[on shooting
Mank (2020) digitally] David and I needed to be able to look at a monitor and get very specific about everything that exists in the frame - the set dressing, the composition, the lighting, the overall tone. Being able to see the image on the monitor and make those creative decisions analytically is crucial to David's process. In contrast, there is an imprecise nature to composing a shot with a film camera. It just doesn't provide the same level of control we need. (...) For this movie we wanted to shoot very deep focus photography for most of the film and then be very specific about where we used shallow focus. Shooting on film would have significantly limited our creative choices, particularly with focus and depth of field. [2021]
