Rachel Morrison Quotes
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Authenticity, to me, is something that you feel, and if it doesn't feel authentic, you pick up on it right away.
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For me, it's always been about the work - it wasn't about, 'Let's go break some ceilings.' I just wanted to tell an important story and do the best work I can. Everything else is secondary.
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I was probably five when I first picked up a camera. My mom had an Olympus OM-10 that she carried around to document our family photos. And I just always loved it.
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It would be naive to say that you could make a movie on film for the same price you can digitally.
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I did photography in summer camp; I did it in high school. The only hard decision I've had to make was whether to go towards photo or film. And I ultimately realized that the type of photo I was interested in was actually photojournalism. And it's a very individualist career, whereas film is a very team-driven medium. So that's why I chose film.
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My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was four. And she was re-diagnosed when I was seven or eight, and again when I was 13, and my dad was very unhealthy, too. I was living on the edge of mortality my entire childhood.
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I kind of grew up with a camera in my hand.
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I'll never know what happens behind closed doors or why I don't get hired for things.
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For me, I just like new challenges.
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Documentaries are inherently instinctual; you're constantly moment to moment, determining what the best place for the camera is to tell the story, usually in service of natural lighting.
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My dad, before he passed away, never understood what I did. What I say is that I'm responsible for translating the director's vision, hopefully turning an idea into something people can connect to and relate to.
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My wife jokes that any time I want to take a picture of her, it has nothing to do with her - it's just because the light is really nice. She's usually right. I definitely am somebody who notices the way the light skips off the floor.
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I came up in photography, and Dust Bowl-era photography is a lot of the reason that I got behind the camera in the first place.
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It's always a challenge to shoot a period film and not have it look like you hit the tea stain button in post.
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I might be one of the very few people in this industry who doesn't have a 'me too' story.
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Cinematography speaks to everything that women do inherently well: It's multitasking, it's empathy, and it's channeling visuals into human emotion.
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Photos have the real task of bringing exposure to places that we otherwise don't have much awareness of.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You just sort of get used to being one of the only women on set, so it's really refreshing to start to enter a time when that's not the case anymore.
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I pour my blood, sweat, and tears into a movie. What I always look for is a message and a social consciousness: a relevance to what's happening in our world.
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'Fruitvale' set the bar for what I wanted to do with my career, which was to make films that had consciousness and messaging in an entertaining package. Once I hit that mark, I never wanted to go back.
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I think there's this assumption that everybody would rather be a director, and I don't know that that's the case for me, so we'll see.