John Knoll Quotes

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.

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.

The job is trying to create movie shots that have depth, that have the meanings you need them to have, and then good enough so that they will add something to the final picture. They will make the picture; they'll get into the picture, and give them what they need. It's an interesting job.

For a lot of my childhood, I didn't want to direct movies because I didn't really know what directing was.

Filming is like a house, you have to feel comfortable in it.

It is not as though the process of production holds any mystery for me, I know exactly what it involves and I know the predominant concern in shooting one of those things is production values - or as they would say, seeing it all up there on screen.

I really love diving in, head first, with directing and not having to worry about hair, makeup or lines.

Every time I hear, Cut. Print, something cold and electrical goes off in my head, because I'm never going to change that film.

From the first moment on the set I was consumed with curiousity about the technical side of shooting a sound picture.

You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.

As a filmmaker and film student, I think it's really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things.

There are a lot of directors who are knowledgeable about images, and others who aren't.

I had no education in filmmaking. I started with a 8mm camera. I made 34 films, and little by little I gained more experience in filming.

I like making black and white films in natural surroundings, but I much prefer shooting a color film inside a studio where the colors are easier to control.

It's possible for an editor to break down a dream, if you like, into its components and being able to shoot the wide shots in sunshine, when the weather was at its best and you know, we would get sort of almost a 3D effect sometimes if you chose the right time of day to shoot the thing.

I like to direct for the big screen.

I will say that 'Source Code' proved to be a very tricky film to shoot.

When you make a movie, you know you're making a long-form thing, so the visuals are different than for a video where it has to be more obvious or in your face, I think, a little bit.

If you want to be a director, work with writers and find different ways of telling stories with film, then do a course. This way you can consolidate what you've learnt and use the course to go further.

The thing with TV and filming is the timing is all faked anyway. You do it so many times, from so many different angles. You never really do it all in one go anyway, so they just fix it all in the edit.

I really got into filmmaking through photography.

I like the fact you can spend two hours setting up a scene that will only last a couple of seconds. And I like just sitting around and dozing between scenes!

When you're making movies you've got to get obsessive.

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.