Scene Composition Quotes

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired.

When you sit down to write a film, you direct it in your head. If you are writing a scene, you are watching the scene. And maybe it's different when you are writing a novel because you are thinking of it in terms of being read. But films are only consumed one way - through the eyes and the ears.

Normally as a director, you do look at other films and things that are relevant. But with this film, it became impossible because I became so aware of the camera placement.

Everything we do on 'Luck' is absolutely no different than if we'd had been doing it in a feature film. There's no short cuts. The specificity of what every single line might mean. Everything Dustin Hoffman does. Kevin Dunn is as authentic in the last scene of the last episode as he is in the first scene of the first episode.

When I watch a movie I don't really care too much about the plot - not that it isn't important, but what I remember is the visual imagery, something that happens in an individual scene.

Every frame and every scene has to have an intention.

So many directors say nothing beautifully, and so many others say great and profound things but have no idea how to read a light meter or arrange a shot.

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.

Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging.

Shooting on film is great because it imparts discipline: What do you need to see so you're not finding it in the camera. When I'm shooting, I have the scene in mind, where I'm going to have certain lines. I learned to overlap and to shoot more than I think I need. That was the learning curve.

If you are making a record, you are the one saying 'action', and you are the one saying 'cut,' and you have to be sure that the most interesting thing is not going on outside the frame.

If you ask me whether I can direct, I can. In fact, I have shot several songs, scenes and stunts. When certain directors of my movies were not able to be there for some reason and had asked me to help out, I have directed. But to helm an entire movie is a different art altogether.

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

Woody Allen likes to do a lot of master shots. He likes to get the whole thing in one take, and so you could be going along doing a scene, and then the next to last line, all of a sudden, you stumble, and you have to go back to first base.

Sometimes there's something that a writer doesn't see or a producer doesn't see when he's looking at a shot.

When you shoot a scene, you remember every moment. You remember when your head went down, your head went up. You don't see little quirks, little eye movements, little lip movements. Once again, you become completely vain when you're watching it in a way that you weren't when you were shooting it. And the vanity, what it makes you focus on are everything that has nothing to do with the scene and everything to do with your own ego.

Nowadays you don't get to see composition in a movie because nobody ever keeps the camera still long enough to see it. Actors don't have the thrill and the power of working with space.

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.

The script is so important... Even if you have a huge entourage or big lighting trucks, the most important thing is the space between the actor and the camera.

My first film was very static.

The difference between one writer and the other, or one director and the other, is the way he deals with a scene.

People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.

As a director, I'm not the one animating every frame, every shot. I'm moving around like a surgeon on rounds, or a farmer checking in on all the plants being grown, pruning and adjusting. For me, it's a very exciting job.

Doing something like 'Bushwick,' a lot of people need to agree that the piece is working with what's going on on the screen. So it's a lot of tweaks and re-works, just kinda moving pieces around and getting things to hit right.

Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes.