Cinematography Quotes

The future of cinematography belongs to a new race of young solitaries who will shoot films by putting their last penny into it and not let themselves be taken in by the material routines of the trade. ~ Robert Bresson

The body moves through space every day, and in architecture in cities that can be orchestrated. Not in a dictatorial fashion, but in a way of creating options, open-ended sort of personal itineraries within a building. And I see that as akin to cinematography or choreography, where episodic movement, episodic moments, occur in dance and film. ~ Antoine Predock

Cinema is a very difficult and serious art, it requires sacrificing of yourself. You should belong to it, it shouldn't belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

I think women have made progress in cinematography, contrary to women directors, who I think have regressed. There are many more women cinematographers than when I started. ~ Maryse Alberti

I wanted to transfer to an art school, and ended up going to the University of Southern California. They had a cinematography school, and I said "Well, that's sort of like photography, maybe that will be interesting." And once I started in that department, I found what it was that I loved and was good at. ~ George Lucas

I'm so aware when you make a film, there are so many elements to get right. So many people with such important jobs. You know, it's terrible. I walk away from a film going, "The cinematography was great, wasn't it? But the music wasn't so good. The casting wasn't great." ~ Stuart A. Staples

I think the reason novels are regarded to have so much more 'information' than films is that they outsource the scenic design and cinematography to the reader ... This, for me, is a powerful argument for the value and potency of literature specifically. Movies don't demand as much from the player. Most people know this; at the end of the day you can be too beat to read but not yet too beat to watch television or listen to music. ~ Brian Christian

I'm proud of the way I rearrange and put things together, like a chef who makes a great meal, or a filmmaker who puts together a story - it's casting, editing, cinematography. ~ Bonnie Raitt

As important as it is to learn the techniques of cinematography, you also have to learn how to deal with the movie set, with show business. I came up with a cinematographer who is very talented, but she was never quite able to handle everything else you have to do - dealing with the producer and the crew and the time frame that you have to follow. ~ Maryse Alberti

Eventually, I think cinematography for every culture is a way to explore different stories, different ways of also delivering a story. ~ Violante Placido

As Frances had learned to do in times of uncertainty, she created a project over which she had total control and began writing a book "Dedicated to the memory of Irving Thalberg as a tribute to his vision and genius." How to Write and Sell Film Stories was written for "serious students of film technique." She filled the straightforward textbook with anecdotes from her films and others' to convey the lessons on the development of plot, motivation, and characters she had learned with Thalberg. She had come to believe that because of increased censorship and the limited number of adaptable plays and novels, "eighty percent of the motion pictures produced will be soon be stories written exclusively for the screen" and the time was right for a book on original screenplays. The audience for the book was immediate; universities ordered copies before it was published and it quickly went into several printings. The book led to her taking on an advice column on screen writing for Cinema Progress, a serious educational film magazine published by the American Institute of Cinematography based at the University of Southern California. She opened her house to roundtable discussions with students and sponsored a scenario contest with the winners serving as studio "apprentices. ~ Cari Beauchamp

My father would tell anyone who would listen that this dentist thing he was doing was not his passion; cinematography was. ~ Lasse Hallstrom

I believe that filmmakers have to internalize the story and subtext so well that all of the departments can start to speak to each other - that music can speak to cinematography can speak to writing and back again. ~ Shane Carruth

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water. ~ Robert Bresson

[C]ourageous film-makers, who take no account of success, prove that cinematography is a medium for realism and lyricism, and that everything depends on the angle from which one observes the spectacle of life ― the angle from which they constrain us to share a singular vision of things and emphasize the everyday miracle that lies within them. ~ Jean Cocteau

Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes. ~ John Ford

And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography. ~ Nicolas Roeg

In 'Tree of Life,' the cinematography records a small story, a celebration of the courage of everyday life. But it does it so up close and so effortlessly that it has the effect of elevating the intimacy of the story to a grand scale. ~ Caleb Deschanel

Some directors don't get involved in the cinematography and are just about story, but I'm definitely more tactile than that in terms of my involvement in the minutiae. ~ Cary Fukunaga

When I came home, I was asked to put my pictures in a photo exhibit at the Cinematography College ... my pictures won first prize. I began to ask myself what I was doing, and why. A few months after the exhibit, I dropped out of college, left my wife and began to write this book. ~ Vladislav Tamarov

Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc ... ) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create ~ Robert Bresson

I like the powerful story, the excellent performances the beautiful cinematography and the vision of the "The Piano". ~ Mabel Cheung

I feel for Veronica Mars so much when I'm watching at home. It is a wonderful story. The writing is consistently funny, biting, charming, heart-wrenching, etc. I also like the look of it. The cinematography - different from any other show. ~ Jason Dohring

Though impervious to the sacred, I loved magic. The cinema was a suspect appearance that I loved perversely for what it still lacked. That streaming was everything, it was nothing, it was everything reduced to nothing. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

The director Denis [Villeneuve] is actually an actor (he's from Sons of Anarchy and he's a great character actor) and he's also a screenwriter (he wrote What Lies Beneath). It blows my mind to see when people from one sector move to another and excel. I think Sicario was one of the best directed and written films. It did get [a nomination for best] cinematography, though. ~ Bun B.

The art of moviemaking seems to get thrown away. The cinematography is gone, and the look of everything becomes of little importance. You lose the memorable images; everything looks like it's been shot at night with a security camera. ~ Rob Zombie

I don't come from a film background. I haven't learned anything about films or film-making. But I have a thirst to know everything about my profession. I want to learn about cinematography, about editing, about music recordings, about post-production. So when people in the know talk, I willingly listen. ~ Priyanka Chopra

I kind of love Colin Farrell again. I think it started with In Bruges. No, I'm lying. It started when I saw a clip of his sex tape where he's manning the camera and instead of getting all Sex Tape-y, he goes, quite genuinely, "GOD, I'm a TERRIBLE cinematographer. ~ Jessica Morgan

Hide the ideas, but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden. ~ Robert Bresson

The introduction of cinematography enabled us to corral time past and thus retain it not merely in the memory - at best, a falsifying receptacle - but in the objective preservative of a roll of film. But, if past, present and future are the dimensions of time, they are notoriously fluid. There is no tension in the tenses and yet they are always tremulously about to coagulate. The present is a liquid jelly which settles into a quivering, passive mass, the past, as soon as - if not sooner than - we are aware of it as present. Yet this mass was intangible and existed only conceptually until arrival of the preservative, cinema.
The motion picture is usually regarded as only a kind of shadow play and few bother to probe the ontological paradoxes it presents. For it offers us nothing less than the present tense experience of time irrefutably past. So that the coil of film has, as it were, lassoed inert phenomena from which the present had departed, and when projected upon a screen, they are granted a temporary revivification.
[...]
The images of cinematography, however, altogether lack autonomy. Locking in programmed patterns, they merely transpose time past into time present and cannot, by their nature, respond to the magnetic impulses of time future for the unachievable future which does not exist in any dimension, but nevertheless organizes phenomena towards its potential conclusions. The cinematographic model is one of cyclic recurrences alone, even if these recu ~ Angela Carter

I think people just see cinematography as being about photography and innovative shots and beautiful lighting. We all want our movies to look great visually, to be beguiling and enticing, but I think that what really defines a great cinematographer is one who loves story. ~ Seamus McGarvey

I'm not sure that I could give notes to someone that I revere. That's a general challenge of directing, giving notes to someone you revere. The other big contribution to this, which most people I show footage to take note of is Mauro Fiore's cinematography is unbelievable. ~ Shawn Anthony Levy

We've tried to use some visual motifs [in Beauty and the Beast]. As far as the cinematography and the lensing and all that, we are presenting a different view into that world. It's a little sleeker, but we're keeping the gothic feel underneath it. ~ Brian Wayne Peterson

Give me B movies or give me death! ~ Clive Barker

I started out with this dream of being a director and doing cinematography and bought my first film camera at 15. ~ James Brolin

