“A lot of cinematography is intuition. It’s an art, not a formula.”
― Reed Morano
“When ‘Frozen River’ started to get really big, I was four months pregnant. So when these agents and directors wanted to meet me, I was coming in pregnant, and people didn’t really take me seriously. They thought, ‘This woman is not going to shoot another movie again. She’s going to become a mom, and that’s what happens.’ But that was not the case.”
― Reed Morano
“Don’t think of your gender as a handicap.”
― Reed Morano
“One of the color combos that I really love is the tones of technicolor, which older movies would have, these tones of blue and red in them.”
― Reed Morano
“I started a business with my cousins in Fire Island called ‘Wagoneers.’ Since there are no cars on the island, we would hustle people at the ferry docks to bring their luggage to their houses in our wagons for a large fee.”
― Reed Morano
“As a cinematographer, I was always attracted to stories that have the potential to be told with as few words as possible.”
― Reed Morano
“I was in film school as an undergrad with a focus on directing. Once I started working on shoots, I realized, ‘Oh, I really like this cinematography thing.’”
― Reed Morano
“When you work as a cinematographer, the actors look to you for reassurance. When you’re lighting them, they can never think you’re making an adjustment because of the way they look. If they are nervous, it impacts their performance, which impacts the story.”
― Reed Morano
“I actually carried a Panavision Platinum and a G2 when I was seven months pregnant for a film called ‘Little Birds,’ and the whole movie was handheld. And we were shooting in the desert. That’s a 35-millimeter camera. It’s huge, probably at least 50, 55 pounds, and I did all my own operating.”
― Reed Morano
“As a cinematographer or director, I’m always looking for projects that are able to say a lot with the actor’s expressions.”
― Reed Morano
“Normally, if I would read in a script that there’s mostly flashbacks and mostly voiceover, I would run as far away as possible.”
― Reed Morano
“Women have to compensate more in the personality department in order to get the things that men get. And they don’t have as much leeway for being divas or jerks.”
― Reed Morano
“Directing is not about gender. Directing is individual to the actual individual. From woman to woman, directing is completely different. It’s about giving more than half the population a chance to express themselves, you know what I mean? It doesn’t always mean it’s going to be more sensitive.”
― Reed Morano
“When I got on my first set, I watched what the cinematographer was doing, and at that level in film school, the cinematographer has the most control. They’re the one looking through the viewfinder, carrying the camera, framing the shots.”
― Reed Morano
“Ultimately, the idea of being able to escape and lose myself in a new world every time I go to ‘work’ was too appealing to ignore.”
― Reed Morano
“My biggest wish is that I would have more time with my husband and my boys.”
― Reed Morano
“I don’t want to step on the DP’s toes. That’s the first lesson I learned when I started directing with other cinematographers.”
― Reed Morano
“I think I subconsciously knew you needed life experience to direct, and the best films are directed by people who have really lived, with exceptions like Orson Welles, who just burst out of the gate. There are prodigies like that, but for me, personally, I thought I needed life experience.”
― Reed Morano
“In everything I do, the aesthetics are driven by the emotion. However I can do that with a camera, whether it’s a long lens or a wide lens, I’ll do.”
― Reed Morano
“I always like to do sound design, and in movies, you have more leeway with that, but I don’t really notice that sound design is being used in TV other than just location sound.”
― Reed Morano
“A lot of male cinematographers stick a pillow to their stomachs so they have somewhere to rest their elbows while shooting.”
― Reed Morano
“We moved around every winter. I don’t know. Maybe my dad was, like, on the run from the law.”
― Reed Morano
“Whenever a woman wields a gun in a film, it ends up looking like they’re trying to be sexy rather than they actually know what they’re doing.”
― Reed Morano
“No, I’m not doing ‘Star Wars.’”
― Reed Morano
“The interesting thing about ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is that everything that happens in it has happened or is happening somewhere in the world.”
― Reed Morano
“I know how a cinematographer wants to be treated by their director, and so I already have a leg up in that department, and I know what would be insulting to say to a DP because I’ve been one for so long.”
― Reed Morano
“The instant feeling I had after I gave birth was you couldn’t get that baby in my hands fast enough.”
― Reed Morano
“My family lives on Long Island.”
