Scott style: While there's no question that movies are a visual medium, some directors are particularly well known for the highly stylized visual approach they bring to filmmaking.

A case in point is Tony Scott, whose action adventure "Domino" opens today via New Line Cinema. Produced by Samuel Hadida and Scott, the Scott Free/Davis Films production in association with Metropolitan Film Export was written by Richard Kelly from a story by Kelly and Steve Barancik. It was executive produced by Barry Waldman, Toby Emmerich, Victor Hadida, Zach Schiff-Abrams, Lisa Ellzey and Skip Chaisson.

The film stars Keira Knightley as the late bounty hunter Domino Harvey, daughter of Lawrence Harvey and model Sophie Wynn. Also starring are Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Delroy Lindo, Mo'Nique, Mena Suvari, Macy Gray, Jacqueline Bisset, Dabney Coleman, Lucy Liu and Christopher Walken.

As a longtime admirer of Scott's stylish directing -- such as "Spy Game" with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, "Crimson Tide" with Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, "Beverly Hills Cop II" with Eddie Murphy, "Top Gun" with Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis and his 1983 feature directing debut "The Hunger" with Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon -- I was happy to have the opportunity Monday to focus with him on "Domino."

"The way my pictures look is always motivated by the people and the environment," Scott told me. "I call this movie 'bounty hunting on speed.' All the characters and everything is a little bit larger than life, a little heightened reality. It wasn't a biopic about Domino Harvey. It was (that) everybody in the movie is a real person, a real role model in real life, but the story is manufactured. I just felt the nature of the story needed this energy and this momentum and this heightened reality in terms of colors. I took a little bit from 'Man on Fire' (his 2004 action thriller starring Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning). I thought I was going to take less than I did, actually in the end. 'Man on Fire' was a sort of study in revenge and betrayal and pain and this is a study in a crazy world with fucked up crazy people. I think the movie is more akin to spending two hours in a rock concert than it is sitting in a movie theater. Not because of the music, but because of the energy and the momentum."

Scott had known the real Domino Harvey, who died in her home in Los Angeles last June at the age of just 35, for a decade or so when he was first inspired to bring her story to the screen. When he began working on the film, he explained, "I had two other scripts written by good writers, but they wrote biopics and the biopics were boring. So then Richard Kelly came along and I said to Richard, 'Try to find a different way into this world.' He was sitting in the DMV (office) trying to get his license back because he was a bad boy and that's where it all began and ended with (him getting the idea for the film's story by seeing) one woman, Lateesha, sitting behind the counter. So that was a real person at the DMV. Everybody in this movie is a real person living in L.A. today (but) obviously not Domino."

What Kelly wrote, he said, was "this piece of heightened reality, this odd look at this world that was controlled by this one woman at the DMV. I thought it was an ingenious stroke in terms of story. This movie is funny, it's dark, it's rock 'n roll. I always like to try and experiment. As long as people will support my habit and pay me to try different things I'll continue to do it. I love it. I hate repeating myself."

Not surprisingly, Scott takes an intensely visual approach when he's preparing to shoot a film. "A camera is strapped to my forehead the whole time in pre-production where it's photographing something I see in the streets in my car," he noted. "I'll say, 'There's a role model for a character.' Or, from magazines and books I pull up (articles and photos). I flip through 'Soldier of Fortune' magazine and different stuff. There might just be one corner of one picture that's an inspiration for something about an interior of a character. It's funny, my life began as a painter and I still think and function like a painter."

Production on "Domino" started about a year ago. "We shot for 60 days," he said. "It was fast for this movie because there's lots of big set pieces. But something comes out of having to shoot fast, which I like. It gives you a different product. I sort of try and build into my weakness, which is lack of time, and I think I'll do something which is different from what I normally do."

Scott makes routine use of multiple cameras when he shoots, an approach that clearly saves him a lot of time that would typically be spent getting close-ups after wider shots had been filmed. "I started out using multiple cameras -- a close and a wide -- on doing performance stuff because I'm able to cut many different takes. Sometimes on performance I'll have three cameras, all of them just grabbing bits and pieces -- hands or different things. When I do action stuff I use several cameras. But the true strength of multi-cameras is you can get it in one take or two takes because you don't have to go back for coverage. People think it's an indulgence, but it's a very smart indulgence because in the end it saves you time (and) it saves the actors' having to find the performance the same again. People always say, 'Oh, it's indulgent.' It's not. It's smart.

"I get my close-ups, my mids and my wides all the same time. One of those cameras is moving, traveling and is going through another camera at any point in time. It's like a piece of choreography and I love it because the actors can get it in a short number of takes and they don't feel I'm intrusive. I don't go wide lenses in their face. I'm backed up and so they do their thing. I let them do their thing and I find them rather than them try to find the lens."

Does he rehearse with his actors? "I rehearse on the set and I always like to rehearse before I shoot," Scott told me. "There wasn't much rehearsal on this one, unfortunately, before we shot, but I always rehearse on the set. When I'm rehearsing (on the set) I've got silent cameras (rolling) and I'm actually shooting. In the end, I find I get lots of accidents (in rehearsal scenes with) things that the actors aren't even aware I'm shooting. A lot of my scenes (include) pieces taken out of the rehearsal period. You get weird accidents that happen, which I love.

"I actually use the footage from the rehearsal cold. They think I'm just lining cameras up and I'm actually shooting. So I say, 'Just run the scene for me. You get in, do your thing.' And I'll jump in and out and I'll walk through camera and I'll sit down next to them while they're getting a close-up (of the actor). Even though they got used to my idea (of shooting then), they forgot because the cameras are so unobtrusive they just kept rolling. This is on the set. The set is lit by the time the guys come in. So I've got a sort of blanket coverage on a room so wherever they want to go the cameras will find them and grab them. When you look at the dailies, I'm sitting on the sofa next to Mickey and next to Keira, but at the same time I'm grabbing a close-up of Keira and that's what I used in one scene in particular."

