It is experiencing life that does it,
I do not think there is one specific thing,
you could learn about cameras
but that is not it.
It is just experiencing and connecting
to what is around you.
I mean that is how
I have always painted
or drawn pictures
or taken still photographs.
And now I shoot movies
and it is just about making images really.
When I was a kid growing up,
a teenager, that was why I love movies.
they posed questions to me,
they searched into subjects like I say,
Peter Watkins “War Game”
or he did a film called “Culloden”.
It was not a contemporary film but obviously
it was about the battle in Culloden.
And just stylistically it was amazing
because there is a period piece
and he has got modern day journalists
on the battlefield in Scotland
talking to camera
and telling you what is going on,
I mean just as a stylistic piece
of film making.
But that is what I was brought up with
and that is what attracted me to film.
And it is probably why I started
wanting to be involved
in documentaries
in the first place.
I always thought
when I was doing documentaries,
if you could just show people
what it would be like to be their neighbour.
Show one person what it was like
to be that other person
the world would be
such a better place.
I think they all influence you even if it is not
conscious when you are doing something,
I really kind of think of another movie
when I am doing something.
But I sometimes
watch things.
A lot of the films
that I grew up with
and I kind of watched them now
they are like sort of old friends
that you have shared
your life with really.
I think they do not influence me
so much in their visual style,
it is the kind of mood they have,
the emotional connection I have with them.
I do not think
I have a style.
I have discovered ways of lighting
that sort of work for me.
Like I look at this lighting and it is great
but I would not do that.
I would do it a different way
but that is all personal.
But that is not really a style,
I do not think I have a naturalistic style.
I hope I have a style
that suits the project that I am on.
I mean I walk on a film set
on a new movie and I think it feels like
I have never done it before, like I am
learning so I do not think I have got a style.
Any way a film looks is a product
of the prep on that look on that film
and how that sort of developed
as we have gone along.
For instance,
there is a scene in “Prisoners”,
where Hugh Jackman's character
is stuck in a hole.
It is a hole with a piece of whatever
on top, so how do you light that?
How do you shoot
sequences like that?
So Denny and I were talking about it,
he said: “What if he got a cigarette lighter?”
Great okay.
Now if that had been filmed I would not
have even gone there but no, we basically
shot the scene with a cigarette lighter.
It was great.
I mean it is simply as that.
It is about
taking those kind of risks,
it would have been hard
to do that on film I think.
I do not think the fact
that camera is digital now,
I do not think it really has changed
the way I work that much.
I remember on “Jarhead”
running around with the ARRI II C
and a battery pack
around my belt
and a 200-foot magazine
shooting battle sequences running around.
It was a pretty heavy camera,
it was pretty hard to do it.
And now obviously with
the M-camera everything is just so much
smaller and lighter and so much
easier to do that kind of work with.
So that is a big change,
but it is only a change to the effect
it has on my back,
it does not make me shoot it a different way.
It is just the equipment
has made it a bit easier.
For me personally there are still
so many things I want to do
and every project is exciting
in a different way, a different challenge.
It is my personal sensibility
where I see the world, feel something,
a film has got something to say
and why does anything
attract your attention
or make you feel anything.
It is so much about the movement
of the camera and the composition.
You want to be open to that sort of level
of things that happen on a set.
You can't be, if you have to
communicate with an operator
which you can't do
when they are shooting a shot.
So if in the middle of a shot
something's happening
and you want to just think:
“Oh, I want to just take the frame over
that way a bit, that will do blah blah blah."
And the way I work with my dolly grip is
that I can just, I will be behind
the camera and I just go like that
so we could just
alter the frame.
So it is that connection with the camera.
It is good now, cameras are getting lighter
and lighter so I reckon I could be
in my 90's and still do it hand-held
and whatever I want.
