Jack [Nicholson] really knows about the camera. He's one of the directors who likes to play with the camera. He'll change things around, play with lighting, things like that. He'll even spend hours on the set-up for an insert shot. He's an interested person who gets involved in all the aspects of the films he is making.

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.

With television, it's difficult to do some things. You have to shoot so many minutes a day, so you always have to be prepared or you won't be able to complete the number of pages that you have scheduled for that day.

There are, of course, many, many, many good cinematographers and unfortunately they don't work as much as many of those people who do those crazy, stupid movies.

I think that the audience should not be able to tell if it is real or not real - it should be an enhanced version of reality, or an artistic view of reality, that captures not only what is physically there, but what is not visible - the mood.

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.

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.