Movie Technique Quotes

In the vast majority of movies, everything is done for the audience. We are cued to laugh or cry, be frightened or relieved; Hitchcock called the movies a machine for causing emotions in the audience. Bresson (and Ozu) take a different approach. They regard, and ask us to regard along with them, and to arrive at conclusions about their characters that are our own. This is the cinema of empathy.

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.

What motivates every other decision artistically or technically is the acting. This is what motivates everything. Never can a camera move be incompatible with the emotion of the actor at that moment. The movement, the style, the atmosphere, everything is dictated by the actor.

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.

I couldn't imagine 'True Grit' in 3D. I think the idea is sort of absurd.

I'm not a big fan of there being voiceovers in movies. I really prefer it when the film tells it story.

One thing I hate in movies is when the camera starts circling around the characters. I find that totally fake.

It's one of the things I always do. I move faster onscreen. Creates a sense of danger.

I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie.

Tarantino's movies are smartly intoxicating cocktails of rampage and meditation; they're in-your-face, with a mac-10 machine pistol and a quote from the Old Testament. They blend U.S. and European styles of filmmaking; they bring novelistic devices to the movie mall.

Any great movie in the old days has a red herring. Hitchcock was so good at that.

I don't like camera trickery and editing and doubles and all of that.

It was fun playing with those jumps and the flashbacks in 'Zombieland,' but I don't think you need it to make a good movie. It's fun to just do a more straightforward one.