Satyajit Ray Quotes

Throughout my pictures I employ a lighting which is not naturalistic.

I believe in naturalistic lighting, which isn't to say natural light.

Back-light is the cinematographer's friend.

In all my films, I have tried a different look.

There's always the temptation, as a cinematographer, to make the shot look as perfect as possible.

'Mayabazar' was the film I immensely loved as a kid. Only when I became a filmmaker about 20 years later did I realise its technical marvel and what a great epic it was. I and my visual effects supervisor, while making 'Yamadonga,' took two days to understand the magnification shot of Ghatothkatcha's persona.

When you do a freeze frame, you have the opportunity to find the exact shot that you want - no guessing.

Making realistic films is basically about the style.

Rehearsing is more about blocking in the case of movies, I think, and blocking, of course, is very important to the beauty of a scene.

When you cut from a long shot to a close shot, you're doing it for a reason, or if you let something stay in long shot for a long take. On the short films, I was teaching myself how to express something personal cinematically, how to use the language of film the best I could.

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.

The long takes process doesn't allow for that many takes. In the past I have shot over 50 takes of different shots. Sometimes you end up using take 64, sometimes take four.

I just - I kind of see it that way. I find the higher angles down. I do - look, you can go back to the staircase shots in "Third Man" or the staircase in "La Dolce Vita." So I just find that visual construction in a frame.

I'm sure I cause just as much consternation for editors as any other actor, but it definitely makes me feel more comfortable understanding how and why all the different camera setups exist.

I love being so tight on people in close-ups that the veins in their eyes look like the Mississippi River.

With John Wick we wanted to do something like that. So rather than punching, kicks - and for the kind of way we wanted to shoot it, which is longer takes - our initial instinct was let's go with a throwing or grappling arm.

The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes.

As a film director I like to have the actors create their own close-ups. It's an older style of filmmaking.

What I like in pictures whether by an old director or a young director is when I have the feeling he or she is really using the capacity of film.

What I do is whatever it takes, it takes. Sometimes you see a scene right away and a take looks great so you might print that and you might print a couple more and take elements of all three. It just depends. You're looking for the highlights. You're looking for the best elements of the scene, but preferably you'd like to have one good take that would go all the way through.

In the theater you can chain a blue-assed baboon in the stalls and with a good script, good actors, and a good set you'd have what is called a production. With the cinema someone has to know about lenses and fine things. I have no time for the "auteur de cinema." To me, it's meaningless.

I'm older and wiser. So and now having segued into filmmaking I'm looking at [Ridley Scott ] and what he does in an entirely different way and I have respect for what he does and how he composes shots. So that was what was completely fascinating.

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.

You have to understand where the camera needs to me. There were times where you were suddenly aware where the cameras were, then you were in a different place and it didn't feel like the same movie.

The close-up, according to D.W. Griffith, allows subtle changes of facial expression-the raising of an eyebrow or the flicker of a smile-to become part of the action.