Quotes About The Camera

#1. When you perform in front of an audience after only two days of rehearsal, you're flying by the seat of your pants - particularly when they're rewriting the show right up to the moment the camera goes on.

Michael Richards

#2. They say the camera never lies. It lies every day.

Cesar Romero

#3. I'd been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years. And then, in 1970, when I first started directing, I if I could pull this off, I can some day just move in back of the camera and stay there.

Clint Eastwood

#4. I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more.

Keanu Reeves

#5. Photography is light-writing, the language of images. Less abstract than written or spoken language, it selects images from the existing world of appearances and arranges them in patterns. The camera-eye doesn't think, it recognizes. It shows us what we already know, but don't know that we know.

David Levi Strauss

#6. For black folks, the camera provided a means to document a reality that could, if necessary, be packed, stored, moved from place to place ... [Photography] offered a way to contain memories, to overcome loss, to keep history.

Bell Hooks

#7. I counted how many seconds it takes to get my smartphone out of my pocket, open it up, find the camera app, wait for it to load, and then take a photo. Six to 12 seconds.

Robert Scoble

#8. My truest passion is writing, so I continue to do that on my own while seeing what all the buzz is about being in front of the camera.

Dylan Penn

#9. The Internet, the camera cellphone and the like have not only sped up the world's information uptake, but they have cheapened that which they capture.

Henry Rollins

#10. The camera or the microphone in the booth is merciless. If you don't believe what you're saying, it hears it. If you don't believe it, it sees it in your eyes, it hears it in your voice that there isn't the conviction there.

Riz Ahmed

#11. Kai neared his desk again, seeing that the fugitive's profile had been transferred to the screen. His frown deepened. Perhaps not dangerous, but young and inarguably good-looking. His prison photo showed him flippantly winking at the camera. Kai hated him immediately.

Marissa Meyer

#12. When I do work, I get so much done in such a concentrated time that once I'm through a series, I'm so drained I don't want to get near the camera.

Cindy Sherman

#13. Every photograph is a realization of one of the possibilities contained within the program of the camera. The number of such possibilities is large, but it is nevertheless finite. It is the sum of all those photographs that can be taken by a camera.

Douglas Huebler

#14. Obviously, when you walk into a room and see people like Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman and Charles Martin Smith behind the camera, it's big time. You just try not to think about it, try and keep up, hold on for the ride.

Austin Stowell

#15. In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.

Arthur Miller

#16. The camera photographs what's there.

Jack Nicholson

#17. I'm attracted to working with comedians because they don't have that stars' idea of what a hero should be. The downside is they're always addressing the camera too much.

Michel Gondry

#18. Musicals and horror films can be very non-verbal and very pure cinema with movement. The camera is justified in being a character. It can really move and tell a story, and literally direct you to look here or there.

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

#19. As long as I have enough money for makeup artists, everything is okay. I feel young and very free. But one day, my face will be too old for the camera.

Sandra Bullock

#20. I'm not an actor that tends to care. I don't ask 'Is this a close up? Is this a master? Is this a wide? What are you doing? If I look up and notice the camera I go 'Oh, it's a big one today, must be an IMAX.' And that's kinda it for me because it doesn't affect what I'm doing.

Christian Bale

#21. I'm not scared of many things in front of the camera. Everywhere else, yes, I'm terrified. But acting is just pretending, and you are exploring feelings in a safe environment.

Julianne Moore

#22. I didn't really understand what you did when you went in front of the camera. And then suddenly I just understood it. When you're in a play, you carry the story, but you don't have to do that in film.

Lars Mikkelsen

#23. The audience is the camera. I don't want the audience to sit and watch, I want it to move.

King Hu

#24. I stumbled into this business, I didn't train for it. I yelled 'Action!' on my first two movies before the camera was turned on.

John Hughes

#25. The camera, you know, will never capture you. Photography, in my experience, has the miraculous power of transferring wine into water.

Oscar Wilde

#26. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

#27. 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

#28. I don't like to work with assistants. I'm already one too many; the camera alone would be enough.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

#29. I appreciate subtlety. I have never enjoyed a kiss in front of the camera. There's nothing to it except not getting your lipstick smeared.

Hedy Lamarr

#30. Life as it unfolds in front of the camera is full of so much complexity, wonder and surprise that I find it unnecessary to create new realities. There is more pleasure, for me, in things as-they-are.

David Hurn

#31. When I look at pictures I have made, I have forgotten what I saw in front of the camera and respond only to what I am seeing in the photographs.

Minor White

#32. My co-stars call me selfish. They say, 'You are only interested in yourself and what you are only interested is yourself and what you are doing in front of the camera.' I reply, 'I can't help it; it's what got me where I am.'

Kareena Kapoor Khan

#33. The thing about producing is that the pressure is off of being in front of the camera, and being critiqued and judged in that way, but there are other pressures producing.

Sean Hayes

#34. When you work with kids, especially, you want to be ready to turn the camera on at a moment's notice.

Clint Eastwood

#35. In the car and in front of the camera I tend to be very calm but behind the scenes I can get fired up and passionate, I just don't see the need to shout my mouth off in public.

Jenson Button

#36. I do think that television, in its early years, played a significant role in that standard-setting, enforcing a certain decency among people. They took their role seriously, and the people behind the camera took their role seriously, too.

