Guillermo del Toro Quotes

I am interested in seeing if you can create on film pieces that feel contemporary and urgent.

There are many legendary DPs that I admire, some of whom have a very strong signature, but I'm not sure I want to be the DP where you see my work and say 'Oh, Reed shot that.'

I always loved Japanese movies. And they had an enormous impact in France - the Nouvelle Vague took so much from them. It taught us how the camera was placed in the centre of the action.

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.

I'm a big fan of being able to hold those long shots and use space. I don't know, I think everything's so quick cut these days, as if films are too afraid that the audience is going to get bored instead of relaxing and trusting their work.

'La Notte' is my favorite of the Antonioni pictures and my favorite work of the master cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, who also shot '8 1/2' for Fellini.

Usually, if you notice good cinematography, then the cinematographer's failing. I try to make light feel like it's always motivated and natural in some way and hope that the lighting goes unnoticed.

I don't believe in one slow panning-shot to show a place. It should unfurl in the story itself.

What I like to do with every film is to bring a form, like a cinematographic proposal. If you watch 'S21,' it's a form; 'Duch, Master of the Gates of Hell' is a different proposal.

It's kind of dangerous to cut in the camera, but that's the only way I know how to direct.

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

Film is a very intimate medium.

You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

Usually when I'm making a movie, what I have in mind first, for the visuals, is how we can stage the scenes to bring them more to life in the most interesting way, and then how we can make a world for the story that the audience hasn't quite been in before.

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

There's an ecstasy about doing something really good on film: the composition of a shot, the drama within the shot, the texture... It's palpable.

Well, visual language is another boring discussion about the nature of film.

In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light.

With the work that I do as a director, I've got dialogue, camera movement, and character blocking to help create a tone to the piece. In photography, those elements are somewhat void so that tone becomes a bit more subtle but still equally important.

All my film ideas and subjects have come from photography.

I prepare for a shoot by saturating my brain with images that have different moods or expressions.

What I am really curious about is the visuals of cinema... the form.

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

Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite. The only true cinema verite would be what Andy Warhol did with his film about the Empire State Building - eight hours or so from one angle, and even then it's not really cinema verite, because you aren't actually there.

Every film deserves its own unique look.