Quotes About Cinematography

The submarine genre is a category with all its own rules. But shooting on water is famously tough.

It's all about this abstract entity called the story. It's all about the best way to tell the story, and to make a movie about the issues that this story is about. Filmmaking is storytelling, for me.

That's why I like fast film. It gives you more freedom to light more naturally.

It was 100 feet of 16 mm black-and-white film of a car coming to a stop sign, and driving off. I had to decide how to frame and light it. It was magic. There was a sense of mystery.

When I saw the original versions of 'Virasat' and 'Gardish,' I felt the content was so good but that they had shot the films very badly. I knew that if I could get such content, I could shoot it much better. That was what I did.

I wouldn't say I see things visually first, but what I do think is important, for a lot of screenwriters, is to not just think about the words on the page, but also the world as a whole and the vibe of the movie, rather than a sequence of scenes written on the page.

When I started working in film, I loved photography, I loved the image, I loved telling the story within a frame, but as I started playing around with film and video, it was like, 'Oh my god.' You just have so much more to play with.

The film camera's ability to physically move through space, not zoom through space - every time we have a video camera the movement is through zoom; every time we have a film camera it is a physical movement.

I guess the way I shoot things is slightly influenced by the way videogames are cut and shot.

My heroes are guys like Frank Capra and Elia Kazan and Coen brothers and Terry Gilliam, more so than a lot of bass players at this point in my life. So I've always been an old-film nut and have very much enjoyed doing videos over the years.

In general, I find that for videos the acting is more realistic.

I think you can make a gorgeous movie on any piece of equipment. Look at 'Tangerine,' which is a beautiful movie shot on an iPhone. You see so many movies that are impeccably shot but are vapid, and there's no audience for that except for other cinematographers who just like to watch two-hour-long music videos.

In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.

I think of filmmaking as a form of communication. Maybe it's also an art, but that's for somebody else to decide.

Clearly, if wed had the kind of computer graphics capability then that we have now, the Star Gate sequence would be much more complex than flat planes of light and color.

The part of television I like are things that have a documentary feel to them.

In a drama, the camera doesn't exist. In a documentary, it does.

Documentary films have always been my passion, I have done documentaries.

Every time you are getting ready to make a shot in a documentary film, you are asking yourself questions about your cinematographic approach. You are approaching the truth, but the image is never the truth itself.

I love period dramas.

I love design-based stuff. I dug it in 'Pleasantville' and dug it in 'Seabiscuit.'

I don't think you can be a great director without knowing a lot about editing.

I'm very interested in the editing process - in all aspects of film-making, really.

I love euro TV drama, there's some fantastic shows.