Etgar Keret Quotes

I really enjoy blocking and staging. I think most of visual storytelling is camera placement and how to stage action around the camera.

I don't like to watch playback. But being on the set, watching the way the camera is being moved and the way the light is being used, you do get an idea of it.

As a director, you're looking for ways to tell the story with the whole image and not primarily dialogue.

The camera must point at the exact spot the audience wishes to look at any given moment. To find that spot is absurdly easy: you only have to remember where you were looking at the time the scene was made.

I have considered the directing, actually. Not so much the writing. That is not really interesting, but the directing is really interesting to me.

Architecture has a strong link with the movies in terms of time progression, sequencing, framing, all of that.

I think we've shot scenes from every angle directors can think of to make it look like different villages. I've directed a couple shows on that set and believe me, it's impossible not to duplicate some camera angles.

All these directors who do different locations forget that one room can be shot from a million different angles and a million different ways. When I direct a movie, I'm going to use that.

Going to directing wasn't a reaction away from acting as much as it was a move towards something I always wanted to do. Ever since I was a kid, I was interested in the camera and how it worked and why one director would place it in this part of the room and then another would place it in that part of the room.

Some directors are interested in acting, and others are only interested in cranes and moving the camera.

Half of 'Mudbound' were shots I stole in between other scenes.

Film gives us the luxury of deciding where the viewpoint of the audience is, and by knowing that, we can very effectively design around what is actually seen on camera.

I don't cover my scenes. We approach it visually. Sometimes we go out of our way to do awkward blocking so that we can tell whatever the emotional heartbeat is of that scene in the most interesting way possible.

I've directed a fair amount of television series - so I'm always trying to learn new things. One episode was all hand-held and I'm trying to get better at when you should do things and when you should just shut up and watch what the people are saying.

The great thing about having spent all this time on film sets is that I've been able to watch directors and how they work. I now know that this is what I want to do as well: to tell stories visually. But it's definitely my vision that I want to put across, nobody else's.

I've always had the utmost respect and awe of what the lens can do and what a director can do with just a camera move.

I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.

You don't want to be the guy whose back's to the camera in the emotional part of the movie. So, you have to be aware of the camera movement and what the camera's doing.

I believe that the best cameraman is one who recognizes the source, the story, as the basis of his work.

Most screenplays depend primarily on the vision of a director.

I design my shots. I walk the rehearsal as the camera and say 'this is where I want to be... I want this look.

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.

I think from an early age I was aware of how a camera can tell a story, how a movie camera can affect how the narrative is told.

Zhang Yimou is an artist. Sometimes we did only two or three shots a day because we were waiting for the sun.

I remembered watching the film from Alfred Hitchcock, 'Dial M for Murder,' and he shot almost all of that movie in one room. There was a genius in what Hitchcock did by manipulating things in that room so that you could see the distances between things like the tables and the vases because of how he used perspective.