Eve Arnold Quotes

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

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.

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.

Try to place the camera somewhere where you get most of the information from there, so you don't need to have too many shots and be too explanatory and expositional about the scene.

So much of it is the design of the shot or the motion of the character; it's the work you do so that it has the same things that are in the movie. In just a few frames it's got to communicate something clearly and dramatically.

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

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.

The camera must point at the exact spot the audience wishes to look at any given moment. To find that spot is absurdly easy: you only have to remember where you were looking at the time the scene was made.

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

Oh yeah - I watched Knife in the Water, saw the shot, and repeated it. But even if I hadn't seen that film, inevitably the camera would've ended up on top of that mast, I mean if you think of it there are only so many dynamic shots on a boat.

A shot is only as every as good as how well it tells the story.

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.

I've storyboarded for things other people have shot. So thinking in shots and orchestrating shots is not foreign to me at all.

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

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 camera is the gatekeeper to the audience that's watching you.

When I started, you didn't focus so much on production, certainly not - gosh - down to the finest little detail of how you shifted your eyes or how you turned to somebody. A lot of the shots were far away from a still camera. There weren't as many close-ups and intimacy.

A lot of directors in my experience are very receptive. They see what you do first, and then they want to find a place to put the camera, and they tweak you here and there.

You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

Every cinematographer I worked with had his own way of solving problems.

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.

What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.

I believe that the best cameraman is one who recognizes the source, the story, as the basis of his work.