For me, the Gluttony scene was about darkness ... when the detectives come into the room, it’s very old and shiny — greasy. There is not supposed to be light there. So when they aim their flashlights, the light shines back to them. Turn them off, and the room would be black. The room itself was underexposed, but we would overexpose the flashlight beams to really pick them up, though they were already two to three stops over the room. To have them fill the room a bit, I put bounce cards here and there in the corners and on the floor. I tried using reflector cards, but the look was too vulgar ... But what we also did differently on this picture was to underexpose so much, to go into the darkness. And only the director can lead you so far, because you can’t go by yourself. David Fincher deserves a lot of credit. It was his influence that pushed me to experiment and got me as far as I did on Seven.
— Darius Khondji

I later talk to the director, whose first words and descriptions are also very important to me. Some know exactly what they want and others are not so structured — that’s not so important, though if they have ideas, things will usually move faster. But it’s their emotions about the story that are very important to me. And then come the actors and how you will work with them, because for me the camera and lighting are like other principal performers. You come as a cinematographer to the world of the director and you must then perform within it with the other actors. It’s the trip you go on with the director. My relationship with the director is like being his closest friend. He is my brother, my family.
— Darius Khondji

He [Paul Watson] seemed possessed by too powerful a drive, too unrelenting a desire to push himself front and centre, shouldering everyone else aside… He had consistently gone around to other offices, acting out the role of mutineer. Everywhere he went, he created divisiveness… We all felt we’d got trapped in a web no one wanted to see develop, yet now that it had, there was nothing to do but bring down the axe, even if it meant bringing it down on the neck of our brother.
— Bob Hunter