Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am not against digital at all.
You can't just stick with what you know, you have to evolve.
A good [film] director is talented, imaginative, and does his homework.
I don't like to be in front of the camera - my place is behind the camera.
The best way to know when there's good lighting is when you don't notice it.
For me, movies should be visual. If you want dialogue, you should read a book.
If you use hand-held techniques just to make the film stylish I think it's wrong.
Sometimes the shots serve as homages to other movies and other directors, like Hitchcock.
There is something more to "reality" than just the tangible. There is also mood, and you cannot skip that.
I think too many film students in America are losing the artistry and not learning lighting the right way.
I don't know the American photographers as well, but I admit I love Ansel Adams. His landscapes are so crisp.
I like to say that lighting is about taking the light away. I often like to use the shadows more than the light.
I am actually retired - yes, I am retired. But I like to work. So I'm retired until someone calls me up to work.
As an actor, Sean [Penn] is brilliant. And he's really an excellent director, as well. We got along really well.
I really like to work with people who know a lot, but they also give me space so I can add something to the movie.
Some movies are what I would call murky. Just because it's murky doesn't make it artistic. It makes it hard to see.
I think that film is still an artform and it doesn't really matter if you're using a digital camera or a film camera.
There are many, many different kinds of movies and directors and styles. I don't mind that a movie looks like a movie.
I hope that film is going to stay as an artform and that people won't forget that there are good movies also to be made.
I should mention Vittorio Storaro, who was Bernardo Bertolucci's cinematographer. You watch those films and they are exceptional.
You used to feed a piece of celluloid into an editor. [Digital] is not expensive and that is an advantage, but I must say that I don't love it.
Spielberg was very young and starting up when we did Sugarland Express and I loved that, but the main thing was that I really loved his talent.
I love to make movies about young people - young scientists that are inventing things and all the writing they did was very funny and very true.
I'm always looking for directors who are very strong, they have great ideas, but on the other hand, that need help. It means they rely mostly on my eyes.
Each story has a different approach for me and I try to work with lighting that will tell you visually the story better than if it was shot in available light.
There are, of course, many, many, many good cinematographers and unfortunately they don't work as much as many of those people who do those crazy, stupid movies.
Even in manipulating the images, I would like to do my dailies in a digital way because you can do so many things in that stage that I cannot do in real photography.
When I do a still picture, I'm doing it all by myself with no help. I'm designing everything. I am my own art director. I'm doing everything. I'm directing, editing, whatever.
I think film is about images. Cinema needs good images. I think that if you don’t have good images, it’s not going to be a good film. I think all films should be really visual.
I don't think there is any advantage to digital unless it's in a case like Slumdog Millionaire, where you have to get a shot and a big bulky film camera is out of the question.
I look at a picture like Scarecrow and think, 'Jesus, how could they have let us make that?' I mean, if you used technology that old nowadays, it would look like old Hollywood.
What I would suggest to the young people is to not forget this and don't try to get assimilated into today's Hollywood style of movies because I don't think it's going to last long.
I like the film camera better because the film is still one hundred times better than any digital image at the moment. So, there are certain movies that you can't really do digitally.
I love Woody Allen. He's very clever, always thinking, and he's great with actors. He lets actors do what they want to do and occasionally he'll give them a specific kind of direction.
There is something missing in a lot of digital filmmaking, something I call "poetic reality." That's something you see played out in film noir, where the technique establishes the mood.
Kubrick was one of those directors who actually did practically everything in his movies. He actually directed, photographed, wrote, lit, edited - everything. A few people can be like that.
I'm always looking in the lighting to tell the story in a different way than it actually looks in real life because it's, for me, more contrast sometimes has to mean it's softer than normal.
If you do not bother to take the time to compose and to light properly, then you end up with something almost less than reality. You end up without the soul, the heart, the art of the moment.
I had never met Woody Allen before Melinda and Melinda. My agent knew the producer of the movie and he suggested that we would work well together and then we did. We had a great time on that film.
As the cinematographer is usually more visual than the director is and full cooperation is really the answer and to make a great film, you need a good director and you need a good cinematographer.
When I first came to America there still was Look Magazine and LIFE Magazine, and the photography in those magazines was amazing to look at. They had the best portraits, and their news photography.
When you are shooting a movie, you have to collaborate with many, many, many people. First of all, the director with all his own ideas and I can only just help him with that. I cannot change his idea.
When we came to America, the movies here needed a "new wave." European films looked totally different than American movies, which were these lush, glossy pictures with this elaborate production design.
In fact, I probably learned more about photography from studying black-and-white photography in those magazines [Look Magazine and LIFE Magazine] than I did from watching movies here. That's the truth.
You make a film for a million dollars and then it costs $10 million to sell it. That's the problem at the moment with independent filmmaking: You can make it cheap and then there's no money to market it.
I like to work with talented people, I must say that. That's my weakness. I really like to work with good directors. That doesn't mean I don't like to work with starting up young directors, that's fun also.
I shot a lot of commercials and sometimes I enjoy the commercial shooting and sometimes I really hate it, but in thirty seconds or one minute, you can make some remarkable work shooting in one or two or three days.
With television, it's difficult to do some things. You have to shoot so many minutes a day, so you always have to be prepared or you won't be able to complete the number of pages that you have scheduled for that day.
I'm not really satisfied with the technology today. Using film was so much easier than the digital technology of today. But digital is still at the beginning of what it can be and they'll be fixing all those problems.
I always try to tell the story the best possible way. I create the mood for each scene in a way that the audience feels that they are right there with me and they feel actually in the mood that was right for the scene.