Ms. Morrison, would you consider confidence to be an essential quality for anyone wanting to work in the film industry?
I would say you need to trust your instinct — which is slightly different than confidence. I do think confidence in the film industry, certainly as a female in the film industry, is a necessity, but I think in any creative medium you have to trust your instinct and let that be your North Star.
How does that trust manifest in your work as an Oscar nominated cinematographer?
Well, you can always second guess any decision in film. It isn't a math equation; you could shoot any scene any number of ways. There's an infinite number of possibilities there. So I think once you set out on a path, the best thing you can do as a leader is to follow that path and occasionally pivot if you know you're going down the wrong path. You pivot fast, you do it with certainty, you acknowledge it. I’m the first person to be like, “Hey guys, I have this idea, and it wasn't what we talked about, but I think this is going to be better. I need everybody on board. Let's go.” If you come at it with enthusiasm and a degree of conviction around the pivot, then people will pivot with you. There’s an efficiency needed on a film set. We're all leaving our friends and our families at times for months to make a film.
“You want to foster an environment of respect, from the top down. I believe in an uplifting approach.”
It’s about making decisions that don’t waste people’s time.
Yeah, your crew wants to feel like their time is being valued, that their opinions are being valued. That's something that's really important to me as a leader, and it's something that I've learned as a cinematographer and now as a director, I want to really acknowledge and respect the opinions of everybody around you, that’s how you get your crew to bring their best work. You want to foster an environment of respect, from the top down. I believe in an uplifting approach.
What else has grown your confidence as a cinematographer? You had already been working in the industry for a few years when you decided to go back to school to get your Masters from AFI, I can imagine that was a technical and creative advancement.
Absolutely. I think I had a decent amount of technical knowledge already but I certainly had a long way to go. Especially as a woman in this industry, you have to be self assured, almost above all else, so I think I did need that confidence boost in my technical craft. AFI is very technical school, so we got to play with all the different cameras, all the different lenses. We learned Kodak strategy, cross processing, bleach bypassing. You really got to try all these different tricks and take some really big swings that you can't necessarily do on your own. I think it also helped me to figure out my creative voice and vision.
After your time at AFI, you went back to work but shooting reality TV to pay off your student loans, right?
That’s right, yeah, and it didn’t feel great! If I could talk to my past self, I would tell her to just have patience and persistence, that that time in life was just part of the game. I would love to reassure her that it wasn't going to end there. But in that moment, it felt like this massive step backwards, which is really the opposite of how I try to live my life. I try to always keep challenging myself and growing and moving towards the direction of things that bring me joy. Of course, I learned a lot during that time, and I try to grow from every experience, even the ones that aren't positive. I was gaining a lot of skills that maybe I didn't even quite realize at the time — shooting with multiple cameras, lighting locations — but I was not telling stories I wanted to be telling.
How did you get yourself back on track?
Well, I had a very specific task, right? It was about making enough money to pay off my private loans and the crippling interest rates. So the second I did that, I made this giant leap off the cliff to go for my dream. And that was terrifying. But I knew that I really wanted to work in narrative cinema, and I ended up serendipitously working with Ryan Coogler on Fruitvale Station. He wasn't looking for someone with reality television experience, but he was looking somebody who knew how to tell stories on the fly, because he wanted that film to feel like an experiential, single camera, day in the life way. So those skill sets of mine paid off, and Fruitvale really felt like the right project for me.
Because of the emotionality of the story?
Yeah, I'm drawn to stories that don't just entertain but also have something to say. In the case of Fruitvale Station, there was a lot of social messaging. Or something like Mudbound, for example, that was so visceral. It was really about the faces; the characters make the story look so cinematic. Filming that was really such a gift. Any time a script can make you cry, for me, that’s a dream. There are probably other DoPs out there who just want a script to challenge them technically, but I am somebody who is drawn towards heightened emotion, and when a film affects me, that’s the best of all.
How was it for you to then work on a film that was more action packed, like Black Panther?
I actually think that Black Panther was really humanist, and despite being action packed, it was incredibly emotional. Even the experience on set, shooting with mostly a single camera, it was just much more intimate. Another Marvel film was shooting next door to us and had something like 12 cameras at a time. So I do think there's an intimacy to Black Panther. It almost oscillates between epic and intimate, and that’s what makes the film soar.
“I think there’s vitality in running towards the danger, running towards the thing you’re afraid of. You have to put yourself out there.”
When you’re filming something with such emotional resonance, do you also feel the same emotions that the audience is feeling?
Oh yeah, you feel those magic moments, for sure. When I'm in a moment with an actor, and especially operating the camera, it’s incredibly palpable and poignant. You really do feel it. And then once you go through an edit and you get to add score, you heighten the experience even more. And I know this now as a director, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
How has the experience been, bringing everything we’ve talked about to your work as a director?
I think of the whole Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours thing. I entered the set as a director, having spent 20 years on set. I feel like I absorbed a lot of experience by osmosis so it allowed me to singularly focus on the thing that was new to me, which was directing, working with the actors with regard to performance. So for my first feature The Fire Inside, so much of certain parts of the job, being on a set, working with the camera became second nature to me, so I could just kind of hone in on performance.
Apparently you were somewhat intimidated to direct; you had to be persuaded to do so by the directors that you’ve worked with in the past.
Yeah, I guess I’d sort of been building myself up to the point that I was ready to take the leap. My fears around directing were mostly around working with actors, because that wasn't what I was trained for. I grew up with a camera in my hand, I'm so comfortable with it — but I wasn't one of those theater kids. I never acted. I never took directing classes. So it was completely new to me. I was also nervous to be the leader when I had always played the supporting role, that was quite intimidating to me. It was terrifying! But it was also incredibly validating getting to tell a story from beginning to its actual end. So I think there’s vitality in running towards the danger, running towards the thing you’re afraid of. You have to put yourself out there, you have to make yourself vulnerable and raise your own stakes, because the stakes come with rewards as well.