Rachel Morrison Quotes

Every shot is unique, even if it's just a close-up, an insert of your hand. You've got to work with the guy behind the lens to get it right, focus in. Those are critical little nothing things, but you've got to work with the people who are trying to put it down, in order to get it.

A lot of cinematography is intuition. It's an art, not a formula.

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.

The process of shooting - of choosing shots - is intuitive for me, and I just feel my way towards what seems right.

For a cinematographer, every frame has to be important.

In film, you're painting a canvas. I got really excited about that.

Photography can be a volatile situation. It can be very potent.

I believe that the best cameraman is one who recognizes the source, the story, as the basis of his work.

I really got into filmmaking through photography.

Film directing has perfected my theater directing. I think when I first started directing, a lot of my stuff was very lateral; I was afraid to have the actors' backs turned away, afraid to put them too far upstage, and I think once I did more things with film, I got more interested in composition.

With the work that I do as a director, I've got dialogue, camera movement, and character blocking to help create a tone to the piece. In photography, those elements are somewhat void so that tone becomes a bit more subtle but still equally important.

All my film ideas and subjects have come from photography.

I always wanted to know what lens they were on, how close they were. I didn't do it with a plan in mind, but I would instinctively gear what I was doing toward what lenses they were using.

I feel every shot, every camera move, every frame, and the way you frame something and the choice of lens, I see all those things are really important on every shot.

The job is trying to create movie shots that have depth, that have the meanings you need them to have, and then good enough so that they will add something to the final picture. They will make the picture; they'll get into the picture, and give them what they need. It's an interesting job.

A lot of directors in my experience are very receptive. They see what you do first, and then they want to find a place to put the camera, and they tweak you here and there.

You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one.

Italian cameramen grow up immersed in an awareness of light. It is part of their mythology.

In a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.

My two great loves when I'm shooting are working with great actors and composing images.

Whenever I arrive on a real location, I have to move around and work out what the best angles are going to be. When I was moving around with the lens, I discovered things that the naked eye would not have.

I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

I design my shots. I walk the rehearsal as the camera and say 'this is where I want to be... I want this look.

If you shoot with a billion cameras, then there's no perspective. You want to use one shot at a time, so it's better to discover what that is before you shoot, rather than trying to make something in the cutting room, and then it just becomes generic.