Jonathan Demme Quotes

Being a cinematographer taught me a lot. I got to expedite the visions of many directors and learned how to navigate many styles and worlds.

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.

The way you present a stunt is tied in to the way you photograph it, so you're hanging out with the cinematographer.

A lot of cable television is shot on a single camera. Our eyes are more trained to that. It takes the camera off the crane, away from observing the action, to becoming a character in the story along with everyone else. People are getting used to that.

I think the camera was always my obsession, the camera movements. Because for me it's the most important thing in the move, the camera, because without the camera, film is just a stage or television - nothing.

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'm very heavily involved in the editorial post-production process, and the camera - it's just such a big part of my storytelling language. I like creating the tension; I like creating the emotion through the movement of my camera, or the lack of movement through my camera, depending on what fits the scene best.

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.

I was in film school as an undergrad with a focus on directing. Once I started working on shoots, I realized, 'Oh, I really like this cinematography thing.'

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

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 went to USC and tried to learn about the other side of the camera a little bit.

In my films that I've directed, and my work in commercials and videos, I've rarely used handheld. It's just not something I'm drawn to, but I've seen it done very well.

I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

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

Because I come from that old-school optics environment, I know stuff about depth of field and camera movement and things that are not necessarily a part of the curriculum for people who started on a box and have never done anything that wasn't on a box.

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.

I think from an early age I was aware of how a camera can tell a story, how a movie camera can affect how the narrative is told.

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.

People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.

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.

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

The first dolly track was somebody who had the idea to put the camera on a boat on a canal. So the boat would move very slowly but steadily. So they would see all that surrounds you and you'd see the landscape changing slowly. So that was the first time.

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

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.