And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.
Any change in form produces a fear of change, and that has accelerated. Marketing is the death of invention, because marketing deals with the familiar.
But in marketing, the familiar is everything, and that is controlled by the studio. That is reaching its apogee now.
Children's finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn't.
Fear has many faces.
Here in England, with the war, it was all documentaries and propaganda films, but film hadn't emerged as a whole other discipline of the arts.
I made a film called Bad Timing that I thought everybody would respond to. It was about obsessive love and physical obsession. I thought this must touch everyone, from university dons down. But it had a curious effect on people - I sort of understood afterwards why it wasn't good for the company.
I stayed at MGM for about two years, and in that time I became part of the camera crew and worked my way up to be a focus puller.
I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look.
In life, we all learn from everyone.
It fascinates me now that film has become a university subject; I can't believe it.
Marketing is a very good thing, but it shouldn't control everything. It should be the tool, not that which dictates.
Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theatre.
So quite a lot of people who've come into cinema from the commercials world have had to learn the very fact of what cinematography is over again.
Some people are very lucky, and have the story in their heads. I've never storyboarded anything. I like the idea of chance. What makes God laugh is people who make plans.
Soon, just as people can now go to Rymans and buy paper to start writing a book, they'll be able to get stuff to start shooting a film.
The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors.
The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don't know them, then something is missing.
There was a village watercolour society and they'd come and paint in my field. I watched them from the window, the way they would struggle this way and that to find the perfect moment. God has made every angle on that beautiful, and I felt that tremendously.
They think something's gone wrong, but in Don't Look Now, for instance, one scene was made by a mistake. It's the scene where Donald Sutherland goes to look for the policeman who's investigating the two women.
We're selective about sound, we tune out things, or maybe you overhear something - and that's an area that's as yet totally unexplored.
Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.
Yes, that's a raw thought, but in detail, I like the idea of human terms of alienation. But it's also about human secrecy.
You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.
You're dead right, in fact there's a joke with my films: they're like claret, you need to put them down for five years first.
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