Cinematographer in my opinion means
writing with light and movement.
What I'm trying to write with light. I'd try to write the story
of each movie
that I'm being called to.
Some kind of destiny for me
to be into the story.
I remember that I had just finishing 1900, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
and Mister Jodorowsky came over from Rome
to present me the project (Dune) he wants to do at the time,
at the same time Mister Francis Coppola
called me for Apocalypse Now
I was very much in love with the book Dune
and because
in my opinion there is something inside that
there is no
apart from whatever it is their knowledge of science fiction, that I was
reading at that stage of my life
but there is something between that past, present and future
There is something about
a symbol of a man, someone
like their main character of Dune
Paul Atreides
These are part of
each one of us. Each one of us at one particular level of our life.
Its practically a
story a of possible messiah
I was so facinated at that time about this book that
I was very close to saying "yes" to Dune
but Mister Francis Coppola had at that time such
an influence on me, apart from the work that he did in "The Godfather"
or in "The Conversation", but as a human being
so I said yes to "Apocalypse Now"
and I was so lucky at that time of my life because definitely "Apocalypse Now" changed
completely my whole life.
By the way Dune was not done at that time
it was to come much later
through Mister David Lynch and produced by Dino de Laurentiis.
Without any doubt when you are already into one project, you watch to somebody else doing
that project
somehow it never exactly matches what you had in mind.
That's what is great about the chance that
one or the other
creative people are doing something,
is transferring
some victories on creativity.
So a few months ago I was in Los Angeles, shooting "Picking Up the Pieces",
directed by Alfonso Arau, with Matthew Clark, the assistant director.
One day he told me, "Vittorio, we'd love to introduce you to a friend of mine, he has a"
"special project and I think he's interested to speak with you"
"his name is John Harrison"
"he has just wrote"
"a script that came from a book that maybe you know,"
"the book is called Dune" And I say "What?"
Well I think that they touch something that
was already
into a kind of vibration into myself.
So we meet with John, we had a wonderful meeting
and we talked about the love that we have
for this incredible story.
And I showed to him what I was
doing with colors for this
special, what I call revolutionary project to
mix the art department and cinematography in order to achieve
a new dimension in visual art, a new dimension in the using of the images.