James Wan Quotes

If you shoot with a billion cameras, then there's no perspective. You want to use one shot at a time, so it's better to discover what that is before you shoot, rather than trying to make something in the cutting room, and then it just becomes generic.

Well, I've learned something from Michael Robison just about maximizing your shots. For example, if I'm shooting a scene and someone's driving at the wheel, you could steal an insert in the same shot.

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.

Nowadays you don't get to see composition in a movie because nobody ever keeps the camera still long enough to see it. Actors don't have the thrill and the power of working with space.

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.

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 everyone worked with wide-angle lenses, I'd shoot all my films in 75mm, because I believe very strongly in the possibilities of the 75mm.

Cinematography is so much about instinct and intuition - you want the same range of experience going into behind the camera as what you see in front of it. Your life experience will come through the lens.

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.

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

I was never one for multi-cameras; my approach was always... I always considered there was only one place to be to do a shot.

I love staging action and wide-shots, not necessarily going to close-ups.

Usually I design the lighting and when I have the physical set there, I'm not good at going out loosely and saying, 'Do you what you want, give it to the editor, and he'll figure it out.' I physically then walk on with the actors and I say, 'Let's walk until you guys feel the space works for you, and tell me when all that happens.'

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

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

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 always wanted to know what lens they were on, how close they were. I didn't do it with a plan in mind, but I would instinctively gear what I was doing toward what lenses they were using.

Most people think of cinematographers as choosing subjects of an epic nature to show off what they do - big, sweeping images of war or pageantry.

I think, as directors, they may recognize, more than the rest of the body of filmmakers, exactly what you do as a director, because I think sometimes the conception is if the camera isn't swinging around, and it's not pyrotechnic or worthily melodramatic, then the direction is uninvolved.

If you've noticed that I don't use long takes, it's not because I don't like them, but because no one gives me the necessary means to treat myself to them. It's more economical to make one image, then this image and then that image, and try to control them later, in the editing studio.

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.

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

Film gives us the luxury of deciding where the viewpoint of the audience is, and by knowing that, we can very effectively design around what is actually seen on camera.

I really enjoy blocking and staging. I think most of visual storytelling is camera placement and how to stage action around the camera.

For a cinematographer, every frame has to be important.