Little White Lies, a UK movie magazine recently published a interview with Anton Corbijn. The photographer-turned-filmmaker talks about the the jump from photography to cinematography, the camera versus the cinema lens, and the career U-turn that led to his new film, The American. An excerpt:
There’s this feeling that the jump from photography to cinematography as an art form is not that far. Was your experience that that isn’t the case?
No, I think it depends on the kind of photographer you are. There’s a lot of people that have a couple of assistants on every job they have, they have lights… I’m not like that. I’m more the guy on his own with a camera and no lights. So from that, it’s like being a solo sailor to the captain of a big ship, it’s a massive difference to me. You know, the whole togetherness of the experience and the longevity of the process, the one and half years you have to spend solidly on this thing is exhausting. It’s a very different experience than taking a picture. Usually with photography there’s no money to talk about so there’s also not that pressure. There’s a different pressure – pressure to make something beautiful, but there’s not that pressure of money, not that pressure of disappointing people maybe.
What about just the art of capturing the image? The photography camera versus the cinema lens – is there a fundamental difference between how you capture a beautiful image or series of images?
It’s very different, yes. It’s much more precise, I think, film, compared to my photography for sure because in my photography you don’t see that much. I print everything dark, and my eyesight is not that great so very often it’s not totally focussed anymore. Whereas film, it’s really annoying when it’s not in focus.
Read the full interview at Little White Lies.
