A lot of cinematography is intuition. It's an art, not a formula.
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 TV, you are much more likely to see the episode closer to the script as written - in terms of the order of the scenes - than you would in a movie, and here's why: you don't have as many days to edit. You have 10 to 12 weeks or more to edit a feature, and you have four days to edit TV. That's a huge difference.
I think it took me seven years before I got the script for 'Frozen River.' That's the movie I had been looking for my whole career. When I read that, I knew I had to shoot that movie - that it'd be a game-changer. It was one of those scripts where I read it, and I was like, 'This movie could get into Sundance.'
I like movies as a viewer that challenge me to actually think rather than spoon feed everything to me.
I don't want to come in and do something that's been done before. You know, for me, it's not that I wouldn't come in and do a sequel to something, but it's only if I can bring something new to the table and I'm not following an extremely strict path.
I would rather be hired solely for my talent, not just to fill a quota. I also don't want to shoot just any studio movie just to say I'm shooting studio movies - for me, quality of the material comes first, and if eventually that leads to a really great studio project, then that's a bonus.
Most of the people I know in the film business here in New York, the moms and the dads, just take different turns working. So everybody's a working parent, and nobody bats an eyelash at it.
I really hate having to put 'female' in front of any title, because it puts us in some kind of weird category for handicapped people or something.
A sad truth I learned as a DP starting out was that it doesn't matter how beautiful I make it if the story and performance are not there. That should be number one.
In my 20s, I was too shy to reach out to successful DPs and directors for an internship or to shadow them. I see young people nowadays doing that all the time. I think that experience would have been cool.
I don't want to step on the DP's toes. That's the first lesson I learned when I started directing with other cinematographers.
When 'Frozen River' started to get really big, I was four months pregnant. So when these agents and directors wanted to meet me, I was coming in pregnant, and people didn't really take me seriously. They thought, 'This woman is not going to shoot another movie again. She's going to become a mom, and that's what happens.' But that was not the case.
Color correction is one of my things.
My dreams are like fuzzy Charlie Kaufman movies, so I love going to sleep.
A lot of people who are in charge in Hollywood are women, so they have the power. Now, I've met a lot of these amazing women who are offering opportunities to other women, and they're awesome. But for the women who maybe haven't done that yet, it's like, why?
I try to shoot film wherever possible. There's nothing like it.
Normally, if I would read in a script that there's mostly flashbacks and mostly voiceover, I would run as far away as possible.
A lot of TV and film commits to one tone.
The first director who ever allowed me to shoot a film for him was a male. He was a gay male. My first feature also came from him. I worked for a lot of dudes at NYU.
