Taika Waititi Quotes

The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.

Handheld camera is approximating what we're seeing when we're looking at each other, and kind of looking around, and your eyes whipping around. It adds an immediacy, where you feel like you are watching something through your own eyes, standing there with them. And that just allows you to take more liberties and have more fun with people's behavior.

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.

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.

People think that the directors direct actors. No. Really, what the director's doing is directing the audience's eye through the film.

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.

You can do really slow movements with it, like zooming in for a minute and a half. The audience isn't aware that the camera has moved, but there's subconscious tension there.

As I started to develop as a director, I wanted to do projects that were inherently more cinematic, where the freight was not so much in the dialogue, where it would be carried more by the camera.

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.

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

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.

The Wachowskis' use of space rivals that of musical directors like Gene Kelly and Mark Sandrich.

My favorite way of making films - and what has allowed me to get key scenes in 'Cartel Land' and 'City of Ghosts' - has been when I've been able to operate alone.

Designing the technical aspects of my camera movement for me is very important. I want the camera to be a big part in telling the story as well, like what I really believe in with all the films I make.

I think a shot can actually influence a scene in a huge way. For example, comedy is always better in a two-shot. What's between the characters is what's funny. So you learn about these things as you go along.

There's nothing worse than an ostentatious shot or some lighting that draws attention to itself, and you might go, 'Oh, wow, that's spectacular.' Or that spectacular shot, a big crane move, or something. But it's not necessarily right for the film — you jump out, you think about the surface, and you don't stay in there with the characters and the story.

That shot in "Into the Inferno" somehow popped up while my editor and I were viewing the footage. I immediately said, "That looks like the opening shot because the camera approaches the action very slowly and we have enough time to insert some of the main credits into it." So it was a practical choice. At the same time, you see these tiny figures standing at the rim of something, and all of a sudden, the camera rises further and you find yourself looking straight down into an inferno.

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

The balance of the frame - the way an actor is relating to the space in the frame - is the most important factor in helping the audience feel what the character is thinking.

A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens.

And Later I Thought, I Can't Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography.

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

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

Don't get me wrong, Carter Smith is an insanely talented photographer, but as a director he approached it more from a story standpoint. He definitely had an interest in communicating the text and the characters first, and he allowed his cinematographer Darren Lew to really find the visuals - of course, he worked with him throughout the entire Jamie Marks Is Dead movie, it was a collaborative effort. While the movie is very visually beautiful, in my opinion, very visually striking, Carter was definitely approaching it from a performance standpoint first.