Cameraman Quotes

Often I pretended to a cameraman to know less than I did. That way I got more cooperation.

There is the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity;

over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine. We do have a very close association between costume and set designer, though. And the cameraman is very important, of course.

The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don't have to explain things with words.

My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful.

People think that all cameramen do is point the camera at things, but it's a heck of a lot more complicated than that.

You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours. (To Black Panther militant Eldridge Cleaver)

The pictures are there, and you just take them.

I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad.

Directing ain't about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn't want to go to film school. I didn't know what the point was. The fact is, you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots and you're only going to get two.

There are a lot of cameramen but not so many photographers.

And a lot of cameramen attack from a technical approach without much imagination. They look, but they don't see.

I worked on 'Blue Peter' and 'Tonight' and lots of TV plays, filmed people like Rudolf Nureyev and Ted Heath, and ended up a senior cameraman with my own crew. I'd had my first short story published in 1947, and when my writing really started to take off I decided to go freelance, and eventually left the BBC in 1965.

Light. Light I think is knowledge. Knowledge is love. Love is freedom. Freedom is energy. Energy is all. Without light, we can't have images.

Since a camera is something too heavy for women and initially made for men, you need a good cameraman.

A saucer flew right over (us), put down three landing gears, and landed out on the dry lakebed. (The cameramen) went out there with their cameras toward the UFO.... I had chance to hold (the film) up to the window. Good close-up shots. There was no doubt in my mind that it was made someplace other than on this earth.

I like to say that lighting is about taking the light away.

I often like to use the shadows more than the light.

Light can be gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, bare, living, dead, misty, clear, hot, dark, violet, springlike, falling, straight, sensual, limited, poisonous, calm and soft.

Whether you're a cameraman or a director, you should ask yourself every now and then, 'What am I trying to do?' Be honest and keep things very simple.

What I believe is really good in the so-called documentary approach to photography is the addition of lyricism.[this quality] is usually produced unconsciously and even unintentionally and accidentally by the cameraman.

A film just doesn't involve actors, a director and a producer, there is also the cameraman, the sound engineer, the music composer, the lyric writer. So many people come together to make a film. When we all feel satisfied with the film that we have created it's a win for all of us.

Gene Mean, look at our body. Cameraman, zoom!

Jack Cardiff - the greatest cameraman who ever worked in colour - was a lab boy to start with so he knew Technicolor from the inside out.

Justice precedes beauty. Without justice, beauty is impossible, an obscenity. And when beauty has gone, what does a cameraman do with his eye?

I grew up as a cameraman, so it's much easier for me to shoot it myself.

I work with an operator and a crew, but it's way easier for me to function as a cinematographer, than to have a cinematographer between me and the lens. I don't need that.

There are things that happen so quickly.

A better cameraman can capture them, but if the light is not bright and you hoist up your camera by the time you've dialed in your settings. There are eye blink moments where you're like "Aaahhhh, I wish," but those are too many to catalogue. Nothing really sticks out.

I have a team, the same team of filmmakers I worked with on 'Pi' and 'Requiem'.

Which is my cameraman, and my composer, and my producer. We've all worked together for a number of films.

I have to have a working knowledge of light, and optics, film emulsions and their properties, and lenses, otherwise I can't create the shoots that are the vocabulary of the films. But it is not necessary for me to be a cameraman, I can hire a cameraman.

Baseball is meant to be fun, and not all the solemn money-men in fur-collared greatcoats, not all the scruffy media cameramen and sour-faced reporters that crowd around the dugouts can quite smother the exhilarating spaciousness and grace of this impudently relaxed sport, a game of innumerable potential redemptions and curious disappointments.

People were murdered for the camera; and some photographers and a television camera crew departed without taking a picture in the hope that in the absence of cameramen acts might not be committed. Others felt that the mob was beyond appeal to mercy. They stayed and won Pulitzer Prizes. Were they right?

I'm not a great fan of green screen. It's not much fun for actors. It's great for directors and technical people and cameramen.

I believe that the best cameraman is one who recognizes the source, the story, as the basis of his work.

Usually in TV... A TV director could be anything from a main grip to just a glorified cameraman, and sometimes a director can be the person who is hired last. It's very much a producer's medium.

A lot of the good cameraman who we used are doing television work;

they're doing commercials for a lot of money. And the commercials look incredible. But what's it about? I made three major commercial campaigns. I enjoyed it, I experimented with it, and at the end of the day I felt no satisfaction. It was like having a fast food lunch.

I grew up on the sets of Bonanza and most of my (childhood) memory is (on the set of) Little House. I was actually an assistant cameraman on Highway to Heaven. So, I observed my father working for many years. He was a very giving person. I really respected the way he ran his sets. He never treated anyone differently - whether you were the guest star of the show or the grip. Everybody was treated with respect.

It took me three, four years, to get from my first film to my second film, banging on doors, trying to get people to give me a chance. Writing, struggling, with no money in the bank, working as an editor on the side. Working as a cameraman on the side. Getting little jobs, eking out a living. Trying to stay alive, and pushing a script that nobody wanted.