Zal Batmanglij Quotes

I don't get tripped up in technology. I use technology as a tool. 'Oldboy' we shot Two Pro 35mm. For 'Da Blood of Jesus,' we shot digitally. We shot the new Sony F55. It's a 4K camera.

I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.

From the first moment on the set I was consumed with curiousity about the technical side of shooting a sound picture.

I started playing around with GoPros on my own to get some cool footage. But it's actually become a big training tool for my team and me.

I'm not wild about hand-held shots.

I remember being on a black-and-white set all day and then going out into daylight and being amazed by the colour.

Motion-picture studio floors used to be all wooden and not smooth at all. This was difficult when moving a camera around on a dolly.

When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

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

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

What's funny is, I was always certain that I couldn't be a director because there are things about the physics of camera and lighting that I fundamentally cannot wrap my head around.

The process of making films is so technically demanding that it's a distraction. You don't spend your time thinking about the philosophical content, which is often very depressing.

When I started, we had just the camera and the person, mostly. And if you wanted to do a dolly shot, particularly working in Chicago where I began, you'd get in the back trunk of a car, and you'd have a friend drive the car, or you'd get in some kid's little wagon that he plays with and have someone pull that for dolly shots.

When you shoot a movie, the camera is always taking, taking, taking and not giving anything back.

If you've got five cameras, you're making sure that you're in the right position for each one of the cameras.

I'd like to own a movie camera - a proper one, with film, not a digital thing. Celluloid has more character.

Editing is the only process. The shooting is the pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editing.

With Fever, the film was so made for the screen, and there's so much surround sound that was done for the film - enormous detail paid to that. I wasn't thinking video, because I didn't know how it was going to turn out.

You know, people always think if you start out as a film editor, you shoot less footage. Actually, just the opposite is true. I tend to grab as much coverage as I can because as a former editor I know how important it is to have those few frames.

On the set for 'Beetlejuice,' it was before people would go watch on monitors, and directors would be next to the camera.

I really tried to get comfortable with the notion of shooting digital on 'Foxcatcher' and just couldn't. I shot many tests and experimented with all sorts of techniques to manipulate it into a place that worked for us, but it just didn't happen.

Everything about camera movement, about how film was made, shot architecture, and time management... I was horrible at all that.

You have full-field view when you're watching the film. Eye in the sky, it's a lot easier to look at it that way than when you're back behind center.

My photography is mainly focused on my work making movies, which I've done my whole life. I think I have a perspective that not many people have. And I get to take advantage of all of the strange sources of light on a set.

I don't do any editing while we're making the movie. I sit down and watch it all with my editor, we make longhand notes on pads, and then we begin our work.