Sometimes the shots serve as homages to other movies and other directors, like Hitchcock.
There are many, many different kinds of movies and directors and styles. I don't mind that a movie looks like a movie.
If you need to strap a camera to you or get in a small space, then it makes sense to use digital.I do think it is possible to use a digital camera artistically, but it can only be good if you are using film technique. Film has grain, and digital has pixels, and there is not that much of a difference, but digital does not replace the need to create a scene and light it properly and spend time considering the shot.
Some movies are what I would call murky. Just because it's murky doesn't make it artistic. It makes it hard to see.
A good [film] director is talented, imaginative, and does his homework.
European films had art. And it was easy to make a European film. They didn't come from the studio system, they weren't shot in sound studios, and that's a good thing, because in the studio system those movies would never have had a chance. And since we were coming from Europe, it was natural for us to use that simple style. Small budgets, less equipment, that was just how it was.
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.
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, of course, many, many, many good cinematographers and unfortunately they don't work as much as many of those people who do those crazy, stupid movies.
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.
I love to make movies about young people - young scientists that are inventing things and all the writing they did was very funny and very true.
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.
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.
Spielberg was very young and starting up when we did Sugarland Express and I loved that, but the main thing was that I really loved his talent.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. It's just too complicated - negatives, tinting, flashing - it's a whole new system that takes a lot of time. Of course, it's not as physical. Even the editing. You used to feed a piece of celluloid into an editor. [Digital] is not expensive and that is an advantage, but I must say that I don't love it.
I really like to work with people who know a lot, but they also give me space so I can add something to the movie.
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.
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.
