Do you normally operate for yourself? Yes. In Belgium, except for maybe the Dardennes, it’s always like that these days. I quite like it – as long as you have time. But The Natives was a lot more complicated because you’re stuck there with the camera on your shoulder and you want to talk to your gaffer – but he’s outside, under-equipped, doing stuff… Just to clarify: you’ve been shooting on digital from the start? At school we shot on 16mm quite a lot. We’d have dinosaurs – and I mean that positively – teaching us how to shoot on film. I think it’s still something that we really need to try, if it’s possible. You haven’t shot on film since then? Only 16mm; I’ve never shot on 35mm. That’s something I’d really like to do, but I don’t think a lot of production companies will warm to the idea: they are so used to seeing everything immediately. Do you think it will be like vinyl and make a comeback? I don’t know, I suppose it already has a bit. You see people still deciding to shoot on film and getting great results. I think if it was going to die it would have died a couple of years ago and wouldn’t still be around. Maybe you could talk me through the other films you’ve shot. You shot three shorts for Gilles… Yes, when we were studying we shot three shorts together. After that I don’t think I shot any more shorts although I did a medium-length experimental film called YURI with Liesbeth Marit, who is preparing a feature now. They have this section called ‘Film Lab’ at the VAF, which is for more experimental projects. So I shot Caroline’s film; I shot a Dutch film Silent City which was mainly filmed in Luxembourg; I shot a French-speaking film called Melody; and then Liebling, a low-budget film which we shot in 15 days in France. We all had a good deal of fun doing it: we went completely berserk with lots of fluorescent lights and funky colours. You like to kind of play around from time to time on films? Definitely, yeah, but in the end it’s always about shooting the story. It’s just a question of what the story allows you to do. Ultimately, I suppose, it depends on what projects you choose to do. I always believe that cinematography is basically just helping the director tell the story better than he could do by himself. Last year you got together again with Gilles to shoot The Natives, which was for television. Was that a different way of doing your job? Oh definitely, yes. The biggest thing about it is, if you do a film, there are only so many people who see it. But this, everybody saw it. It’s incredible. I’ve been working for five years and suddenly people around me have seen something I’ve done! You have a lot less time on TV series, which was rather frightening. You have to be really quick and devise a style that you can do within your budget and at the speed with which you have to shoot it, especially with The Natives because it was very actor-based.
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