― Reed Morano
“When it was time to go to college, I was going to apply to Boston University for journalism, and dad said, ‘Why not apply to NYU film school, because you love telling stories and taking pictures?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I can do that for a job? Cool!’”
― Reed Morano
“I’ve DP’d so many films for first-time directors, and I know the trauma, the heartbreak, the vulnerability, how much you have to believe in the story.”
― Reed Morano
“I have been lucky in getting a lot of the projects I’ve wanted, maybe because I’m really, really driven. But there is a stigma that women can’t direct big studio films. Not that I want to do that, but it is a topic that comes up a lot.”
― Reed Morano
“In America, we tend to be very sheltered, and I’m speaking from personal experience because I feel sheltered.”
― Reed Morano
“I feel like directing is more about who the individual is rather than if they’re a man or a woman. It’s kind of hard to generalize and group all of us female filmmakers into one group, like we’re all going provide you with the same thing, because we’re not. We’re all individuals.”
― Reed Morano
“I think it’s a common misconception that because you’re a woman, you can’t command a set and have people respect you, and for some reason, Hollywood is really far behind every other industry. It’s getting better; it’s just slow.”
― Reed Morano
“I don’t want to just make the safe, easy commercial films.”
― Reed Morano
“I want to make the movies that move people in a way they’ve never been moved before.”
― Reed Morano
“My father passed away when I was 18. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it is not like that all the time. Not every moment is dark.”
― Reed Morano
“It can be insulting to an actor when the director comes out, and they have no notes on the performance, and all they care about is that the camera has to do this one technical thing.”
― Reed Morano
“A sad truth I learned as a DP starting out was that it doesn’t matter how beautiful I make it if the story and performance are not there. That should be number one.”
― Reed Morano
“When I read ‘Meadowland,’ I could see the potential for a very internal, quiet story that could be powerful and emotional but also disturbing and dark.”
― Reed Morano
“I really hate having to put ‘female’ in front of any title, because it puts us in some kind of weird category for handicapped people or something.”
― Reed Morano
“Most of the people I know in the film business here in New York, the moms and the dads, just take different turns working. So everybody’s a working parent, and nobody bats an eyelash at it.”
― Reed Morano
“What’s the hardest thing about making a show like ‘Vinyl’ or ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ is they are expecting movie-level cinematic quality in every way – from the performances to the visuals and the shots – especially on a show where you are doing Scorsese style.”
― Reed Morano
“In TV, you are much more likely to see the episode closer to the script as written – in terms of the order of the scenes – than you would in a movie, and here’s why: you don’t have as many days to edit. You have 10 to 12 weeks or more to edit a feature, and you have four days to edit TV. That’s a huge difference.”
― Reed Morano
“There is something to be said for one vision and following one vision through. I do think it’s something TV will catch up to at some point and realize, ‘Wow, we’re in the Golden Age of Television right now; we’ve taken television to another level, but now let’s take it to an even higher level where it is one vision throughout a whole season.’”
― Reed Morano
“I read it in college as an assignment. I didn’t think about it at the time. But when I heard there was a ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ pilot, I freaked out.”
― Reed Morano
“A lot of TV and film commits to one tone.”
― Reed Morano
“Being a cinematographer taught me a lot. I got to expedite the visions of many directors and learned how to navigate many styles and worlds.”
― Reed Morano
“Color correction is one of my things.”
― Reed Morano
“When I was an undergraduate in Film & TV at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, most of the projects I shot had male directors, and only a few had female directors.”
― Reed Morano
“After graduating, I was shooting as well as working as a key grip, and I often found myself the only female out of the whole crew, except for producers and the occasional AC.”
― Reed Morano
“I would rather be hired solely for my talent, not just to fill a quota. I also don’t want to shoot just any studio movie just to say I’m shooting studio movies – for me, quality of the material comes first, and if eventually that leads to a really great studio project, then that’s a bonus.”
― Reed Morano
“I learned a lot while I was ACing and gripping for other DPs as I was coming up.”
― Reed Morano
“I try to shoot film wherever possible. There’s nothing like it.”
― Reed Morano
“The first director who ever allowed me to shoot a film for him was a male. He was a gay male. My first feature also came from him. I worked for a lot of dudes at NYU.”
