John Mathieson, el director de fotografía de la película (y que trabajó con Scott consecutivamente en cinco películas a principios de siglo), ha comentado en una entrevista para el podcast DocFix que Ridley Scott se ha vuelto un director de cine vago e impaciente, lo que ha afectado negativamente a la calidad visual y la planificación de sus películas.

Las prisas, junto con el abuso de las multicámaras en el set de rodaje, perjudican seriamente la labor del director de fotografía.


“It’s really lazy,” Mathieson continued. “It’s the CG [computer graphic] elements now of tidying-up, leaving things in shot, cameras in shot, microphones in shot, bits of set hanging down, shadows from booms. And they just said [on Gladiator II], ‘Well, clean it up.’

“He is quite impatient so he likes to get as much as he can at once,” Mathieson said of Scott’s use of multiple cameras. “It’s not very good for cinematography,” he explained, saying it means you “can only light from one angle”.

He added: “Look at his older films and getting depth into things was very much part of lighting. You can’t do that with a lot of cameras but he just wants to get it all done.”

“Having lots of cameras I don’t think has made the films any better…It’s a bit rush, rush, rush. That’s changed in him. But that’s the way he wants to do it and I don’t like it and I don’t think many people do, but people love his films and he’s Ridley Scott and can do what he wants,” Mathieson continued.








“People want to shoot multi cameras because they get lots of performances and they put lots of people in,” he added. “But there’s not the care.”

“Now it is this thing of ‘generally covering stuff’ rather than me being the cook cooking you something wonderful in my kitchen downstairs,” he said. “You just go to the supermarket and get one of those really big trolleys and you just put your arm on the shelf and just chuck all that stuff in and we’ll sort it out later.”