A lot of cinematography is intuition. It's an art, not a formula.
Reed Morano
I was in film school as an undergrad with a focus on directing. Once I started working on shoots, I realized, 'Oh, I really like this cinematography thing.'
The interesting thing about 'The Handmaid's Tale' is that everything that happens in it has happened or is happening somewhere in the world.
I don't want to come in and do something that's been done before. You know, for me, it's not that I wouldn't come in and do a sequel to something, but it's only if I can bring something new to the table and I'm not following an extremely strict path.
A lot of people who are in charge in Hollywood are women, so they have the power. Now, I've met a lot of these amazing women who are offering opportunities to other women, and they're awesome. But for the women who maybe haven't done that yet, it's like, why?
I have a lot of brothers and male cousins. I grew up in an informal, jokey environment.
I don't want to step on the DP's toes. That's the first lesson I learned when I started directing with other cinematographers.
Sometimes you come up with an idea when you're going out for a job, and then when you actually get into dissecting the world, you end up changing your approach, just because that's the way art goes sometimes.
'The Handmaid's Tale' is a very special story.
The first director who ever allowed me to shoot a film for him was a male. He was a gay male. My first feature also came from him. I worked for a lot of dudes at NYU.
I know how a cinematographer wants to be treated by their director, and so I already have a leg up in that department, and I know what would be insulting to say to a DP because I've been one for so long.
A lot of male cinematographers stick a pillow to their stomachs so they have somewhere to rest their elbows while shooting.
It can be insulting to an actor when the director comes out, and they have no notes on the performance, and all they care about is that the camera has to do this one technical thing.
When you work as a cinematographer, the actors look to you for reassurance. When you're lighting them, they can never think you're making an adjustment because of the way they look. If they are nervous, it impacts their performance, which impacts the story.
No, I'm not doing 'Star Wars.'
The way I'm used to telling a story is by looking through the viewfinder and being really close to the actors.
We're too complacent. We let things happen to us. And you don't have to let things happen to you. You can affect change.
Directing is not about gender. Directing is individual to the actual individual. From woman to woman, directing is completely different. It's about giving more than half the population a chance to express themselves, you know what I mean? It doesn't always mean it's going to be more sensitive.
There are a lot of women who direct in a way that is even more masculine sometimes than men - and that's not a bad thing, either.
Ultimately, the idea of being able to escape and lose myself in a new world every time I go to 'work' was too appealing to ignore.
There are obviously issues in our industry. That starts at the top with studio execs who - not just men - don't believe a woman could handle a huge franchise or big action movie.
A sad truth I learned as a DP starting out was that it doesn't matter how beautiful I make it if the story and performance are not there. That should be number one.
Whenever a woman wields a gun in a film, it ends up looking like they're trying to be sexy rather than they actually know what they're doing.
In my 20s, I was too shy to reach out to successful DPs and directors for an internship or to shadow them. I see young people nowadays doing that all the time. I think that experience would have been cool.
I do think it's unfair for women who get pegged with creating fare for other women.
Most of the people I know in the film business here in New York, the moms and the dads, just take different turns working. So everybody's a working parent, and nobody bats an eyelash at it.
I like movies as a viewer that challenge me to actually think rather than spoon feed everything to me.
I would rather be hired solely for my talent, not just to fill a quota. I also don't want to shoot just any studio movie just to say I'm shooting studio movies - for me, quality of the material comes first, and if eventually that leads to a really great studio project, then that's a bonus.
In TV, you are much more likely to see the episode closer to the script as written - in terms of the order of the scenes - than you would in a movie, and here's why: you don't have as many days to edit. You have 10 to 12 weeks or more to edit a feature, and you have four days to edit TV. That's a huge difference.
I think I subconsciously knew you needed life experience to direct, and the best films are directed by people who have really lived, with exceptions like Orson Welles, who just burst out of the gate. There are prodigies like that, but for me, personally, I thought I needed life experience.
Funny enough, the most discrimination I've ever gotten as a woman in this industry has been from other women.
We have this attitude in America of, 'Someone else is going to fix the problem.' That's what the majority of Americans have. Or, 'I'm just going to go online and sign this petition, and that will take care of it.' That's doesn't do it.
Normally, if I would read in a script that there's mostly flashbacks and mostly voiceover, I would run as far away as possible.
The instant feeling I had after I gave birth was you couldn't get that baby in my hands fast enough.
I really hate having to put 'female' in front of any title, because it puts us in some kind of weird category for handicapped people or something.
Real people - everyone is not just one thing.
I'm trying to make people understand: yes, women are oppressed in 'The Handmaid's Tale.' But the men are also oppressed, too. It's just a very scary world for anyone.
Don't think of your gender as a handicap.
I think it took me seven years before I got the script for 'Frozen River.' That's the movie I had been looking for my whole career. When I read that, I knew I had to shoot that movie - that it'd be a game-changer. It was one of those scripts where I read it, and I was like, 'This movie could get into Sundance.'
I feel like directing is more about who the individual is rather than if they're a man or a woman. It's kind of hard to generalize and group all of us female filmmakers into one group, like we're all going provide you with the same thing, because we're not. We're all individuals.
A lot of TV and film commits to one tone.
I try to shoot film wherever possible. There's nothing like it.
Color correction is one of my things.
When 'Frozen River' started to get really big, I was four months pregnant. So when these agents and directors wanted to meet me, I was coming in pregnant, and people didn't really take me seriously. They thought, 'This woman is not going to shoot another movie again. She's going to become a mom, and that's what happens.' But that was not the case.
My dreams are like fuzzy Charlie Kaufman movies, so I love going to sleep.
In everything I do, the aesthetics are driven by the emotion. However I can do that with a camera, whether it's a long lens or a wide lens, I'll do.
I always like to do sound design, and in movies, you have more leeway with that, but I don't really notice that sound design is being used in TV other than just location sound.
We moved around every winter. I don't know. Maybe my dad was, like, on the run from the law.
My family lives on Long Island.
When it was time to go to college, I was going to apply to Boston University for journalism, and dad said, 'Why not apply to NYU film school, because you love telling stories and taking pictures?' And I thought, 'Oh, I can do that for a job? Cool!'
