In a period piece, particularly a fantasy, the lighting is your own choice, the lenses are your own choice. It's really a great thing for a cinematographer to do. Everything is open for you. You can even be more creative and you can use more shadows than usual.

Sometimes the shots serve as homages to other movies and other directors, like Hitchcock.

I hope that film is going to stay as an artform and that people won't forget that there are good movies also to be made.

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.

I look at a picture like Scarecrow and think, 'Jesus, how could they have let us make that?' I mean, if you used technology that old nowadays, it would look like old Hollywood.

I think too many film students in America are losing the artistry and not learning lighting the right way.

I had never met Woody Allen before Melinda and Melinda. My agent knew the producer of the movie and he suggested that we would work well together and then we did. We had a great time on that film.