Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The biggest challenge of any cinematographer is making the imagery fit together of a piece: that the whole film has a unity to it, and actually, that a shot doesn't stand out.
There's a scene in 'Medium Cool' in which a young man walks by with a sign that says, 'Sanity, please.' If anything summarizes what I was feeling at that time, it is that sign.
There are films that are difficult. There are films that would actually affect your personal life because of the length of the production, how long [you're away] from the family.
It was 100 feet of 16 mm black-and-white film of a car coming to a stop sign, and driving off. I had to decide how to frame and light it. It was magic. There was a sense of mystery.
It's great to be recognized for work, and the work is great, but once you have the awards, it becomes less important. It just gives you the ability to do better work, in my opinion.
I've been in wars and in riots and hung out of many helicopters in the early days. And there's a detachment that happens when you look through the camera. You're looking for the shot.
Someone said to me, early on in film school... if you can photograph the human face you can photograph anything, because that is the most difficult and most interesting thing to photograph.
I came up, I suppose, a fairly traditional way. I went to art college. I always wanted to be a stills photographer, really, when I was younger, and I briefly worked as a stills photographer.
Lara Croft is such a strong individual, she's very driven, she doesn't need a man, she's speaks her own mind, and that she's in control of her own life. It's a lot of what women want and have.
My mother let me know that we're all connected. If some of us become more affluent it's not because we're better or even smarter people - we have a responsibility to ourselves to be a good boy.
Sometimes it’s not how much light you use to get an effect, it’s how little you use and still make it work. There are a lot of rules to be broken in photography, and you’ve got to have courage.
I don't really believe in the mystery of cinematography - what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense - I want the director to see what I'm trying to do.
We have not looked at any particular movies [in creating War Horse], but again, it's hard not to see the similarities between those movies [because of those filmmakers' influence on the industry].
I really think music and movement - dance, you know - and literature inform my visuals. I think film is also based in dance. The relationship between me, the camera and the actor is always a dance.
Am I nostalgic for film? … I mean, it’s had a good run, hasn’t it? You know, I’m not nostalgic for a technology. I’m nostalgic for the kind of films that used to be made that aren’t being made now.
Some of what I consider my best work, and some of the best films that I've ever worked on, kind of disappear without a trace. There's no accounting for it. Something connects, or something doesn't.
I am certain that if I have any merit, it is knowing how to make good use of my eyes, to guide the camera in its task of capturing not only colors, lights and shadows, but the movement of life itself.
Lighting was very primitive. And still it was really the way to learn because sometimes some of the modern technology is so extreme and so compartmentalized that we lose sight of exactly what we're doing.
There's nothing worse than an ostentatious shot. Or some lighting that draws attention to itself, and you might go, 'Oh, wow, that's spectacular.' Or that spectacular shot, a big crane move, or something.
With today's fast films, you can light the way your eye sees the scene. You can abuse the film and create subtleties in contrast with light and exposure, diffusion and filters. That's what makes it an art.
In regards to The Haunting, people compared it to the old movie, which is unfair. We didn't have the rights to the movie. I couldn't duplicate a single thing because that would have been legal infringement.
I think that lens flares can work really well under certain circumstances. Personally, I am trying to get rid of them most of the time. I don't like artifacts that draw attention to the surface of the image.
I always start a movie by being very firm and very hard and very, very serious, and then I can relax a little more once I've gained respect. That's part of the job - you have to earn the respect of your crew.
Movies are a voyeuristic experience. You have to make the audience feel like they are peeking through a keyhole. I think of myself as the audience. Then I use light, framing, and motion to create a focal point.
I think technology has advanced so far now that there are some cameras on the market that give film a run for its money. It's all about flexibility in capturing images, and digital or film, it doesn't matter to me.
Sometimes I feel ashamed at my lack of interest in all the new techniques of modern filmmaking, but I prefer to work with as little equipment as possible. If I have a good lens and a steady camera, that's all I need.
[Steven Spielberg makes] human movies. Movies [...] that reflect the life we wish it would be, not necessarily as it is. And the happy ending, you know. Life is a tough thing to begin with, and I like the happy ending.
