Orson Welles Quotes

That's one of the best things about the RED ONE - I can use all the best lenses that have been used in film forever.

Every shot is unique, even if it's just a close-up, an insert of your hand. You've got to work with the guy behind the lens to get it right, focus in. Those are critical little nothing things, but you've got to work with the people who are trying to put it down, in order to get it.

If you look at classic Hollywood films, they tend to shoot close-ups on quite long lenses and the background it out of focus. You know, it's just a mush.

I feel every shot, every camera move, every frame, and the way you frame something and the choice of lens, I see all those things are really important on every shot.

If I have to point to something specific with the way I move my camera, I love to do it with a wide lens. I like to show you as much of the space as I can, even if I'm following a character.

I learned first of all not to be intimidated by any visual effects that I don't understand. It can all be learned. You can then use them as tools to tell your story. I also learned that you have to be really vigilant, the more complex the movie, to not lose yourself and to not lose sight of the priority.

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

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 learned a lot about how to shoot and how to put together sequences.

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 don't know one lens from another. That's not my job. It's the cinematographer's job. But I can talk to people.

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

My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can't come in closer with the 35 mm.

I've heard it said many times, 'Let's work on the look of the film,' but that doesn't work with me.

You learn tricks to make action look more dynamic - having the fight come toward you or shooting on a longer lens to compress the speed.

For an actor working in television or film, I think it's important to understand how the medium works - how the camera and lenses work and how the sound and the editing works.

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.

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.

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.

I'm not a big fan of shooting something that looks like it could belong in any movie. I'm not a fan of, okay, 'wide shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up, close-up - we'll figure it out in post.' I hate that.

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

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.'

My background is in filmmaking, and my mentor is Dusan Makavejev, who combined fiction and documentary.

I always direct next to the camera and watch my actors, and so you can see the small things that you can't see on the small screen but you can definitely see on the big screen.