James Wan Quotes

There's a subtleness to camera work. You can really create intimate moments on camera, and sometimes that requires a little more precision from an actor because you have to pull people in as opposed to throwing it to them.

A good filmmaker is someone who can look at a piece and go, "This camera's really going to be a character. I want people to feel like they're being punched."

I've always tried to make movies that pull the audience out of their seats... I want audiences to be transported.

Tracking action without cutting is the least jarring method of placing the audience into a real-time experience where they are the ones making the subtle choices of where and when to look.

One thing I try to avoid in my films are effects that have a CG 'look' to them. The challenge is never let the audience get distracted by thinking that they're watching something made in a computer.

I try to make all the action in my movies subjective: to give a sense of what it would feel like to actually be a part of it.

I feel like my job as a storyteller and director is to create an experience where the audience forgets they're in a cinema and can get lost in the story. Things popping out of the screen call attention to the artifice of what you're doing, so I use 3D as more of a window into a world behind the screen.

The power of a close-up can be extraordinary, but you have to have actors who are able to reveal themselves.

Stanley Kubrick was brilliant at getting under the audience's skin. He was very interested in the idea of, 'How can I tell this with just a camera?'

I'm really specific in the way that I shoot. I've always had a very good sense of what I need in the editing room. I used to shoot in a way that drew more attention to the camera and I've tried, in each film, to draw less and less attention to the camera. I think when you pay attention to the shots, you're aware of the fact that there's a director.

I'm interested in how people shoot because I have a very specific way of shooting and I'm fascinated by the way other people shoot films, particularly if they're smart and talented.

Also expressionistic filmmaking - making the audience feel like they were inside the characters' heads. And so we create all these different types of techniques to put the audience there.

Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about. It’s not just about getting a performance. It’s also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.

I think you can say a lot with the movement of your camera but you can also say a lot by keeping it still.

What I do not like, the kind of high-resolution cameras, 4K, 6K, for shooting dialogue, for having faces and close-ups of actors, and you see every single pore in the skin.

[While shooting close-ups] you study real eyes, you study how the light reflects in them, you study the back of the eye, you study the way irises reflect emotion. You go into great scientific detail.

I see an incredible abuse of close-ups in many films these days. Why is that?

I always wanted to do a movie, because I love the movies. They give you a chance to have an intimacy with your audience that is different from stand up. With movies, you can bring the audience in with a close up, and emote in a different way.

Every movie you're going to forget that it's 3D whether it's widescreen or whatever it is, you're going to forget everything if the movie is working. If the movie doesn't work or if the movie generically doesn't work then immediately you start to pick apart whatever has contributed to that.

Slow motion is so visually cinematic; when you create that, you create it for your audience, you let them have the feeling of what it must be like to be there. And in a movie, you can't forget the audience.

The function of camera movement is to assist the storytelling. That's all it is. It cannot be there just to demonstrate itself.

We want to have movies be seen. So, first and foremost, what's the world? So we can get it onto a big screen.

Some people would find just the rhythm of my films alone to be a nightmare; they'd probably just fall asleep because they want something quicker. Other people fall into it and it works for them like a dream.

[on his use of tracking shots throughout his 50-year career] There's always a certain amount of camera improvisation.

The thing I always guard against when I'm talking to people I'm working with about a script is that there's a thing I don't like and it's called "talk story." It's when you're talking about the story; the characters are tasked with talking about the story instead of allowing the audience to experience the story.