Richard Corliss Quotes

I'd never really shot action scenes before, but I realized early on that is very much like shooting choreography and dance.

I like to give dimension to shots inside action scenes. It's demanding because you have to rehearse a lot of things happening at the same time and frame all those things in a shot. But I feel like when you accomplish that then you've got a cool action scene.

I've done all sorts of different kinds of action. We did a thing in 'Blood Diamond,' the attack on Freetown, where I carefully staged the action but did not show the camera operators what we were going to film - so it has the feel of documentary, trying to capture something, and that gave it a whole different feel.

Some directors are interested in acting, and others are only interested in cranes and moving the camera.

I'm in total awe of the technique of great film people. Because if you get your emotional life up to perfection by miracle on Take One, you better have a technique to keep doing it again and again and again.

I love having 30 shots of every scene.

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

I'll reshoot a corridor 13 different ways, and you'll never recognise them.

You really get to direct the movie three times when it comes to the action sequences and the set pieces.

I view filmmaking as a director's medium.

I don't study films particularly. I plan to direct, but I'm not watching film - I watch the entire film to see how the story goes, but I don't say, 'Oh, so he does a slow pan here, or he pulls here, watch the crane shot, or look at the composition,' because it's got to be my eye.

Usually you talk about directors in terms of the way they choose camera lenses or a kind of light to create a certain effect. But to me the most valuable commodity for a movie to create is a feeling of life, and that's what A Hard Day's Night has in spades.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

In a normal movie, the director controls what you look at. The shots don't last very long because you're getting the audience to look at specific things. An IMAX shot, on the other hand, can be twenty or thirty seconds long.

We have an uncanny ability to make birds do what we want them to do. In Blood Simple there's a shot from the bumper of a car and it's going up this road and a huge flock of birds takes off at the perfect moment.

If you know how to shoot a scene, then you know how to shoot an action scene. If you've seen an action movie, and you watched it, and you paid attention to how scenes are constructed and where the camera is and how the camera moves, then you know how to do it.

Intimate scenes or a kiss is a very technical aspect of filmmaking. It is extremely mechanical.

Making a movie is universal. Directing a movie is universal; it's a universal language.

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

I think with any movie, directing is more in the preparation. You just have to prepare for everything that's going to happen.

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

The experience of shooting a film is about the script, the captain of the ship who is the director, and the way they push their actors and teams to give their best. It's not about the language and the region.

Rajkumar was the winner of 'Naalaya Iyakkunar Season 2,' and I was impressed with his short film. He joined me as an assistant when I started the pre-production work for 'Vada Chennai.'

With film, you stop and go. You have to do 20 takes or whatever.

It is a challenge to direct any film.