Scene Coverage Quotes

On a conventional film, you do one take, and if it's good, they say, 'Let's do another one for insurance.'

The hardest scene for me is always the scene when I'm dealing with performances, when I'm actually looking at the guys and hoping that I'm covering it in the right way and that I'm handling it in the right way.

My job is to kind of nudge them. Who said it, where, like, '90% of the job is casting,' so all I do is try to come to set and focus on getting all the best shots to cover the story; that's really it.

I don't shoot movies quickly because I get a lot of coverage and a lot of angles, so we have all the pieces in the editing. I do a lot of takes, but it's because I'm looking for something.

As a director, try to be humble and not to overdo it, not overcoverage and over-covering the scene.

In features, we're languid: we shoot one or two scenes over, like, three days. In TV, the pace is so different. You're shooting ten scenes a day, going way into the future or way back into the past. It's complete madness, and I'm just trying to keep up with this really electric pace.

You do need to edit yourself as you shoot because you have fewer options in a smaller movie. In other words, when I'm shooting a big movie, and I got an 85 day shooting schedule or more, then I'm saying I have enough time to shoot option A and B and C and D for every scene.

Every single director-actor I talked to, from Warren Beatty to Clint Eastwood to George Clooney, said the biggest mistake they made is not shooting enough footage of themselves.

Live television drama was like live theater, because you moved without thinking about the camera. It followed you around. In film you have to be more aware of what the camera is doing.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

In TV, you have no time and sort of just carpet bomb the scene with as many angles as possible as quickly as possible and find it in the edit.

I was fortunate to work on a few episodes of 'Barry' right before we shot 'Atlanta.' That was where I got my training wheels for action coverage.

Shooting a movie can be so tedious. You're trying to get 20 different angles on the same swing. You never get into a rhythm. But I took it very seriously.