I was very fortunate in the '70s to work with the best actors, the best directors, the best cinematographers.
But at heart, I am more than a cinematographer.
The way I work with my cinematographer is not based on general principles, but the ideas are triggered by the locations where we shoot.
It's cinematographic to smoke. Imagine Lauren Bacall without a cigarette.
Very few cinematographers, other than the Europeans, know how to light women like they used to in the old days.
You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.
Every cinematographer I worked with had his own way of solving problems.
When the cinematograph first made its appearance, we were told that the days of the ordinary theatre were numbered.
Bring together things that have not yet been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.
Nothing more inelegant and ineffective than an art conceived in another art's form.
Most people think of cinematographers as choosing subjects of an epic nature to show off what they do - big, sweeping images of war or pageantry.
'La Notte' is my favorite of the Antonioni pictures and my favorite work of the master cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, who also shot '8 1/2' for Fellini.
I always try to preserve my cinematographic style, even while I work in the US. I wish to always be European.
I want to try and be as involved in the art of filmmaking as possible. I feel that the only way to really do that is to take on as many roles as possible, whether it be as an actor, an editor, a director, a cinematographer.
I don't know one lens from another. That's not my job. It's the cinematographer's job. But I can talk to people.
An action choreographer is kind of like a dance choreographer. You choreograph the moves and you let the director, cinematographer take into positioning their cameras.
I came up the old-fashioned way - tea boy, cutter, focus-puller, cinematographer - but I wasn't myself old-fashioned.
When I was in pre-production for Trees Lounge, I was hearing the cinematographer talking with the production designer about colours and this and that, and feeling like I was losing control.
Our memories are convenient lies we create, cribbing images from others' experiences. We discard the personal specifics which don't conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.
When you're doing a film, narrative is your most important tool, but it's a tool to create a cinematographic experience, to create those moments that are beyond narrative, that are almost an abstraction of that moment that hits your psyche.
That excites me, working with really excellent people, be it wonderful directors or actors or cinematographers and especially writers. My work life is going to a set and having these great experiences and coming home shifted by them.
