Werner Herzog Quotes

You don't want to be the guy whose back's to the camera in the emotional part of the movie. So, you have to be aware of the camera movement and what the camera's doing.

I remembered watching the film from Alfred Hitchcock, 'Dial M for Murder,' and he shot almost all of that movie in one room. There was a genius in what Hitchcock did by manipulating things in that room so that you could see the distances between things like the tables and the vases because of how he used perspective.

We have an uncanny ability to make birds do what we want them to do. In Blood Simple there's a shot from the bumper of a car and it's going up this road and a huge flock of birds takes off at the perfect moment.

The core to what makes Fincher really interesting - all the technique and all that, that is not in the center even if it's a big big part - what is in the center is the characters, and he really is interested in that.

Some directors are interested in acting, and others are only interested in cranes and moving the camera.

If you're tracking with a character that's running off a thing and diving off, I would leave the camera there and not follow them down, because cameras don't do that. The audience understands that. I'll definitely bring that understanding of keeping things a bit more grounded.

Silence Of The Lambs is a fantastic film. It's a horror film, and it's an incredibly well-told film that is about point of view in such a unique way. The way that film is shot, the way the eyelines are so close, if not directly into camera, betrays an intimacy with the characters and the audience.

I think a shot can actually influence a scene in a huge way. For example, comedy is always better in a two-shot. What's between the characters is what's funny. So you learn about these things as you go along.

I wish I was sort of someone like Woody Allen who can stage everything in one long master shot, no coverage; just, you know, that's it.

I was known for a while for doing very long takes, especially after Atonement.

I was paying attention to where Steven Soderbergh had the camera and his shots. I was blown away.

One of the great things about film is that, typically anything that's introduced in the first five minutes, the audiences will by into.

The art of moviemaking seems to get thrown away. The cinematography is gone, and the look of everything becomes of little importance. You lose the memorable images; everything looks like it's been shot at night with a security camera.

A good filmmaker is someone who can look at a piece and go, "This camera's really going to be a character. I want people to feel like they're being punched."

There's always an intellectual side to the films Ang Lee's doing and to the characters, and there's such a deep knowledge when you've worked with the actors that he's worked with, on stage in particular, but also in film.

The only thing of value we can give kids is what we are, not what we have.

I think that's what makes David Ayer really interesting. He likes to make a tough-y movie, but actually he's a character director. He's fascinated by the actual people who decide to have these jobs and the way it affects their lives.

I really wanted the house to be a character. And I knew, I said, I'll produce that one, but if I direct it, I need to build a house.

In the vast majority of movies, everything is done for the audience. We are cued to laugh or cry, be frightened or relieved; Hitchcock called the movies a machine for causing emotions in the audience. Bresson (and Ozu) take a different approach. They regard, and ask us to regard along with them, and to arrive at conclusions about their characters that are our own. This is the cinema of empathy.

John Huston was the kind of director that totally left you alone. Not every actor always does it right, every time, but most of the time he was re-directing someone. He was making tight adjustments, and not even in terms of interpretation because he knew that by the time that the character had been filmed... well, he got it right when he cast you.

You have the hilarity and the great production. These films are distinctive because they are not just topical, they tell good stories and they let scenes play out physically. Apart from the dialogue, the characters also have a non-verbal existence, for example with Scrat.

Example is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

I spend a long time casting, but once I've cast a film there's a reason why I selected those people. So I'm hands-on in selecting the cast, hands-off to see what they do with their characters, and hands-on again to offer suggestions.

If a man teach uprightly and walk crookedly, more will fall down in the night of his life than he built in the day of his doctrine.