John Knoll Quotes

The nature of motion capture is only going to work for certain films. It's not going to put any other type of movies out of business.

To me the biggest breakthrough was when we did Terminator 2 that just opened the door for Jurassic and all of the others and that was as big as when we did motion control on Star Wars. But I don't see another big thing coming.

I think some of the special effects in Close Encounters hold up better than the new more expensive special effects is because they were better actually.

For 'Star Wars' I had to develop a whole new idea about special effects to give it the kind of kinetic energy I was looking for. I did it with motion-control photography.

I had an almost fetishistic attraction to film technology.

George Lucas wanted this moving camera for all of the photography in Star Wars. He was willing to take a risk with the concepts that I advanced with regard to ways for doing that.

They had some really cool rigged cars and things that were different that they would tow behind the camera car that were actually on these trailers that manipulated side to side and stuff like they were getting hit, and actually put the actor right in the middle of the chase.

I mean, I did a film, a musical of 'Scrooge', in '70, and the tricks were done by flat clothes and mirrors. I hope that the day will come when we don't have to turn up at all.

I've done some effects shots. I've done some compositing. And in 'Just Like Heaven' did a lot of, like, motion control and things like that. But never done, like, computer-generated imagery in action.

'Tangerine' being my fifth film, I was out of favors. I couldn't afford to get the Arri Alexa or RED cameras and I definitely couldn't shoot on film.

I came in during the era of models, motion control, and optical printers. ILM had just started its own computer graphics division, after the Lucasfilm computer division had been sold off and became Pixar.

I'm a film geek man. I love toys. I love everything in filmmaking, so for me to just be around this technology is just so cool to watch it being used for the first time, some of the stuff.

I remember borrowing my mum's Instamatic 110 camera as a kid and doing still lifes of tennis balls and benches and thinking they were going to be something really amazing. They ended up being really bad.

I remember, when they started remaking 'Star Wars,' the fury that surrounded that whole thing, and, 'How dare they?' But now, that's just a common denominator.

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.

You hear people say that there's too much CG in movies today, but CG is what allows me to take a green-painted wall in a studio and make it disappear, and then put 100 miles of landscape in. CG, in the right hands, can be a marvelous tool.

Green screen, you know, it's been interesting, it's my first time to ever work with green screen technology, and it's, sometimes it can be really boring because you're like wow, I've got to really imagine all of this stuff around me. But it's low maintenance, which is nice, um, and it's not as hard as I thought it would be, so.

I hate to say that, but the past was much more fascinating. I don't particularly care for any of the current crop of actors. I don't particularly care for any of the current crop of directors. But I have a lot of friends who are editors, and there are a lot of technical things going on here that are interesting.

But in the former, those movie sets that you've been on like that, even if they're huge movies and most of its being spent in special effects afterwards, I think that's the way that we're going.

Under budgetary pressure (arbitrary or not) it is truly remarkable how many options one discovers one can do without.

She'd fallen into the best part of her past.

I have to admit I do get a bit depressed at times and you know I think about the good old days when I was charging ahead.

I jump from one thing to the next but try and strike a balance. But it's not nostalgic in the sense of 'those were the good old days and now we're not there'. I don't think like that. Not my way.

Particularly in the final season [of Fringe], when we were shooting seven-day episodes with a reduced budget and big special effects, the team was so polished, by then, that we were able to do it and, I think, with incredible results.

Working with a green screen is easy. It's just like being a kid. But it's not nearly as satisfying.