All I’ve ever wanted to do is take stills of people, or take documentaries about people, and try to express to an audience how somebody lives next door. You know what I mean? Just how similar we all are as individuals.
There are some sequences in films that I think work filmicly, that stand out to me, but thats much more to do with the staging and the cutting and the mood of the thing as a sequence, the way everything comes together.
At the beginning of my career, I shot a lot more documentaries because I liked the adventure, and probably also because it was easier, and still is easier, for women DPs to shoot documentary than it is to shoot fiction.
There are some sequences in films that I think work filmicly, that stand out to me, but that's much more to do with the staging and the cutting and the mood of the thing as a sequence, the way everything comes together.
I'm really interested in experimental works, so the people that I admired the most was Dziga Vertov, Sergey Eisenstein, people from the '20s. Also, I loved John Ford and his westerns. The New Wave was not tender to women.
The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move.
I used it in a shot where Richard Burton goes down the hall to get a gun in a closet. And I wanted to get some excitement, and the hallway was too narrow for the dollies that they had at that time. So it was quite useful.
Partly why I love to operate is that I love to watch an actor within a shot. When you watch a shot, and you know that everything's come together, I feel I'm the first person watching it. I always get pleasure out of that.
I do like 'Munich'.It's a really wonderful film. I mean, there's 'Schindler's List', there's 'Saving Private Ryan'. But 'Munich' - of all the other films, Munich would be the one that's really, really amazing storytelling.
The idea of accountability in Vietnam, Nicaragua and now Iraq - the media never has that in its quiver. When you see time after time there is no possibility of Nuremberg [war crime trials], we're doomed to have it repeated.
The best thing that winning those Academy Awards things are - the best thing of it is that when I say some of my ideas, somebody's going to listen to it, and they'll preface what I say, 'Academy Award winner da-da-da-da-da.'
I do miss the idea of the crew getting together to watch dailies after work. I will usually get selected dailies printed on film especially for the early part of a shoot as HD dailies really don't tell me much photographically.
When I was in Vietnam with Jane Fonda, I was shooting a farmer in a field - just a pastoral scene. And while I was shooting him, an explosion occurred right - he blew up right in my lens, so to speak. And he had stepped on a landmine.
I like the ending of the movie [War Horse], simply because it's such a demanding scene emotionally, and yet [the look] is all done on camera. I like the work not to be manipulated digitally. And it's all done on camera [in that scene].
You see the world, you end up in jail three or four times, you accumulate experience. And it gives you something to say. If you don't have anything to say then you shouldn't be making films. It's nothing to do with what lens you're using.
When you hear the word tear gas you think, well, your eyes will burn and that's it. But that whole feeling of your whole skin burning, that you can't breathe, you can't inhale, you feel suffocated - it's a very, very terrifying experience.
Now, I have to - in my defense, I have the say that general knowledge of the deadly nature of cigarettes was not primarily in my mind and nor was it on these poor cowboys, who - many of whom who've died of emphysema since we were shooting.
[Spielberg] surrounds himself with great crew members who are at the top of their game and know their stuff. He motivates us by liking what we do, and he doesn't get paralyzed by the process or by new ideas. He embraces them and uses them.
Women are one of the most important segments of the adventure travel industry. Women make the vast majority of travel decisions in families - not only the destinations, but the activities. They are the predominant adventure travel planners.
There's something almost impossible about the criminal justice system when it comes to sexual assault cases. It immediately sets up a trial, where witnesses may have been drunk or maybe there were no witnesses and maybe there's no evidence.
I felt it was really important to come here to see what was happening in New York. So, I came to see film and accidentally I stumbled upon theater, so I discovered Andre Gregory, Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson, and theater became my first anchor.
I rationalize out, well, how much help could you really be, you know? And maybe if people saw this, they'd realize the brutality of war and figure out there's got to be some better way than killing human beings who are just trying to farm a field.
[ 'American Dream' ] probably will [go] somewhere in Europe. You get 3000 entries [to] Sundance, and how many movies get [screened]? So, I'm a realist. I'm very much realistic in terms of if this movie will be released in the States. Probably not.