EMMANUEL LUBEZKI

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.

For each movie that I do, I like to find a specific language to tell the specific story.

I can tell you that going to the Oscars is not as exciting as people think, at least for me.

I did sound for a number of years, so I know the pain of the sound mixer on a set where everybody was talking.

I don't miss film projecting. I always hated it.

I would love if film doesn't disappear, if we can have film forever so we would have all these brushes, all these possibilities available.

The language of film is further and further away from the language of theater and is closer to music. It's abstract but still narrative.

When you're shooting with long lenses, even if you're shooting a close-up, you feel the air, the distance between the camera and the subject.

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.

I don't like it when a movie becomes a series of 'tour de force' shots, and in a way, I was disappointed that with 'Children of Men,' people noticed that the car scene was one shot with no cuts. If people notice that, it's like they're noticing my trick, you know what I mean? I'm doing it so people will get immersed in the movie, not to show off.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've been directing a few commercials, and I would probably like to direct a feature one day. It's not a priority - I'm not dying to do it. But what I realize is that every time I direct something, I learn how to be a better cinematographer. I learn much better how a director feels, the loneliness of a director, how you need to have a great crew.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The language of film is further and further away from the language of theater, and is closer to music. It’s abstract but still narrative. Everything feels less rehearsed. It’s more experimental than classical.

Instead of trying to modify what nature brought us, we embraced it.

If I'm collaborating with an artist I like to give them my point of view and if they don't want to take any of my recommendations it's fine, but it's hard otherwise.

I see an incredible abuse of close-ups in many films these days. Why is that?

What you don't want is to repeat a formula over and over or impose a formula to a movie that...when you impose yourself and you impose a formula and you're not open to explore and to find what is right for the movie, I think you're doing a disservice to the story and what you're trying to express.