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.

Mexican cinematographers Gabriel Figueroa and Emilio Fernandez were students of both Sergei Eisenstein and Toland. Their exteriors and lighting were gorgeous. And the films Ingmar Bergman did with Sven Nykvist were exceptional.

There is a difference between creating something and just capturing something. And when we were using film, it was not that fast, and it was expensive, so there was incentive to make sure the shot was exactly right before we rolled. With digital, it's fast and its cheap, and it's easy to bypass the rest.

When I do a still picture, I'm doing it all by myself with no help. I'm designing everything. I am my own art director. I'm doing everything. I'm directing, editing, whatever.

I'm always looking in the lighting to tell the story in a different way than it actually looks in real life because it's, for me, more contrast sometimes has to mean it's softer than normal.

You always like to be the collaborator. I don't want to take over the movie, because if I want to do that, I should really become a director because then you have the control of everything, basically. I'm very happy to just be the visual part of it, doing the visual part of the movie.

You can't just stick with what you know, you have to evolve.