Rachel Morrison

“It would be naive to say that you could make a movie on film for the same price you can digitally.”

“So much of 'Mudbound' is about man's relationship to the land and to the elements. It's about the desire for control and how powerless we are against nature. We always knew we would shoot widescreen as a means to isolate a body in the frame and to highlight our own insignificance.”

“Lighting practically whenever I can when shooting period really helps with authenticity.”

“The theatrical experience is also a communal one. When people saw 'Fruitvale' in the theater, there was not a dry eye at the end of the movie, and you would look to your neighbor and have this shared moment together that had a real weight behind it.”

“The best kind of entertainment is the kind that also makes you question something or think outside the box or live another life. Those are the stories that I'm drawn to.”

“We really owe it to our world to infuse our entertainment with messaging.”

“I don't love cinematography that's very flashy because I find that it keeps the audience from becoming a part of the film; it becomes sort of self-reflective.”

“Authenticity, to me, is something that you feel, and if it doesn't feel authentic, you pick up on it right away.”

“Your movie becomes much more narrow-minded when you have like-minded department heads. Whereas if you can surround yourself with people who have been a mother before, been a grandmother before, you get a much broader and wide-reaching swath of human emotions.”

“If there's anything consistent about my work, it's not flat.”

“When I was studying photography, I became interested in conflict photojournalism, and that got me interested in lighting. Then I realized there was this amazing thing called cinematography where you could kind of tell more complete stories photographing for film. So I ended up going to AFI grad school for that.”

“The focus has to be about making good work. I don't ever want to be hired for a job because I'm a woman. And I don't ever want to be recognized for a job because I'm a woman.”

“Having a family is a compromise on some level, but it's so incredibly worth it. It actually informs the work that I do as a DP.”

“I find beauty in imperfection.”

“As artists, we can't help but infuse our art with our own experience, so your experience becomes informative.”

“It took me a long time to adapt to the West Coast. I lived eight years in New York before California and might have gone back. Then I discovered surfing. It's the California equivalent of ice hockey, I guess. It gave me a real sense of place.”

“I think you can make a gorgeous movie on any piece of equipment. Look at 'Tangerine,' which is a beautiful movie shot on an iPhone. You see so many movies that are impeccably shot but are vapid, and there's no audience for that except for other cinematographers who just like to watch two-hour-long music videos.”

“For me, it's just always about trying to tell stories that I care about.”

“The biggest difference for me was that I operated almost every frame on 'Mudbound,' and I didn't operate on 'Black Panther.'”

“To me, as an audience member, movies always come to a screeching halt when they get to their action scenes. They always feel like they drag on to me.”