Most of the movies are working like, 'Information, cut, information, cut, information, cut' and for them the information is just the story. For me, a lot of things [are] information - I try to involve, to the movie, the time, the space, and a lot of other things - which is a part of our life but not connecting directly to the story-telling. And I'm working on the same way - 'information, cut, information, cut,' but for me the information is not only the story. ~ Bela Tarr

I had a love for photography, which of course rolled into cinematography. ~ Scoot McNairy

Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle. ~ Robert Bresson

Cinematography is infinite in its possibilities ... much more so than music or language. ~ Conrad Hall

Music is, for me, a great tool of a filmmaker, the same way cinematography, the acting, editing, post-production, the costumes are. You know, to help you tell a story. ~ Spike Lee

I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it's hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don't get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I'm sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

And the best films feel like a fist punching you in the solar plexus and all elements of the filmmaking process - the acting, the design, the cinematography, the music, is all working to one end. ~ Ethan Hawke

PLAINVILLE WAS A QUAINT picturesque town. Northern California's version of Andy Griffith's Mayberry. Bucolic enough to provide cinematic contrast for any low-budget stalk-and-slash film. Juxtaposition played just as important a role in still photography as it did in cinematography. Maybe that's why Natalie Jones had picked Plainville for her final descent into darkness. The climactic scene in a comedic tragedy. Cast of one. Audience of one. Curtain closed. ~ Virna DePaul

If chess has any relationship to film-making, it would be in the way it helps you develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives at a time when an impulsive decision seems very attractive. ~ Stanley Kubrick

The cinematography is as much involved with the physicality of the scene, so a lot of our shots are hand-held. I felt the cinematographer needed to be the fourth-character with the same drive as the actors ~ J. Robert Spencer

Micky was a hard taskmaster. He could be very unkind. He was out to judge people, I think pretty quickly, and once he'd made a decision, he never altered it. If he didn't like you for one reason or another, it was best to leave. On the other hand, with the people he liked and respected, he was wonderful and was very loyal. He was one of those people who liked to be challenged. He liked people to stand up to him, and most people ran away. ~ Christopher Challis

I think as he gets older, Quentin [Tarantino] is growing more and more into his directorial side, but the writer in him won't stop the pen. I don't think he deserved a directing nod. Like I said, it's beautifully shot - it's cinematography, obviously, deserves a nomination - but he's not the camera man. ~ Bun B.

Well,' said Can o' Beans, a bit hesitantly,' imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.'

Huh?'

Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.'

The manner in which the other were regarding him/her made Can O' Beans feel compelled to continue. 'The word neat, for example, has precise connotations. Neat means tidy, orderly, well-groomed. It's a valuable tool for describing the appearance of a room, a hairdo, or a manuscript. When it's generically and inappropriately applied, though, as it is in the slang aspect, it only obscures the true nature of the thing or feeling that it's supposed to be representing. It's turned into a sponge word. You can wring meanings out of it by the bucketful--and never know which one is right. When a person says a movie is 'neat,' does he mean that it's funny or tragic or thrilling or romantic, does he mean that the cinematography is beautiful, the acting heartfelt, the script intelligent, the direction deft, or the leading lady has cleavage to die for? Slang possesses an economy, an immediacy that's attractive, all right, but it devalues experience by standardizing and ~ Tom Robbins

Cinematography was incredibly foreign to me, so I read as much as I could about it. Once I figured out that it was just photography with a set shutter speed, I got some slide film and I just went about storyboarding the script and taking snapshots. I took a ton of time doing it just to make sure I knew exactly what I was doing. By the end of it I knew what the film was going to look like - my exposure and the composition and everything. I wasn't scared of cinematography anymore. ~ Shane Carruth

You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me. ~ Nicolas Roeg

When you live in Israel, there are restrictions which come from budget definitely. I came to the point where I had shot many fiction, many feature films, but at one point it began to bore me. It was boring because when you're Gordon Willis or when you are a legend of American cinematography, you know that you are gradually building yourself and you can go into bigger budgets and experiment more. In Israel, the budgets are very, very limited. ~ Dror Moreh