Paul Feig Quotes

The reason I like tracking shots has to do more with a sense of real time than anything else. In 'Gravity,' the use of tracking - of long extended takes - was partially because we wanted to film it like an IMAX-style Discovery Channel documentary. You don't have the luxury of cuts when you're in space. The camera is there; you're just observing.

It's funny, people don't think of 'Cloverfield' as being restrained because it's a handycam movie, but the only reason it's a handycam movie is because that was supposed to be the reality of the situation.

Having been a cameraman, I think about, 'Well, if this was real, how would this be shot?' I try to inject as much realism as much as possible.

When I started, you didn't focus so much on production, certainly not - gosh - down to the finest little detail of how you shifted your eyes or how you turned to somebody. A lot of the shots were far away from a still camera. There weren't as many close-ups and intimacy.

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.

Designing the technical aspects of my camera movement for me is very important. I want the camera to be a big part in telling the story as well, like what I really believe in with all the films I make.

If you're tracking with a character that's running off a thing and diving off, I would leave the camera there and not follow them down, because cameras don't do that. The audience understands that. I'll definitely bring that understanding of keeping things a bit more grounded.

I see things going on before my eyes and I photograph them as they are, without trying to change them. I don't warn people beforehand. That's why I'm a chronicler. I speak about us and I speak about myself.

A movie that I'm involved with and have a lot of love for, which is 'On The Road,' does use a lot of handheld. It can be done beautifully. I'm proud of that. It's a very beautiful movie.

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.

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 am not at all interested in theories about cinema. I am only interested in images and people and sound. I am really a very simple person.

It's so easy for shows to be gritty and handheld and shaky and really tight in people's faces.

I wanted to make these people real, not like they were in a painting. Like these are people who don't know they're in a period movie. Those concerns are incredibly immediate.

In my films that I've directed, and my work in commercials and videos, I've rarely used handheld. It's just not something I'm drawn to, but I've seen it done very well.

You make a film you feel is as real as possible and hope people react as though it were real.

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.

You can do really slow movements with it, like zooming in for a minute and a half. The audience isn't aware that the camera has moved, but there's subconscious tension there.

If the audience sees and feels things are real, then they buy it.

Generally in my films like 'Hearts of Darkness' or 'Picture This,' I try not to make myself a presence in the film.

On 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' we started exploring shots that are longer, where the camera is moving around the actors, and there are no cuts, and you feel like you're there.

TV does a thing that film can never do. It takes you to a place that no novel written after the late 19th century can. You can just go through people's lives; it's like a marriage.

There's a fashion for a macho style of filmmaking. How long can your longest take be? And shooting things in one shot. For me, if you can sort of disappear and make people feel that they are there, that involves massive amounts of work.

When I set out to make 'Bourne Identity,' my main goal for the franchise was to create something where it feels like you're in the action. You're not just passively watching it from far away. That's something that I have constantly aspired to do - even in 'Swingers,' to feel like you're Jon Favreau; you're not just watching him.

Theater's wonderful because it's visceral, and it's happening in front of you, but you never get that close. So the close-up is a great privilege of film.