Scott's a big believer in storyboarding his films, which is exactly what one would expect since he typically makes large scale action movies that benefit from careful advance planning. Moreover, given his background prior to becoming a film director, Scott has no trouble creating top quality storyboards on his own. A native of Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, England, Scott received a fine arts degree in painting from the Sunderland Art School. He went on to do graduate study at Leeds College, where he became interested in cinematography and made a half-hour film called "One of the Missing," financed by the British Film Institute. From there he went to the Royal College of Arts, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree and making another BFI financed film called "Loving Memory."

In 1973, Tony Scott partnered with Ridley Scott -- his brother and, needless to say, now also a longtime A-List producer-director -- to form RSA, a commercials production company based in London, New York and L.A. The Scotts achieved great success making commercials and ultimately evolved into two of Hollywood's most successful and in-demand filmmakers. They're now partnered in Scott Free Productions.

When I asked about storyboarding, Scott replied, "Every morning I get up and unless I'm prepared I can't go to the set. I don't have that confidence unless I've done my homework. So I get up at 4 a.m. every morning if I've got a 6:30 call (allowing for) two hours (to do) storyboards and half-hour in the shower and then I leave. If it's an earlier call I get up at 3 a.m. or 2 a.m. I always do the two hours (of storyboarding) because it's very productive for me. I find that pressure and I've got to make decisions and I make decisions in a good way, not a bad way. I'm obviously under pressure, but it's a pressure that I enjoy and it elicits strong responses from me."

As for his original training, Scott observes, "Eight years of art school. A lot of directors do shot lists. Because my background is painting, when I'm doing my storyboards I'm not thinking about the visual I'm drawing, I'm thinking about the character and the scene. It's just a way of exercising my homework because my background is painting and visual. I block the scene in my mind, but most of all as I'm drawing I'm working out (how to shoot it). I'm always driven by characters. I'm thinking about Mickey or Keira doing this scene and that motivates how I stage the scene and block the scene."

In "Domino," there are quite a few scenes that take place inside two Winnebagos that are in motion. Typically, a director would shoot such scenes on a stage against an out-of-focus background with lights being flashed in the windows to simulate traffic, but that's not how Scott handled it. "You know, you put actors in an alive environment and the performances get so much more vibrant," he observed. "The Winnebagos are like a goldfish bowl so you see the desert fly by outside and you see Downtown L.A. You just feel it. I don't make a feature of it but you know you're actually moving and it makes it more exciting and it (also) really helps the actors, them being in the real situation. The more (comfortable they are) about their environment, the better they perform."

Scott also makes special use of color in "Domino." "Again, the film is heightened reality, so what I did (was) I shot on reversal stock," he noted. "A reversal stock makes your blacks black and your whites whiter and your colors more vibrant. That all came from the world that I was embarking upon and from the characters. They're certainly larger than life characters. That's why I shot a lot of it on that particular stock. I shot little bits and pieces (of the film) in high-def (video), but in the end I shot, I'd say, 99 percent of my film on 35mm -- 35mm mixture of stock, black & white sometimes, and what we call two-perf and reversal and normal negative. It's fun. It's like I have the opportunity now (to experiment like that). I have all the paint on my palette and that's all the different stocks. I walk in the room and I start to feel something that the actors are giving me or the environment's giving me and I'll put on a new piece of stock or try a different camera."

Anyone who's ever seen one of Scott's films knows that editing plays a key role in making them work so well. "Editing today on the Avid is fantastic," he said. "Gone are the days (when you'd have to) wait for the lab to send you back a visual effect a week later. It is truly painting (today) with digital film. Everything's available to you in these (computer) towers. You know, in the past editors used to say, 'I'm a dialogue editor,' 'I'm a performance editor,' 'I'm an action cutter.' Now those days are gone. The editors I work with are everything and they have to be, I think. They're painting for me."

Having done as much storyboarding as Scott typically does, when the time comes to edit the picture he's already got it cut in his head. His editors, he said, "look at my storyboards and they'll take it to a different level. They'll take those boards and they'll (ask), 'What if we went left or up and right with this sequence?' Especially with this movie, it's a very organic process."

Looking back at "Domino," Scott told me, "I'm 61 years old and I think I'm exercising a lot of my rock 'n roll demons in this one. You'll either like it or you'll hate it, but regardless I love what I do. I'm not repeating myself and as long as people support my habits to do what I want to do, I'll continue doing it until I drop. People say to me, 'How old are you? Fucking 61! Slow down, pal.' Now I'm going faster as I get older."

Filmmaker flashbacks: From March 17, 1986's column: "What better day than today (St. Patrick's Day 1986) to focus on how much green an Oscar is worth? Insiders agree that the only Oscar that ever translates into boxoffice gold is the one for Best Picture. Other Oscars raise the salaries their recipients can command on future projects, but they don't really sell movie tickets.

"A Best Picture Oscar can be worth anywhere from $5 million to $10 million in film rentals, depending on what level of success the winning film has achieved prior to winning. Last year, for instance, Orion saw the cumulative boxoffice gross of 'Amadeus' rise by nearly one-third in the month following its Best Picture victory."

Martin Grove is a regular contributor to CNN Headline News' "Showbiz Tonight" weeknights live at 4-5 p.m., PT (7-8 p.m., ET) with repeats at 7 & 9 p.m., PT (10 p.m. & Midnight, ET).