Rachel Morrison Wants More Women Behind the Camera

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/magazine/rachel-morrison-wants-more-women-behind-the-camera.html

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In January, you became the first woman nominated for an Oscar for best cinematography, for your work on “Mudbound.” Did you know that it was going to be a male-dominated profession when you first started out? I don’t know that I was entirely conscious of it, because I started in photography, which is closer to 50-50. There’s this idea that there are more female cinematographers now because cameras are lighter, which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Cinematography speaks to everything that women do inherently well: It’s multitasking, it’s empathy and it’s channeling visuals into human emotion. Little by little, I realized that I was an anomaly, but I tried not to focus on it, or to, at least, see it as a way to stand out in the crowd and bring something to the table that most people don’t.

What movies did you first see that made you think about cinematography? I gravitate much more toward realism realism in the work that I do, but magical realism got me hooked on film. I think it was my first time realizing that there was something besides popcorn movies. I caught the Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro bug: “Delicatessen,” “The City of Lost Children.” Wong Kar-wai’s “Chungking Express,” “Happy Together” and “Fallen Angels.” Emir Kusturica’s “Time of the Gypsies” and “Black Cat, White Cat.” It was a reflection of the literature I liked: Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie.

“Mudbound” feels like a very timely movie, with its focus on racism and rural poverty. When I read the script, Obama was president. We didn’t ever think in a million years Trump would get elected. I thought it was timeless, but I didn’t realize it would be as timely as it ultimately proved to be.

What were your inspirations for shooting it? The Farm Security Administration photographers were a huge part of my inspiration for “Mudbound.” I was always very much interested in photojournalistic work — people like Robert Capa, James Nachtwey, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks. It was always about capturing human emotion in a very real, authentic way.

Are you a gearhead? I try to focus on the emotion, not the technical. 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.

You previously worked with Ryan Coogler on “Fruitvale Station.” Was it difficult to transition to a more fantastical, almost sci-fi film like “Black Panther”? I wouldn’t call “Black Panther” a sci-fi movie, though I’d love to shoot one. It’s a fictional African country, but it’s still Africa; it’s still a world we know. There aren’t any characters who are fully computer-generated — it’s actually quite grounded in authenticity, even if you get to fly in space shuttles. My lighting tends to be very naturalistic, and that’s because we know what our world looks like. There’s only one sun; there’s only one moon. But when you do sci-fi, you get to do motivated lighting, in which you can have eight moons and 12 suns, and the light can be red, and you can do really crazy stuff that actually makes sense in the context of a film like that.

Do you ever get caught looking at someone’s light instead of in their eyes? A cinematographer friend said it’s something you all do. 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. Every cinematographer in the world is drawn toward backlight, but we ended up with a front-lit view in our house. I almost didn’t buy it because of that!