What is the first thing you do after you
read a script? I read the script and I try to
feel it. What does it feel like? And then
I just close my eyes, I go, what do I see?
Like what kind of thing am I seeing or
feeling? I have a lot of art books, photo
books and then sometimes we'll
go through them then looking for images
that resonate with me. I'll just go and just
start flipping through stuff and okay
that's one! I'll put a post-it on it. I
try to find an image that sums up the
gist of the movie. And on "Entourage" I
came in there with a Renoir painting.
The one I saw was this one with people
dancing and I could show you a scene... Oh,
I know the one! It's one of their party scenes. It's exactly
like the party scenes. I see it now. On purpose cuz I
said, that's what the party scene should
look like. OK, I've got it. And on
"Secretary" I found a Wynn Bullock painting
of this girl in a forest. I showed it to
Steve Chambers and he said, that's it, that's
what the movie feels like. And another
reference was Nan Goldin's photographs. She shoots with like a 35
millimeter lens and 35
millimeter lenses a normal lens. And one
of the things we did, and this was I
think a very good decision, was the
normal lens, it makes you look at
something as if it's really happening.
That means no magnification. Right, it
doesn't feel manipulated.
And so we're shooting people doing some
weird sexual thing in a room and it's a
long take without very much editing and
it's a normal lens. And then we're
shooting a wide shot, Then we go closer,
we just move in, we don't change the lens.
Okay, it feels real. It doesn't feel
abstracted whereas if you're cutting say
from a wide-angle to then a telephoto
shot, the viewer subconsciously feels the
manipulation of the director. The
director is manipulating your perception
and  you're aware of that, so in
some ways it makes it less real, what
you're seeing.
The film is divided into four
sections, being with her mother, other
people she knew, trying to please him and
then finally being her own self or own
woman. And we broke it up also by focal
length. We started out wide angle with a
14, the very beginning of the movies 14
millimeter. Then the middle, most of the
middle is 32.
So we do not see a close-up done with a 75 millimeter until the last 5 minutes of
the film. And it's so transcendentally
beautiful, because a 75 is more
flattering, but it has tremendous impact
because you've never even seen her that
way, I'm starting from, well, what are we
trying to say here? What is the story
we're trying to tell? And then, okay, how can I
use my tools and the images and the
places and locations and the actors and
all the wonderful things that we have,
how can we use those in the best way to
tell the story? Then the craft
of you, of knowing how to use those
things. By shooting a close-up of you
with a wide-angle lens from right
here or a close-up of you from a telephoto
lens from back here - that's the craft of
filmmaking. I would make decisions like
you know, which one of those
close-ups I should do based on my
interpretation of the story? First of all,
I think you can have a great film with
poor lighting but if the shots are not
good at telling the story then I don't
think it's a great film. For example, John
Cassavetes films, a movie like "Faces"
which most, a lot of people write off and
say oh it's technically not good and I
completely disagree with that because
the shots and the staging are fantastic
at telling the story. And then it's a
low-budget movie, it's shot at 16, it's
grainy, it's not particularly - you're not
looking at it going the lighting is
great, even though lighting is very
realistic for what,  you know,
what is happening in the story.
So I feel that the first thing to do is
get the shot right and then light it in
the most appropriate way possible for
the story. And I don't usually compromise
a shot for lighting. For example, I'm not
someone who'll say, well, I can light this
a lot better if I just use a tighter lens. I
will tend to first go, what lens should
are used to tell the story the best way?
And of course the wider the angle the
harder it's going to be to light. But if
a wide angle is what I want that's what
I'm gonna do. And then I'll go okay so
it's not gonna be lit quite as well but
the shot is gonna be the right shot.
"Last Tango" has, to this day, some of the most
beautiful shots I've ever seen in my
life.
And he did not do the camera at all, I
mean I've interviewed him. Bertolucci
and the operator set up the shots in
"Last Tango" and he lit them. That's how
they worked together. And he actually said for
the beginning of his career he was
interested in light and dark and then he
felt like he had done it all in that he
mastered it. And then he said, okay, now I
want to concentrate on color, and that
was the second half of his career. I
always find I'm always excited.
Everything's different. Every day is
different. Every set is different. The
light is always different. I think one of
the reasons I always wanted to go in into
this field was I felt like I would never
know it.
I would always be learning.
