Robert Osborne Quotes

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.

You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.

Honestly, if I could shoot everything in 1:33, I would.

For me, there's far too many close-ups in film. They're a television technique.

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

I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.

In the old days, before there was such a thing as film schools, directors learned the camera by watching other directors, and learning from their own dailies, and listening to the cameraman, and seeing what would work. Some of those guys could cut their movies in their head.

A movie that I'm involved with and have a lot of love for, which is 'On The Road,' does use a lot of handheld. It can be done beautifully. I'm proud of that. It's a very beautiful movie.

First of all, in the old days, if you wanted to show someone getting shot on film, all you could do was place an effect in the original take. And if you wanted to brighten somebody's face and leave the rest of the room dark, that was a very expensive process.

I love having 30 shots of every scene.

I like the way Quentin Tarantino creates a scene using a series of close-ups or showing very cool images of a person or people walking on some ordinary street in slow motion. I wish I could achieve that kind of slow-motion effect in manga, but it's rather difficult to draw; the only things we can play with are tones of black and white.

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.

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 wild about hand-held shots.

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 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.

I shoot a lot of film - that's one of the things I try to do, and it's one of the things I learned how to do with Robert De Niro on 'Men of Honor.'

I remembered watching the film from Alfred Hitchcock, 'Dial M for Murder,' and he shot almost all of that movie in one room. There was a genius in what Hitchcock did by manipulating things in that room so that you could see the distances between things like the tables and the vases because of how he used perspective.

In Goodfellas they have this one scene where the camera goes down some steps and walks through a kitchen into a restaurant and the critics were all over this as evidence of the genius of Scorsese and Scorsese is a genius.

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

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.

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

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.

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.