― Reed Morano
“Eventually, when I got the ‘Meadowland’ script, I saw something in it that made me think I could make something special out of it, something that could work with my style. Emotionally, I connected to it. I thought, ‘If I feel this way just imagining it, maybe we can make that happen on screen and make people feel something when they watch it.’”
― Reed Morano
“I think it took me seven years before I got the script for ‘Frozen River.’ That’s the movie I had been looking for my whole career. When I read that, I knew I had to shoot that movie – that it’d be a game-changer. It was one of those scripts where I read it, and I was like, ‘This movie could get into Sundance.’”
― Reed Morano
“I’m trying to make people understand: yes, women are oppressed in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ But the men are also oppressed, too. It’s just a very scary world for anyone.”
― Reed Morano
“Real people – everyone is not just one thing.”
― Reed Morano
“In my 20s, I was too shy to reach out to successful DPs and directors for an internship or to shadow them. I see young people nowadays doing that all the time. I think that experience would have been cool.”
― Reed Morano
“My dreams are like fuzzy Charlie Kaufman movies, so I love going to sleep.”
― Reed Morano
“There was a movie that was made about ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ And I never watched it on purpose because I didn’t want to… I just didn’t want to know.”
― Reed Morano
“I don’t want to come in and do something that’s been done before. You know, for me, it’s not that I wouldn’t come in and do a sequel to something, but it’s only if I can bring something new to the table and I’m not following an extremely strict path.”
― Reed Morano
“There are a lot of women who direct in a way that is even more masculine sometimes than men – and that’s not a bad thing, either.”
― Reed Morano
“We have this attitude in America of, ‘Someone else is going to fix the problem.’ That’s what the majority of Americans have. Or, ‘I’m just going to go online and sign this petition, and that will take care of it.’ That’s doesn’t do it.”
― Reed Morano
“We’re too complacent. We let things happen to us. And you don’t have to let things happen to you. You can affect change.”
― Reed Morano
“Huge studio movies are handed over to a man with less experience before they’re handed over to a woman with less experience. That’s a fact. But I think it’s not just about men not hiring women: it’s about women not hiring women, too.”
― Reed Morano
“I love strong women like Uma Thurman, Meryl Streep, and Charlize Theron.”
― Reed Morano
“I have a playlist for every project that I do. I made one for ‘Handmaid’ before I got the job.”
― Reed Morano
“There are obviously issues in our industry. That starts at the top with studio execs who – not just men – don’t believe a woman could handle a huge franchise or big action movie.”
― Reed Morano
“Funny enough, the most discrimination I’ve ever gotten as a woman in this industry has been from other women.”
― Reed Morano
“There are many legendary DPs that I admire, some of whom have a very strong signature, but I’m not sure I want to be the DP where you see my work and say ‘Oh, Reed shot that.’”
― Reed Morano
“I have a lot of brothers and male cousins. I grew up in an informal, jokey environment.”
― Reed Morano
“It’s a very tricky job we have as DPs, where you are expected to make something that really is an emotional art but also needs to be technically spot on. You’re often given a very small window of time to achieve it. People sometimes expect it to be even quicker and forget that there’s a schedule for a reason.”
― Reed Morano
“’Meadowland’ was the reason I got ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ and probably my experience in cinematography helped. Everything was like a stepping stone to the next thing.”
― Reed Morano
“The way I’m used to telling a story is by looking through the viewfinder and being really close to the actors.”
― Reed Morano
“Out of 10 projects I get sent, seven or eight are female protagonists, and that’s not the only thing I’m interested in.”
― Reed Morano
“I do think it’s unfair for women who get pegged with creating fare for other women.”
― Reed Morano
“I like movies as a viewer that challenge me to actually think rather than spoon feed everything to me.”
― Reed Morano
“A lot of people who are in charge in Hollywood are women, so they have the power. Now, I’ve met a lot of these amazing women who are offering opportunities to other women, and they’re awesome. But for the women who maybe haven’t done that yet, it’s like, why?”
― Reed Morano
“’The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a very special story.”
― Reed Morano
“Sometimes you come up with an idea when you’re going out for a job, and then when you actually get into dissecting the world, you end up changing your approach, just because that’s the way art goes sometimes.”
― Reed Morano
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