Spontaneous Moments Quotes

American culture is no longer created by the people... A free, authentic life is no longer possible in AmericaTM today. We are being manipulated in the most insidious way. Our emotions, personalities and core values are under siege from media and cultural forces too complex to decode. A continuous product message has woven itself into the very fabric of our existence. Most North Americans now live designer lives-sleep, eat, sit in car, work, shop, watch TV, sleep again. I doubt there's more than a handful of free, spontaneous minutes anywhere in that cycle. We ourselves have been branded.

I love the live cut part of making records the surprises are the prizes.

However spontaneous I hope a photograph will look, I always put a lot of thought into how I can make it happen. The very best pictures are the most relaxed, so a lot of fussing around technically can completely break the spell, and everyone freezes up with nerves.

Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation - everything except a stage set.

Travelling is like a novel: it's what happens that counts.

A lot of kind of like the way that Andy [Bernard] talks, you know, the writers pick up on those things - little moments that I inject and then they start to write it in later. It's hard to say if a whole storyline is spun out of an improv. I feel like it has happened on The Office, I just can't think of it.

I've been in every disco in the world. I saw a picture of my wife Shakira and I dancing in Studio 54; I didn't even know someone had taken that picture.

People don't live their lives in a series of scenes that form a dramatic narrative, they don't speak in dialogue, they're not lit by a cinematographer or scored by a composer. The properties of real life and the properties of drama have almost nothing to do with each other. The difference between writing about reporters and being a reporter is the same as the difference between drawing a building and building a building.

You can't plan to reach another person on a deep level, it just happens. So those are the moments that I think I really live for.

The best things in life cannot be willed into being.

I can't tell you how many pictures I've missed just 'cause I've been so hell bent on getting the shot I think I want.

You see reality TV and it's not reality TV. It's contrived and everything is plotted and scripted nearly. Documentaries are the same and just as bad.

I just love when a movie takes a break and gives you a poetic moment, but sometimes it's good when they just happen randomly. If your actors are really comfortable and you let the camera roll, sometimes things happen and you just see something that's visually iconic, or emotionally that way.

The difficulty is capturing surprise on film.

I never know what kind of people I'll meet just by stopping to take a photo.

All of the Vines that were acted & setup & had nice cameras, those weren't the good Vines. The good Vines were, like, a random little kid in the middle of a forest, like, yelling.

Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute. Don't reject them, let them come through when they're ready, don't think you can plan it al out. This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again. It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated.

I want to get out of the way of the actors. I want to get out of their eye lines. I want to them to stop thinking they're making a movie. I want them to just go and live. It's like you take these great actors and put them in an aquarium of life, and just watch them swim. That's what makes editing tough because you get all these beautiful, unplanned moments.

I prefer to take actors and put them in real settings and real locations and real situations rather than create artificial locations that serve the characters. It's just much easier when you are walking down the street with your actors to do that in a real street that's still open with people on it, rather than to close it off and bring in extras.

I'm always that annoying person that pulls out the camera in the middle of dinner and starts taking candids.

'Efficient' scheduling and control of time are often counterproductive. The efficiency focus creates expectations that clash with the opportunities to develop rich relationships, to meet human needs, and to enjoy spontaneous moments on a daily basis.

I'm sure favorite moments in movies are things that just happen accidentally when the camera is there. You have to do all the homework to get yourself into the period, the costumes, the style, the voice, the hairdo or whatever it is, but once you've done all that work, you have to kind of let it go and just be there. If you're always thinking about it, it just looks a bit over-thought.

There are certain things that happen during the production of, I think, every film, that you didn't plan, and often it's better than what you did plan. There's the question of either going with it or not.

Let's be honest, you and I have probably seen a whole lot of family films - you have to do something special. Jim Strouse has the ability to write this hairpin turn between emotion and comedy that is very real. In real life, you don't have time to prepare for the bad stuff and you don't have time to prepare for the good stuff, it just sort of happens.

If I took perfect pictures all the time, the people standing in the room with me, or on the carpet, would think, 'What an actress! What a faker!' That thought embarrasses me so much that I look like s**t in half my photos, and I don't give a f***. What matters to me is that the people in the room leave and say, 'She was cool. She had a good time. She was honest.'