“I always knew that it’s a 92-minute movie or whatever. It’s not a 10-hour limited series. There’s only so much narrative real estate to go around. I always knew that I wanted the victims to be explored with roughly the same depth as Rodney. In the movie, we don’t learn a whole lot about Rodney. You just see his behavior play out in front of you.”
“Part of my job as a cinematographer is to prepare as much as possible, then be ready for all the changes on the day. And then having a team of people that can support you so that you can be present. I think that’s something I learned with maturity.”
“Well, when I read the script, the first thing that came to mind was actually a painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, because it felt like a feast—an alien feast—and it’s kind of dark. But if you look more closely, it’s also sumptuous and full. The whole design of the movie and the way we wanted it to look and feel was kind of based on that painting and a lot of Bosch’s work.”
We have Johnny Marr and Pharrell to thank.
The two musical juggernauts convinced Hans Zimmer to hit the road, to leave the dark room, play live, and connect with audiences. For the last few years, composer Hans Zimmer has done just that, thanks to Marr and Pharrell’s advice. On stage, Zimmer and his 40+ band are a cinematic force of nuance and bombast.
“As a cinematographer, I love actors. I could never act, my daughter’s an actor, my brother’s an actor, but I love acting and actors. I love watching them. So, you create for me to create an environment with a camera and lighting, that these actors can find their space within it. With minor adjustments you’re going to add a bit, subtract a bit, and as you find what they want to do and the action and the shots, you can just add a bit or subtract.”
“What’s funny is, I had the world, the internal logic and rules for this universe for a while. It only came to light when I had the right story. I had stories that hit dead ends in terms of just like, oh, is there actually a reason we’re following this character or do I just want to play around with it? I think finding the brother-sister angle, which is loosely based on me and my own sister, was a real emotional point for me to go down there.”
“My biggest note that I always give my assistant editors in action sequences, that is when they’re sound designing it for me is more beefy, and that’s the word I use all the time. My assistant editors will attest to it. They’re like, oh, she wants more beef again. And by that, I just mean I want layers of heft to it.”
“We were trying to write a film about somebody finding their voice, and then it developed into a story of a chef. We are really related to this mix of ambition and self-doubt. A lot of our writing comes from a very personal place, from our own experiences working on film sets as young whipper snappers and camera interns and PAs and stuff.”
Detective Sugar (Colin Farrell) will return in Sugar season two. The first season was well-liked by audiences and critics, but the show deserves more love for its ambitious narrative and substantial style, the latter of which earned cinematographer Richard Rutkowski an Emmy Nomination for outstanding cinemtoagraphy. The Apple TV+ program is an excellent sci-fi drama, a film noir with a bold twist.
“There is always red tape around songs. Part of it is I do a lot of projects that are hip hop based, so always, you’re finding a writer who has 2%. You’re like, where are they? And you’re on Instagram and you’re trying Twitter, you’re really trying to do that. Even now with pop music being so many writers, producers contributing, and samples, all this stuff is complicated.”
