Film Technique Quotes

By the time I got to the Fox studio for my first major film, I knew how to hit a mark. I knew how to memorize lines. I knew how to pay attention.

I think you can say a lot with the movement of your camera but you can also say a lot by keeping it still.

I'll reshoot a corridor 13 different ways, and you'll never recognise them.

Yeah, Kubrick's a big influence. In something like 'A Clockwork Orange,' he is trying to use the practical light - I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they're not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In 'Elephant' we basically used no lights; we never really adjusted.

Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.

I think the good thing about Dogme is that it forces you into an extreme sense of reality because there's no artificial light and no set design and all of those icings on the cake that you usually have on a movie.

I had seen 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' and I thought that was a different kind of film than I'd seen before, with that kind of editing and slick camera movements.

There's two aspects of film crafting that I'm very strict about, and that's how I move my camera and where I cut the film.

I don't like fast editing.

Every single director stops at the moment he thinks he has the shot. Sometimes, directors shoot an establishing shot where everything is in the shot. He's going to use this at the beginning and the end.

Everyone knows that a movie is false. But if as filmmakers we give the audience too many reasons to lose the suspension of disbelief, I believe we're working our way down a hole.

I try to shoot the first rehearsal because people are more spontaneous. People in real life don't really know where they are going to be either positioning themselves or how they will be saying their words. When people goof during the first take, it usually looks realistic.

To work effectively in a film, you have to repeat and work consistently. Basically, you shoot a big master then you do close-ups. You're supposed to be in the same moment, the same 30-second moment, for a day.

I don't look at rushes, or I don't go to the dailies. I don't even really look at playback... unless it's an action scene or a move that I need to do better, something like that.

I don't use film in the way that the great auteurs do. I use film, the camera, to record as effectively and as perceptive as I am able what I want to say through the actors.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

I can't watch a movie where the actors are great and the photography sucks.

If I'm ever working on a set and anyone talks about a master shot, I say there is no master shot. Before I even went to film school, I learned about movies by being in a British feature film, where everything was shot master shot, mid-shot, close-up. But I reject the idea of a master shot. You don't shoot everything mechanically; you find imaginative ways that serve the action.

There was a lot of stuff [in Rock of Ages] that had effects in it and I thought it was too smooth. I thought it would be sexier if it were in-camera cuts. So I did that.

It's not a film-maker's job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way he can.

I'm not a big fan of shooting something that looks like it could belong in any movie. I'm not a fan of, okay, 'wide shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up, close-up - we'll figure it out in post.' I hate that.

I did a lot of screaming in 'The Originals,' and I hurt my voice so badly that I said, 'I can't scream if you want me to be able to work for, like, the next three days.' So, what I usually do is that I scream once in the season, and we'll just use that scream, all throughout, or extend it, or do whatever we need to do.

I wish I could do a black and white film.

I'm really specific in the way that I shoot. I've always had a very good sense of what I need in the editing room. I used to shoot in a way that drew more attention to the camera and I've tried, in each film, to draw less and less attention to the camera. I think when you pay attention to the shots, you're aware of the fact that there's a director.

Television is a prisoner of dialogue and steady-cam. People walk down a hall, and the camera follows them around a corner.