Quotes

[shooting Woody Allen's first digital film] I had seen that the Sony F65 was capable of recording beautiful images in 4K and 16 bit-colour depth in 1:2, which is my favorite composition. So when Woody called me this year asking me to be the cinematographer of his new film with the working title 'Wasp 2015,' my decision was already made. I convinced him to record the film in digital, so we can begin our journey together in the digital world. It's time now for the Sony F65! [2015]

[on his projectionist father] My father put the dream of working as a cinematographer into my heart.

[on Muhammad: The Messenger of God (2015) and Univisium] I used this composition system that I like very much, called Univisium. A relationship between the vertical area, one time, for the result area, two times. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) gave me inspiration through his own paintings, particularly "The Last Supper". I found a perfect balance between those to perform. I was tired of using so many different numbers in composition. If you remember, the silent cinema was 1.33; with sound, it was 1.37; French Panoramic, it was 1.66; English Panoramic, it was 1.85; new, modern television was 1.79; 75mm was 2.21; Anamorphic is 2.40. It's a chaos of numbers. Leonardo said something very simple: the most balance between composition areas is 1:2 - like two square parts for the eyes. [2015]

Francis Ford Coppola proposed to me to do One from the Heart (1981) using electronic technology. I said, "Francis, let's use every electronic technology for pre-production and post-production, but keep the film to record the master of the film, because this is the best technology to screen the film all around the world." And he said, "Vittorio, I think you're right. But you will say, in the near future, I was right." He was right. Not necessarily in the near-future, because the time took twenty years to really change the photochemical-electronic relationship. [2015]

So when I approached, recently, Woody Allen to do his new movie, I said to myself, "I have to realize that progress is one word - that you cannot stop it. You can push it or you can slow it down, but you cannot stop it. So it's much better to be conscious now of this kind of evolution. It's better to be part of this evolution in order for you to know this new system, to do whatever you can to make it better." So I did my film with Woody Allen. It finished one week ago in digital, using the camera that I think was more appropriate for me, which is the Sony F65, because it has the major chance to record a digital image. It has 4K information, digitally. It has 16-bit color depth, which means millions of colors. [2015]

My first film was done in black-and-white, because, in 1968, it was the will of many directors, producers, whatever, to do dramatic films in black-and-white, because they were scared to film in color in a dramatic area. At the time, people thought that maybe color was not recorded well in the shadows. A dramatic story needs conflict, so needs contrast between light and shadows. But, after the first film, I started to investigate color. At the time, I was too young to be conscious about the decision; the industrial journey took me into this color decision. But, pretty soon, it became my own decision. After the third film, I said, "No. I really need to express myself in color." And I rejected some projects that they proposed to me that were all in black-and-white, because I was missing the emotion of color. [2015]