As the cinematographer is usually more visual than the director is and full cooperation is really the answer and to make a great film, you need a good director and you need a good cinematographer.

I think all cinematographers, at least most of them, would love to do everything on location because you cannot cheat on location. It's there, it's part of the story usually. You have to deal with the elements. You have the sunshine, you have rain, you have fog - it really makes you work harder to try to match things during the day to make it look like it was shot within five minutes, movie time.

The best way to know when there's good lighting is when you don't notice it.

I love the Dutch impressionists - Vermeer, Rembrandt. What they were able to do with light was astonishing. As for photographers, I think mostly of the Hungarians: Robert Capa, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jozsef Pesci. In fact, I have one of his photographs hanging in my house.

You used to feed a piece of celluloid into an editor. [Digital] is not expensive and that is an advantage, but I must say that I don't love it.

European films had art. And it was easy to make a European film. They didn't come from the studio system, they weren't shot in sound studios, and that's a good thing, because in the studio system those movies would never have had a chance. And since we were coming from Europe, it was natural for us to use that simple style. Small budgets, less equipment, that was just how it was.

Even in manipulating the images, I would like to do my dailies in a digital way because you can do so many things in that stage that I cannot do in real photography.