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Definitely the biggest misconception is that it is overly burdensome to be a woman and pursue this line of work. But being a woman gives me a unique perspective and style, which is probably why I get the work that I do.
I started a business with my cousins in Fire Island called 'Wagoneers.' Since there are no cars on the island, we would hustle people at the ferry docks to bring their luggage to their houses in our wagons for a large fee.
I think that digital is offering many great possibilities for cinematographers. Particularly in urban cityscapes and low light photography its allowing us to render what we actually see with our eyes; which is interesting.
Technology has a great deal to do with it. The Panaflex camera was a big breakthrough when it came along; it changed everything, because now you could shoot from the perspective of a person riding in the backseat of a car.
If you take a sophisticated idea, reduce it to the simplest possible terms so that it’s accessible to everybody, and don’t get simple mixed up with simplistic, it’s how you mount and present something that makes it engaging.
Hayden [Sterling] told me that he was thrilled about the way he moved around the set, that wherever he would go, there would be lighting. He didn't think about his marks because they were set in the only places he could move.
There are a lot of directors out there that don't like to deal with actors, I think. Many of them have said something like, in the future they will actually manipulate the actors on their computers. But don't believe all this.
Mexican cinematographers Gabriel Figueroa and Emilio Fernandez were students of both Sergei Eisenstein and Toland. Their exteriors and lighting were gorgeous. And the films Ingmar Bergman did with Sven Nykvist were exceptional.
I think it's a common misconception that because you're a woman, you can't command a set and have people respect you, and for some reason, Hollywood is really far behind every other industry. It's getting better; it's just slow.
I don't really like directing. I've had a good relationship with actors, but I can do what I do and back off. I don't want that much romancing. I don't want them to call me up at two in the morning saying, 'I don't know who I am.
I'm a great believer in relativity when making movies. Relativity, in my mind, meaning "Light to dark, big to small, good to bad." You visually embrace these things to enhance transitions and instantly paint environments and moods.
Huge studio movies are handed over to a man with less experience before they're handed over to a woman with less experience. That's a fact. But I think it's not just about men not hiring women: it's about women not hiring women, too.
These days that wouldn't happen - waiting for the light to be exactly right. Because it takes time and time is money. And with these big productions with expensive actors, you just don't have the time to get every shot exactly right.
I have been lucky in getting a lot of the projects I've wanted, maybe because I'm really, really driven. But there is a stigma that women can't direct big studio films. Not that I want to do that, but it is a topic that comes up a lot.
We have this attitude in America of, 'Someone else is going to fix the problem.' That's what the majority of Americans have. Or, 'I'm just going to go online and sign this petition, and that will take care of it.' That's doesn't do it.
'Little Princess' was the first big movie that I did in America with big stages where we had kind of a different schedule to work. We had a great production designer, Bo Welch, and we had time to think about the movie in pre-production.
When I got on my first set, I watched what the cinematographer was doing, and at that level in film school, the cinematographer has the most control. They're the one looking through the viewfinder, carrying the camera, framing the shots.
It's the angle that shows how we see differently. I have always believed that all documentaries are fictional. It's really the angle of the camera, the owner of the perception, that makes the story what it is. The video camera is a fiction.
I think that the audience should not be able to tell if it is real or not real - it should be an enhanced version of reality, or an artistic view of reality, that captures not only what is physically there, but what is not visible - the mood.
A normal day of working in Burbank is 14 hours, sometimes more. On 'The Revenant' sometimes it was eight hours, but we were shooting only five. So they were short days, but they were very strenuous because of the weather. And it was very dark.
Good films are not made by accident, nor is good photography. You can have good things happen, on occasion, by accident that can be applied at that moment in a film, but your craft isn't structured around such things, except in beer commercials.
I think the audience doesn't know a movie's lit, but they feel it. Because you've walked in a forest many times, or in a park, so you know how it looks. When you start lighting, subconsciously you know there is something that is absolutely wrong.
When it was time to go to college, I was going to apply to Boston University for journalism, and dad said, 'Why not apply to NYU film school, because you love telling stories and taking pictures?' And I thought, 'Oh, I can do that for a job? Cool!'
I don't want to come in and do something that's been done before. You know, for me, it's not that I wouldn't come in and do a sequel to something, but it's only if I can bring something new to the table and I'm not following an extremely strict path.
The studios are never going to make $200 million a picture with those types of movies. It's not familiar to them, and it's not a model that can necessarily be sustained. Now, if they go back to making movies about people ... well, I hope they do that.
The dynamic range of the digital camera is pretty crappy compared to film, but now film is not great because the labs have closed. It's going to hurt a lot of the movies that we did in this gap because I think they are going to look very old very soon.
What's the hardest thing about making a show like 'Vinyl' or 'Handmaid's Tale' is they are expecting movie-level cinematic quality in every way - from the performances to the visuals and the shots - especially on a show where you are doing Scorsese style.
