“We can put the light over here, we can put it here, we can put it just in front, on the back: it changes completely. Any cinematographer, using this kind of light, can tell a story, can write with light.”

“There are three things that lighting has to do: it has to provide for sufficient illumination to record the image on film; it has to make up for the difference in contrast between our eye and the film; and it has to enhance the illusion of third dimension in a two-dimensional medium.”

“You walk on a set, it’s absolutely black, and you strike your first light for what you’re going to do, and that becomes your first brush-stroke. And then you add other brush-strokes all the way through, add different lights, till you come out with your complete picture. And then you look at it and say ‘OK, let’s do it!’.”

“I walk onto a dark stage usually I turn on one light. This light hopefully has been there before, I put it there earlier because I hopefully know where the light’s coming from in the scene. And then I decide what does that look like. And that’s theoretically the light that’s coming in the window, or the light that’s coming from the main lamp in the room, or something, and I’ll start with that. And the other lights all should be in place, then I’ll turn them on. I don’t turn on all of the lights at once. Usually I turn them on one at a time, and then I start turning them off again.”

“Usually when I show up on a set and get ready to shoot, I’ve already lit the set in my head.”

“My favourite thing in using light, for instance: I like relativity, I like light-to-dark, big-to-small. My favourite kind of thing is you have somebody standing by a window talking to somebody who’s standing in the corner. And someone standing in the corner is in the dark. So you’re cutting from this guy at the window talking to this girl who’s standing in the corner in the dark.”

“There are three things that lighting has to do: it has to provide for sufficient illumination to record the image on film; it has to make up for the difference in contrast between our eye and the film; and it has to enhance the illusion of third dimension in a two-dimensional medium. OK, that’s what it has to do; what it can do…”

“It can affect you emotionally, it can help tell the story. You have to know what story you’re telling before you even start to think about how you light it. And you have to think about whether you want the audience to see everything clearly, or whether you want to hold it back a bit from the audience, whether you want to throw the actors into a little bit of shadow.”

“Not adding, but taking-away is better, always. It’s like something’s not working, you throw another sand bag in the boat because it’s listing, and you keep throwing sand in till pretty near the whole boat sinks. You don’t put in more, you take away. Usually when something doesn’t work it’s because you’re doing too much, or you’ve made the wrong choice.”

“I remember when I first started out as a cinematographer the very first thing I was into was is there enough light.”

“Light can be flat or not-flat, and clearly flat is not good.”

“It’s not just to look at the screen. You’ve got to make the audience look at a some part of that screen that’s important, where the dialogue is going on.”