman could handle a huge franchise or big action movie.
What I would suggest to the young people is to not forget this and don't try to get assimilated into today's Hollywood style of movies because I don't think it's going to last long.
It can be insulting to an actor when the director comes out, and they have no notes on the performance, and all they care about is that the camera has to do this one technical thing.
I was able to shoot a movie like 'Tree of Life' because I had done 'Y Tu Mama Tambien.' The camera needed to capture that sense of freedom and joy and life you have when you're young.
I like the film camera better because the film is still one hundred times better than any digital image at the moment. So, there are certain movies that you can't really do digitally.
We are writing stories with light and darkness, motion and colors. It is a language with its own vocabulary and unlimited possibilities for expressing our inner thoughts and feelings.
I love Woody Allen. He's very clever, always thinking, and he's great with actors. He lets actors do what they want to do and occasionally he'll give them a specific kind of direction.
There is something missing in a lot of digital filmmaking, something I call "poetic reality." That's something you see played out in film noir, where the technique establishes the mood.
I'm very attracted to directors who want to experiment. The thing that attracts me the most are people who are trying find a language that is correct for their film, for that specific film.
Most of the people I know in the film business here in New York, the moms and the dads, just take different turns working. So everybody's a working parent, and nobody bats an eyelash at it.
Kubrick was one of those directors who actually did practically everything in his movies. He actually directed, photographed, wrote, lit, edited - everything. A few people can be like that.
I'm always looking in the lighting to tell the story in a different way than it actually looks in real life because it's, for me, more contrast sometimes has to mean it's softer than normal.
If you do not bother to take the time to compose and to light properly, then you end up with something almost less than reality. You end up without the soul, the heart, the art of the moment.
I had never met Woody Allen before Melinda and Melinda. My agent knew the producer of the movie and he suggested that we would work well together and then we did. We had a great time on that film.
As the cinematographer is usually more visual than the director is and full cooperation is really the answer and to make a great film, you need a good director and you need a good cinematographer.
When I first came to America there still was Look Magazine and LIFE Magazine, and the photography in those magazines was amazing to look at. They had the best portraits, and their news photography.
The most important thing in imaging for me is the dynamic range. The dynamic range means the tones that you can capture from highlights to dark and the bits, the depth of color that you can capture.
Those who skim over the surface in a hit-or-miss fashion not only forfeit the best returns on their efforts, but are ever barred from the keen pleasure of seeing beauty in the results of their labor.
When you are shooting a movie, you have to collaborate with many, many, many people. First of all, the director with all his own ideas and I can only just help him with that. I cannot change his idea.
When we came to America, the movies here needed a "new wave." European films looked totally different than American movies, which were these lush, glossy pictures with this elaborate production design.
In fact, I probably learned more about photography from studying black-and-white photography in those magazines [Look Magazine and LIFE Magazine] than I did from watching movies here. That's the truth.
I know how a cinematographer wants to be treated by their director, and so I already have a leg up in that department, and I know what would be insulting to say to a DP because I've been one for so long.
You make a film for a million dollars and then it costs $10 million to sell it. That's the problem at the moment with independent filmmaking: You can make it cheap and then there's no money to market it.
In my 20s, I was too shy to reach out to successful DPs and directors for an internship or to shadow them. I see young people nowadays doing that all the time. I think that experience would have been cool.
I like to work with talented people, I must say that. That's my weakness. I really like to work with good directors. That doesn't mean I don't like to work with starting up young directors, that's fun also.
I hate when somebody says, "This may not work." You'll never get anywhere with that. I've pushed a lot of people out of my way - I don't mean physically - over them being afraid something isn't going to work.
Sometimes you come up with an idea when you're going out for a job, and then when you actually get into dissecting the world, you end up changing your approach, just because that's the way art goes sometimes.
I shot a lot of commercials and sometimes I enjoy the commercial shooting and sometimes I really hate it, but in thirty seconds or one minute, you can make some remarkable work shooting in one or two or three days.
The thing about film is that your eye is selective. Film isn't. You have to make film do what you want. Simply photographing something doesn't do it. You have to know how to apply light and know what it does on film.
With television, it's difficult to do some things. You have to shoot so many minutes a day, so you always have to be prepared or you won't be able to complete the number of pages that you have scheduled for that day.
I'm not really satisfied with the technology today. Using film was so much easier than the digital technology of today. But digital is still at the beginning of what it can be and they'll be fixing all those problems.
I always try to tell the story the best possible way. I create the mood for each scene in a way that the audience feels that they are right there with me and they feel actually in the mood that was right for the scene.
We are all made of flesh, of matter. And at the end, this matter is dissolved in light, and transformed into energy. It’s the Einstein formula. Energy is nothing but matter that is moving at the speed of light, squared