Quotes About Cinematography

The reason I loved doing films like 'Rogue One,' 'Zero Dark Thirty' and 'Lion' was that there was enough breadth and difference in those projects to properly represent my interests.

In this movie they took them up in space. They're floating around and doing zero gravity stuff. Well, they had to do it all on wires. All the wires had to be painted black against this black background. If you didn't light it properly you could see the wires. Drove them crazy!

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

I'm not one of these directors, so far, that wants to have a whole separate director's cut of these things. So far they've turned out to be kind of the length that they wanted to be.

When I'm channel surfing, and 'Silence of the Lambs' comes on, I have trouble turning it off. I wouldn't say that about 'Beautiful Mind.' It's a good movie, but I'm much more in awe of what Jonathan Demme did with 'Silence of the Lambs.'

I'm not a fan of these very cutty, handheld-y kind of films or TV shows, where a cut is just every half second or every two seconds, where you're desensitized to it. To me, a cut should say something and be impactful.

In a normal movie, the director controls what you look at. The shots don't last very long because you're getting the audience to look at specific things. An IMAX shot, on the other hand, can be twenty or thirty seconds long.

The only thing I've kind of missed is finding a really good western that I want to do, because I watched westerns a lot.

The digital process gives me total control over how I want the film to look. The films look like they did when I was first looking through the viewfinder.

Now that everyone's shooting digital they want the anamorphic to soften the look. You know, to make it more filmic.

The only thing I really wanted was the freedom to be able to get what I want on film. I've dealt with the MPAA since 1973, so I know how to renegotiate and rework.

I use people's real voices because I want realism. So often I mention the actors' physicality because I want it to be like a real documentary.

The films I love are very precise, and every shot means something; every shot should convey something new.

I think there's something special about getting a moment perfect or near perfect. In a film, you can do that.

A close-up on screen can say all a song can.

'Rangeela' and 'Daud' are both exciting films. The songs, the music, the dances - they all blend so well.

But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.

I've seen every episode of 'Sopranos.'

You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.

The mystery of film is not in the script. It's in the shooting, in the interacting of humans and space and time.

I have a Bolex, Aaton, Arriflex, Eyemo, Filmo, Mitchell, Photosonic, Beaulieu, Keystone - just about every movie camera you can think of.

'King Kong,' especially the first two acts of it, is a really good example of the use of miniatures mixed with digital characters and how convincing it was.

Film is shot in fragments, and the same moments can be shot again and again until the director is satisfied.

Every time I look through the lens with Denzel, I'm like a 12-year-old kid. It's hard for me to look at the monitor because the fun is in watching him.