I’ve done a few interviews of late, I guess online rags have got some time on their hands, and the most common thing that they want to know is how my work has changed since moving from film to digital.
This has pressured me into analysing my work process which I loathe doing but the truth is that the digital world has transformed my shooting process and not always for the best.
Whilst the new world has placed control of my imagery back into my hands allowing me to delete, colour treat and effectively becoming the laboratory, it has taken away some of the purity.
Cartier-Bresson’s ‘Decisive Moment’ has been eroded I fear.
Withnail is a good example as I still have the original negatives and know that I shot about 1600 black and white images over the course of the filming days I covered. To give this some perspective, on ‘The Matrix 4’ which I recently completed I was submitting between 600/1000 images per day. The two films are entirely different of course, one had a budget of $200 million and the other was a bowl of rice and a bag of nuts but in some ways maybe when working with film we were more focused knowing we didn’t have an unlimited supply of ones and zeros to fall back on.
I managed to capture the essence of the ‘Tea Room’ scene in 45 frames, lord only knows how many I would rack up today.
Just thoughts as always…