The biggest challenge of any cinematographer is making the imagery fit together of a piece that the whole film has a unity to it, and actually that a shot doesn't stand out. I don't know what camera Vadim Yusov shot with in the water, but I'm sure it was a lot heavier than the ones we use now. It's this incredible black and white landscape, illuminated by flares like a kind of ghostly hinterland, with this downed fighter plane jutting out of the earth. I don't know how to pick just one shot - I guess it depends on what mood you're in that day - but there's a shot in Ivan's Childhood (1962) where the boy is crossing between the German and Russian lines that I absolutely love. Some other cinematographers get on it to answer more technical questions because I'm not very technical. And after that evening, my wife said, 'Well, we should start a website.' So we decided to start this website if people wanted to ask questions, and it's become a general conversational site. After the film, there were literally hundreds of students who came up and asked for advice. I was screening Army of Shadows (1969), directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, which is my favorite movie. I might've become a photojournalist or something. If that hadn't happened, I don't think I would have gone into film at all. I mean, the big break was really getting into National Film School. I made two other films with the same director in rapid succession. It actually played at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was released theatrically, and it was very successful. He was doing a fairly low-budget feature film for Channel 4 television in England. I was shooting documentaries, mostly, and a lot of rock videos, and then I got the chance to shoot a feature film with a guy I knew at film school. Make documentaries first, then shoot features. His work was more in the vein of Raaoul Coutard, who shot many of Godard's films. That film and others really turned me on to the idea of shooting movies instead of stills.I was excited by hall's work because he shot more in the Italian neo-realist way more than traditional cinematographers. But Conrad broke the mold, and "Fat City" really stood out. It gave everything a stagey look, since there was a key light, back light, and fill light. Most English films back then were shot with very traditional, direct light. (.) As I say, just the technical problems with film, I'm sorry, it's over. I don't think the infrastructure's there. I mean I never really remember having those kind of problems before. And I've heard that's happened to a lot of people lately, you know, stock and lab problems. We had some stock issues and stuff like that, which was really disconcerting. But Vadim Yusov's work is actually stunning - maybe not 'beautiful' but stunning. Certainly in Hollywood terms, you might not say that film was 'beautifully shot.' The cinematography garnered no nominations. I was watching Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) the other day. Their knowledge was used as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. (.) Cinematographers such as Oswald Morris and Conrad Hall had great technique, but they were not technicians. I certainly think there is an obsession with technical abilities at the expense of creativity and substance.
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