What did you learn watching Stephen Goldblatt shoot The Cotton Club?
I learned the importance of patience. Francis (Ford Coppola) was writing and rewriting the screenplay while we were shooting. Stephen would light the set and be ready to roll, and then Francis would walk on the set and say they were going to shoot in the other direction. Stephen was always very patient. He’d say, OK, and re-light the set. That was a different time. Today, if the cameras aren’t rolling, someone from the studio is on the phone asking why we aren’t shooting! Who were some of the other people who influenced your thinking during that pivotal time in your life and career? When I was working on video assist during production of The Cotton Club, I was looking at composition on the monitor all the time. Michael Stone was the camera operator. He became one of my main mentors. I learned so much by watching how he helped to build scenes by the way he framed images. It was the same on One From the Heart. I watched the video monitor to see how Enrico Umetelli was composing shots. En