When you work as a cinematographer, the actors look to you for reassurance. When you're lighting them, they can never think you're making an adjustment because of the way they look. If they are nervous, it impacts their performance, which impacts the story.
When I was in Hungary in December I was looking at student films and I could not tell which ones were shot on film and which ones were shot digitally. I think that is because the filmmakers in Europe go to four years of film school and learn the techniques.
Zooms are lazy closeups. And too many people hang their hats on video assist; it's a way to avoid too much. Video assist helps people dissociate from the scene that they are directing. Pretty soon the director will be directing all the way from his apartment.
A lot of people who are in charge in Hollywood are women, so they have the power. Now, I've met a lot of these amazing women who are offering opportunities to other women, and they're awesome. But for the women who maybe haven't done that yet, it's like, why?
Telling the story with only a few shots, I love that style. It makes you feel like you're part of the action, part of the story. It reminds me of the theater, where one act is basically like one long shot. It almost makes you forget that you're seeing a movie.
In a period piece, particularly a fantasy, the lighting is your own choice, the lenses are your own choice. It's really a great thing for a cinematographer to do. Everything is open for you. You can even be more creative and you can use more shadows than usual.
In Slumdog Millionaire when you are immersed in the point of view of children in the slum and the bustle of the city, the handheld camerawork is amazing. A handheld camera is perfect for establishing point-of-view and for instilling the feeling that you are there.
I love the Dutch impressionists - Vermeer, Rembrandt. What they were able to do with light was astonishing. As for photographers, I think mostly of the Hungarians: Robert Capa, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jozsef Pesci. In fact, I have one of his photographs hanging in my house.
I think people just see cinematography as being about photography and innovative shots and beautiful lighting. We all want our movies to look great visually, to be beguiling and enticing, but I think that what really defines a great cinematographer is one who loves story.
I feel like directing is more about who the individual is rather than if they're a man or a woman. It's kind of hard to generalize and group all of us female filmmakers into one group, like we're all going provide you with the same thing, because we're not. We're all individuals.
You always like to be the collaborator. I don't want to take over the movie, because if I want to do that, I should really become a director because then you have the control of everything, basically. I'm very happy to just be the visual part of it, doing the visual part of the movie.
I would rather be hired solely for my talent, not just to fill a quota. I also don't want to shoot just any studio movie just to say I'm shooting studio movies - for me, quality of the material comes first, and if eventually that leads to a really great studio project, then that's a bonus.
I think I subconsciously knew you needed life experience to direct, and the best films are directed by people who have really lived, with exceptions like Orson Welles, who just burst out of the gate. There are prodigies like that, but for me, personally, I thought I needed life experience.
I actually carried a Panavision Platinum and a G2 when I was seven months pregnant for a film called 'Little Birds,' and the whole movie was handheld. And we were shooting in the desert. That's a 35-millimeter camera. It's huge, probably at least 50, 55 pounds, and I did all my own operating.
Directing is not about gender. Directing is individual to the actual individual. From woman to woman, directing is completely different. It's about giving more than half the population a chance to express themselves, you know what I mean? It doesn't always mean it's going to be more sensitive.
When you do movies on low budgets, you don't want to have a location that requires a very big light right outside the window when you're 10 stories up. You have to find a location where you have a terrace outside, or you can light from a second floor, or you can light through the windows for daylight.
There is a difference between creating something and just capturing something. And when we were using film, it was not that fast, and it was expensive, so there was incentive to make sure the shot was exactly right before we rolled. With digital, it's fast and its cheap, and it's easy to bypass the rest.
I have two daughters, and they grew up and wanted to get into Instagram, and I didn't know anything about social media. I started it to learn about what they were starting to do and how they communicate with their friends. I opened an account. Very fast, in a few hours, I realized that I actually liked it.
It's a very tricky job we have as DPs, where you are expected to make something that really is an emotional art but also needs to be technically spot on. You're often given a very small window of time to achieve it. People sometimes expect it to be even quicker and forget that there's a schedule for a reason.
I think it took me seven years before I got the script for 'Frozen River.' That's the movie I had been looking for my whole career. When I read that, I knew I had to shoot that movie - that it'd be a game-changer. It was one of those scripts where I read it, and I was like, 'This movie could get into Sundance.'
In TV, you are much more likely to see the episode closer to the script as written - in terms of the order of the scenes - than you would in a movie, and here's why: you don't have as many days to edit. You have 10 to 12 weeks or more to edit a feature, and you have four days to edit TV. That's a huge difference.
I was really fortunate from the time I arrived in Hollywood to work with some of the greatest directors from the beginning. I worked with Robert Altman, John Boorman, and of course Steven Spielberg, Michael Cimino, Brian De Palma ... I couldn't pick one of them; they were all different, but they are all so talented.
It's all about special effects and explosions now. It leaves me just cold when I walk out of the theater. There's no heart; there's no soul. Movies used to be about people. It's as though we don't tell stories any more. The studios have to make money, and if you want to make $20 million, you have to spend $200 million.