I discovered by working with actual glass models that the important thing is the play of reflections and not the effect of light and shadow, as in ordinary buildings.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've used mirrors in a lot of movies. I think the mirror is an extraordinary thing, also the reflective, a reflection in water, etc.
When you seek out - or seek to avoid - your own reflection, the modern city becomes a hall of mirrors: car windows, reflective walls, and plate glass are everywhere, transmitting a cacophony of different versions of you - this one too short, that one too wide, another one with a sickly color you've never seen before.
I feel that buildings often have a workaday aspect that you see during the daylight hours, and a more resplendent side that emerges after dark.
I don't think of reflection on dark things as necessarily dark.
Light is architectural. It is sculptural.
My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful.
Realizing this, I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctures in the room's composition.
And when an architect has designed a house with large windows, which is a necessity today in order to pull the daylight into these very deep houses, then curtains come to play a big role in architecture.
When I was modelling, I spent half my life staring at thousands of perfect reflections. It got to a stage where I was losing all sense of reality - so after I quit modelling, I took all the mirrors out of my house.
Despite the fact the studio looks out of five windows onto a picture perfect view of sky, hills and wide open spaces, I work with my blinds firmly drawn, daylight filtered through their white canvas, a painterly northern light falling through two big skylights above my table, and nothing visible outside to distract me.