You can't direct without a good crew.
I like to work behind the camera.
My son works as a production assistant in television.
I really like photography, and I'd like to do more of that kind of thing. If I had to choose a different job within the industry and do it well, I would love to do cinematography.
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.
I was in film school as an undergrad with a focus on directing. Once I started working on shoots, I realized, 'Oh, I really like this cinematography thing.'
In Europe and America, you never see a director pick up a camera. They all sit behind monitors.
Usually in TV... A TV director could be anything from a main grip to just a glorified cameraman, and sometimes a director can be the person who is hired last. It's very much a producer's medium.
I know how a cinematographer wants to be treated by their director, and so I already have a leg up in that department, and I know what would be insulting to say to a DP because I've been one for so long.
I had a brief theater background and loved the backstage world there's more backstage work in television, so I saw a job advertised and applied, and got it. That was back in 1977, when getting jobs was easy.
I knew from early on I would go to film school and try to work behind the camera.
I'm going to insult a whole industry here, but it seems like TV is for people who can't do film. I'm not talking about actresses; I'm talking about lighting people. Lighting on TV is just so... it's sinful, it really is.
I first started working in film when I was 17. I was a director's assistant, an editor.
You have to understand that crew members make movies so they're seeing a lot of actors all the time in their career acting.
I love writing but not crazy meticulous/prepared enough to be a director. I'd work as a gaffer on something.
We love the idea of having a really great lighting production.
On my first movie, there were three women: the body-makeup girl, the hairdresser, and the secretary of the producer.
My work is made on lines similar to those of a film production. A lot of my work is kind of bureaucratic, endlessly phoning up people, trying to find the cameraman and the lighting man, because I am a total technology-phobe, quite helpless with equipment.
