Dario Argento Quotes

The first dolly track was somebody who had the idea to put the camera on a boat on a canal. So the boat would move very slowly but steadily. So they would see all that surrounds you and you'd see the landscape changing slowly. So that was the first time.

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.

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.

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

I'm one of the few directors that actually shoots a lot in camera.

Finding where to put the camera is probably the most important thing you have to learn when you're a young director, and it's something that's a mixture of instinct and technique.

The cinematographer's basically translating the director's vision into imagery.

We build camera rigs tailored specifically to the story we're trying to tell or the shot we're trying to capture.

I was in film school as an undergrad with a focus on directing. Once I started working on shoots, I realized, 'Oh, I really like this cinematography thing.'

When I got on my first set, I watched what the cinematographer was doing, and at that level in film school, the cinematographer has the most control. They're the one looking through the viewfinder, carrying the camera, framing the shots.

I really like photography, and I'd like to do more of that kind of thing. If I had to choose a different job within the industry and do it well, I would love to do cinematography.

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

Because I come from that old-school optics environment, I know stuff about depth of field and camera movement and things that are not necessarily a part of the curriculum for people who started on a box and have never done anything that wasn't on a box.

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.

People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.

The camera is not your eye, and it's not the eye of the audience. I don't think it's my eye, either. It belongs to the film.

I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look.

Tak Fujimoto and I, when we started getting enough of a budget where we could afford the right lenses - 'cause we started out doing low-budget pictures together - we started experimenting with this subjective camera thing. And we kind of fell in love with the idea of using that as our close-up.

I like to work, and I worked for years as a camera person before I directed.

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

As a DP who mostly does features, I'm normally in a director's pocket, 24/7.

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.

Being a cinematographer taught me a lot. I got to expedite the visions of many directors and learned how to navigate many styles and worlds.

The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script.