Quotes

[on Lion (2016)] Visually, we definitely found influence and inspiration from photographers that work in India. Filmically though, it's more about what influences Garth [director Garth Davis] as a filmmaker, and it's the type of decisions that he makes as a filmmaker. He's very much kind of a filmmaker that works in this neorealist kind of way. People like John Cassavetes, he's kind of very much Cassavetian. (...) We used Alexas on a gimbal, and it was the flexibility of that digital format that allowed us to be more free with our decisions, and be able to shoot on a train with very little lighting. We discussed film, and we discussed the idea of film, and as much as we of course would have loved to have shot film for some of the movie, if not a lot of the movie, it just wasn't a viable option. I think that, realistically, we wouldn't have been able to achieve half of what we achieved if we shot on film. (...) I think in this case, where we were travelling across India, we didn't know where we were going to land, we didn't know if we had to shoot into the nighttime because the train didn't arrive on time, so therefore the scene would have changed from a day to a night scene. There were all these elements that were out of our control, strictly working in that system, in that Indian system, which is pretty wild. I guess in the end, even though our first choice may very well have been film, had we had no limitations, I think we ended up with the right format for the job. [2016]

[on choosing the Melbourne locations for Lion (2016)] I used to pass everyday, I wouldn't think twice about shooting on that street because it's just a regular street, so when you actually get to the nitty gritty, it's actually about shooting the right location for the story, and getting very intimate with the story and the locations. In India, we shot at Howrah Bridge, which is amazing, but to the locals it would be like, "Why are you shooting at Howrah Bridge? It's so boring." I don't know. I'd be keen to know what sort of people's perceptions of Melbourne are, who have not been there. [2016]

[on working with natural light on Lion (2016)] I had to make a decision early about what the method is, and with Garth [director Garth Davis], it's rare that we ever do big lighting set-ups. We try and choose locations that don't require big lighting set-ups. We did have to work with natural light - we did do some slightly bigger set-ups, but for the most part, we were working with tiny little, beautiful LEDs. I had one Pelican case, and I carried them all the way through India, and all the way through Australia. [2016]

[on locations] I believe that locations are such an integral character to the movie. Listen, who am I to say what's right and what's wrong, because there are different people that approach things differently, and I'm some punk upstart that has no sort of standing, but the thing is that a great location could often say things in droves that the right words or the right performance can't say. [2016]

[on the color palette of Lion (2016)] I know that when I was shooting, I wasn't concerned about the color palette as it stood, because the natural color palette in India in just so rich and so beautiful, but it's so desaturated, and so dusty. It's very dimensional, but it's just very dusty. We didn't push it any further than it needed to go, and also we didn't want to make a deal out of it either. We didn't want the audience to go, "Hey, audience, we're in India, by the way, if you haven't noticed." It's excessive, we didn't need to. We had such beautiful locations and such beautiful places to be that we didn't need to say that. [2016]

[his advice for young cinematographers] My advice would be to shoot as much as you can and only show people the very best of what you've shot, because I think you are defined by what people see of your work. (...) I think there are fewer barriers to entry when it comes to cinematography in this day and age and I'm excited to see what the young cinematographers who are coming up now will be doing. I think young cinematographers have a huge advantage over more established cinematographers. I used to shoot on film. Now you can go out and shoot on a [Canon] 5D and you get amazing pictures. [2016]

[on shooting Lion (2016) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) with Digital Sputnik's innovative RGB LED lights] They're killer. They have three heads, and you can come up with three different lighting sources with three different colors. It's all iPad-controllable [through an App]. (...) On a small film like this ["Lion"], I could sit behind a camera. I could ask the gaffer and the guys to move the lights to where I wanted to, and then I could adjust the levels and I could change the color to suit back light, front light, fill, whatever it was. [2016]