Jeff Cronenweth

0:01I first met David with my father. I was a camera assistant and operator for my dad. And we did a Madonna video called, Oh Father, which was the last video on that album, which was probably 1988. I'm all about change and doing experiments and pushing my own personal boundaries. So I love diversity, but with David, it seems like we speak the same language visually and that makes the journey, especially one that was, you know, as long and grueling

0:48as Dragon Tattoo was a much better experience. This book was really long. You know, it's a big book and there's a lot of details. Stieglarson writes meticulous information into it. And so when you have to then put that on film, it takes a lot of time. And we had to be extremely careful in not losing audiences, both with all the Swedish cities or towns and the Swedish names. And they're so imperative to keep everybody along the ride so that you can participate in the discovery of this kind of murder mystery adventure. Winter was a very important part of it. It dramatically affects the characters and the storyline and having spent the winter there, I realized what it does to Swedish

1:37life there. And so it was important for us to make the weather and the environment a character. I think we did a pretty decent job without actually feeling the cold. You appreciated what the characters were going through. I don't think it's changed my job that much. It's just another tool and another way of telling stories, but you still have to compose shots and it's all about color palettes and tonalities that help sell that medium. And avoiding some of the tailtail giveaways, you know, bright colors and daylight and infinite depth of field, they're all problematic with digital. They're more inherently problematic digitally than they are filmically. And so those are all things that we try to control and manipulate, especially depth of field. It's a really key storytelling tool for us,

2:25you know, to decide where you're looking or what certainly we want you to look at. And because the latitude varies from film in that digital camera seem to see into the lower darker shadow areas than film does and can't handle the highlights, you kind of rework your mindset. And once you get there, it's, I got to say, I like going to sleep at night and knowing I have a job in the morning as opposed to calling lab at five a.m. to find out if there's an image, which was always historically what we did. David is, and I'll use one of his words, very didactic when he directs and he looks for pieces within a performance that he can utilize. And so each take he may feel like he's got this, he's got this, he's got that. And so he'll do 10 or 15 takes and piece it together until he feels like he has

3:14a complete performance or enough options in a performance that, you know, it works for him. He's one of the brightest minds in our industry. And I mean, without being over the top, I look at him as kind of our generation's orson wells. And I mean that by his preparation, his insight into the craft, his pushing the boundaries and his aesthetics, which I tend to fall in line with. So it's really an easy working experience.