Cinematographer Quotes

#1. The cinematography was of course incredibly important to me because I graduated as a cinematographer.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#2. A writer, like a cinematographer, manipulates the viewer's perspective on an ongoing story, with the verbal equivalent of camera angles and quick cuts.

Steven Pinker

#3. 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

#4. The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way.
Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.

Robert Bresson

#5. It's because you have no power. You give them all the material and the cinematographer, the director, the editor, boy what they can choose ... You better hope they like you because they can slice and dice and make you look like a damn fool when your face and body are up there on a 30-foot screen.

William Mapother

#6. Everyone his own cinematographer. His own stream-of-consciousness e-mail poet. His own nightclub DJ. His own political columnist. His own biographer of his top-10 friends!

Walter Kirn

#7. I think I learned a lot on Beaches. A guy I worked with Dante Spinotti is a wonderful cinematographer and it was his first picture and he went on to be nominated for an Academy Award for "LA Confidential" which was great.

Garry Marshall

#8. An action choreographer is kind of like a dance choreographer. You choreograph the moves and you let the director, cinematographer take into positioning their cameras.

Donnie Yen

#9. In comics, the writer is also the director in a certain way. So if this were a film, you wouldn't tell the cinematographer to make a good fight scene while you go and get a cup of coffee.

Max Bemis

#10. I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look.

Nicolas Roeg

#11. A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist - moving an audience through a movie ... making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark.

Gordon Willis

#12. But at heart, I am more than a cinematographer.

Conrad Hall

#13. I was the one who kept telling my second husband he should become a cinematographer. I paid for him to get his director's card, and he went on to make 'Godspell.'

Carmen Dell'Orefice

#14. 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

#15. The visualization of my films is always very important to me and I work very closely with my cinematographers. I've never had the same cinematographer twice now that I think about it. I don't know why that is. Everyone is always busy. They do three or four films a year. It's vital to me.

Scott Hicks

#16. A lot of times, I'll resist the temptation to visually define a movie until, one, I really understand just what the movie's about, and two, until I start talking to my cinematographer.

Tom McCarthy

#17. Every cinematographer I worked with had his own way of solving problems.

Conrad Hall

#18. My favorite part of the whole filmmaking process is working with a fantastic cinematographer, a fantastic actor or actors, and then just creating emotions and stories. I get so excited by that. That's the part I'm utterly addicted to.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

#19. 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

#20. In a period piece, particularly a fantasy, the lighting is your own choice, the lenses are your own choice. It's really a great thing for a cinematographer to do. Everything is open for you. You can even be more creative and you can use more shadows than usual.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#21. I want to try and be as involved in the art of filmmaking as possible. I feel that the only way to really do that is to take on as many roles as possible, whether it be as an actor, an editor, a director, a cinematographer.

Joe Swanberg

#22. 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.

David Douglas

#23. The way I work with my cinematographer is not based on general principles, but the ideas are triggered by the locations where we shoot.

Paolo Sorrentino

#24. When you are interviewing someone, don't just write down what he says. Ask yourself: Does this guy remind you of someone? What does the room feel like? Notice smells, voice inflection, neighborhoods you pass through. Be a cinematographer.

Gene Weingarten

#25. I have always wanted to be either a cinematographer or a veterinarian.

Christopher Bollen

#26. 'La Notte' is my favorite of the Antonioni pictures and my favorite work of the master cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, who also shot '8 1/2' for Fellini.

Jake Paltrow

#27. As the cinematographer is usually more visual than the director is and full cooperation is really the answer and to make a great film, you need a good director and you need a good cinematographer.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#28. I have developed my eye as a cinematographer through the craft of operating. When I am not operating, I am often anxious, uncertain, restless, sometimes irritable. When I am in the position of working with Steadicam or remote cameras, I fly with a broken wing.

Robert Richardson

#29. The way you present a stunt is tied in to the way you photograph it, so you're hanging out with the cinematographer.

David Leitch

#30. I should mention Vittorio Storaro, who was Bernardo Bertolucci's cinematographer. You watch those films and they are exceptional.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#31. I got fired from a movie that ended up being called 'Windows,' which Gordon Willis, the cinematographer, directed. I got fired because he refused to cast Meryl Streep, who at the time was at Yale. I told him I thought he was an idiot, and he fired me.

Scott Rudin

#32. I came up the old-fashioned way - tea boy, cutter, focus-puller, cinematographer - but I wasn't myself old-fashioned.

Nicolas Roeg

#33. I don't know one lens from another. That's not my job. It's the cinematographer's job. But I can talk to people.

Penny Marshall

#34. I thought that was a pretty stupid argument, really, because it's the final product that matters. The look of the film, however it's done, is still the cinematographer's vision in my mind. People said the same when color film came in, didn't they? The world evolves, and image-making evolves.

Roger Deakins

#35. When I was in pre-production for Trees Lounge, I was hearing the cinematographer talking with the production designer about colours and this and that, and feeling like I was losing control.

Steve Buscemi

#36. It's a very tricky relationship, the cinematographer and the director as a woman.

Patricia Riggen

#37. The art of making films is a collaborative art. As a composer, you're always working with the cinematographer because he's so much the heart of the world they've created on film.

Howard Shore

#38. I wanted to be in film. I wanted to be a film student, possibly be a director or cinematographer, not an actor. That was my goal. I didn't believe I had the physical beauty that I'd seen projected and advertised in movies, in theater. It just wasn't for me.

Pam Grier

#39. I worked with the same producer from The Freebie, my cinematographer was one of my shooters from The Freebie. I was really aiming to tackle a genre, but sorta tackle it in my own way, and put my stamp on it, and the way that I like to see movies made.

Katie Aselton

#40. So we got there at 6 a.m. We'd be shooting by 6:45. We wouldn't break for lunch, we'd just pass food around all day. And we would just rock and roll 'til 4, then Matty Libatique, our great cinematographer, would say, 'Outta light, guys' - and that was it.

Joel Schumacher

#41. Amy Grech has a cinematographer's eye, and a surgeon's hand - at once brutal and tender, unsettling yet humane. These stories linger like traces of an acid trip. Highly recommended!"

- Jay Bonansinga, National Best-Selling Author of Twisted, Frozen,
and The Sinking of the Eastland

Jay Bonansinga