Orson Welles Quotes

Pictures are much harder to do than the theater... You're at the mercy of the camera angles and the piecemeal technique.

Hitchcock loved long convoluted shots that contained a lot of tracking and camera moves.

The only reason for using another cut is to improve the scene.

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.

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.

The reason I like tracking shots has to do more with a sense of real time than anything else. In 'Gravity,' the use of tracking - of long extended takes - was partially because we wanted to film it like an IMAX-style Discovery Channel documentary. You don't have the luxury of cuts when you're in space. The camera is there; you're just observing.

The size of a studio film lets you see technology in a way that you wouldn't on an independent film, like the gadgets and the angles and all that.

I love having 30 shots of every scene.

In the past I've worked with directors who saw very much their scene in their head and knew exactly how they were going to cut it.

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.

I like finding a great shot and then just staying with it for a long time, not trying to pump things up with some kind of artificial energy by cutting.

If the audience, in minute 50, is thinking about the way a movie is shot, there's a problem. I want it to permeate emotionally.

In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light.

That's the trouble with anything which essentially has a lot of bits that are physically impossible: You're left, stuck, in the studio. And that's a shame. You're making a movie. You don't want it to stay put, you want it to be a movie - to move.

I'm a filmmaker, but my working procedures are different. All my basic structuring is done during the filming. You know, how long I keep the shot, the exposure or the speed - slower or faster, etc. That's structuring. And then there is a second stage of structuring that comes later when I begin to put those pieces together.

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.

I guess why the Ocean's films are hard for me is because on the one hand you have to make sure the performances are there, but on the other hand it's a film that demands, to my mind, a very layered and complex visual scheme. That takes a lot of time to figure out.

I would love to direct a western. I love taking photographs and I'm always fascinated with angles. Also, my father was a film editor, and I have a talent for thinking of things that aren't always in a script.

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

I love directing more than anything in the world, and I love being in the editing room. I love cutting. When I'm shooting, I cut it in my head anyway. That's not to say that it always turns out that way, but you have a sense when you're composing a sequence or a scene how you want it to look anyway.

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

I enjoy setting the scene and coming up with interesting frames. 'True Detective' was a very hands-on set.

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.

With bad movies, I have this image in my head of the director and the editor in the editing room watching a scene that is not happening, looking at each other and saying, 'Put some music in there.'

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.