John Seabrook

#37. If we take a step back and look at what Snapchat is, it all starts with the camera.

Evan Spiegel

#38. I have to have eight hours a night. I feel that everything falls apart if you don't sleep. If I spend four hours memorizing dialogue but don't sleep, then the next day I will not be able to stand in front of the camera and say my lines. For me, sleep is the number one thing.

Cote De Pablo

#39. I do have a concern about projecting. I've never projected or had any reason to project before. In fact, the camera has only gotten closer to me going from TV to film.

Topher Grace

#40. When I was a kid, my mother used to film all of our holidays and all of the good times, and I kind of associated the camera with everything being okay and everything being happy.

Natalia Kills

#41. If you focus your energy on the camera, it takes away from the time you have to focus on the performances.

Spike Jonze

#42. One of the Life Saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had risen to a height of about two feet.

Orville Wright

#43. Only in the problem play is there any real drama, because drama is no mere setting up of the camera to nature: it is the presentation in parable of the conflict between Man's will and his environment: in a word, of problem.

George Bernard Shaw

#44. I don't take the camera out with me. My eyes are the camera for me every day.

Patrick Demarchelier

#45. To be honest, I don't see myself acting forever. I just can't imagine myself being a 70-year-old man fighting for roles. I would love to do small parts in my friends' movies or things that I'm directing myself. I do envision myself behind the camera as I get a little bit older.

Dave Franco

#46. In the the late seventies and early eighties, I played background roles in thirty movies ... Woody Allen movies, Scorsese films, you name it. Whatever was being shot in New York, I was doing stand-in and background work because I wanted to be close to the camera; I wanted to see what was going on.

Tobin Bell

#47. You have license in front of the camera to do things, feel certain emotions that you don't get to in real life. It can be addicting.

Sebastian Stan

#48. A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space.

Garry Winogrand

#49. It's like
this is going to sound weird, but it's like we're in a movie and every time I'm with you, the camera zooms in for a close-up and we're the only two people in the frame. Do you know what I mean? You're the close-up.

Malinda Lo

#50. I've always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he's been in front of the camera. He doesn't have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

Clint Eastwood

#51. My acting stopped being about disguise and became about truth which suits the camera, so my film career took off when I came out.

Ian McKellen

#52. There are only two hard things in photography; which way to point the camera and when to release the shutter.

Ralph Steiner

#53. Whether I'm in front of the camera, behind the camera, at my computer writing a novel or a screenplay, as long as I get to entertain someone out there, I'm happy.

Chris Colfer

#54. Making a film of a work you've played for six weeks gives you intimate knowledge of the character. By the time you go in front of the camera you've worked out the behavior and life of a character.

Linda Lavin

#55. If you choose your subject selectively - intuitively - the camera can write poetry.

Harry Callahan

#56. I've been acting since I was 2 and have always been on camera but doing a video is different because when you're acting, you pretend the camera's not there and you just do the scene and with a music video you're right in the camera so it feels weird sometimes.

Corbin Bleu

#57. I believe your thoughts are your thoughts, but are you a human being in front of the camera, or an actor? They are two different things.

Harry Lloyd

#58. I am a big fan of photography, more of being behind the camera - so when I get the opportunity to work with such great photographers, I always try and learn from their technique.

Penelope Cruz

#59. My background is a small town with no movie theater. So ... I always pictured myself onstage. I went to acting school and learned all the skills. I left early because I did my first movie and discovered that I really loved the minimalistic work with the camera.

Franka Potente

#60. (1) The more thoroughly a photographer explores his subject with the camera (i.e., the more pictures he makes), the more he sees and the better his chance of getting good results. (2) Even slight changes in subject approach can make significant differences in the effect of the picture.

Andreas Feininger

#61. The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination, against poverty, against racism.

Gordon Parks

#62. I am a man of very many anxieties but doing strange things with the camera is not one of them.

Lars Von Trier

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

Maria Sharapova

#64. Each new film is like a trial. Before I step in front of the camera, I do not know whether I am going to fall or whether I am going to fly - and that is exactly the way I want it to stay.

Juliette Binoche

#65. The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me.

Andre Kertesz

#66. My first concern is that when you go to a show, you should be present. It's much more exciting to put the camera down and lose yourself in it.

Bo Burnham

#67. There are photographic fanatics, just as there are religious fanatics. They buy a so-called candid camera there is no such thing: it's the photographer who has to be candid, not the camera.

Weegee

#68. I never uttered a word about things, but with my age now, I've completely lost all reservations. In more ways than one. I was never in front of the camera, for example, but now I've been in films and documentaries.

Giovanna Cau

#69. The camera has always been a magic wand for me, giving me access to places where I could try new experiments.

Rene Burri

#70. I constantly doubt myself. I only feel confident in front of the camera.

Anushka Sharma

#71. The camera only documented what had been there all along, a marriage whose foundations, constructed from the cheap materials of convention and fear, had been buckling for years.

Susan Faludi

#72. When the protagonist breaks the fourth wall by looking at the camera in a movie, it's generally been used for comedic purposes, rather than feeling like they're looking into your soul.

Chris Milk

#73. I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.

Dorothea Lange

#74. I find myself in situations that I know would be unbelievable pictures and I have to gauge, Is this worth taking the camera out? Am I gonna lose the moment? Am I gonna get a dirty look from Sting?

John Mayer

#75. When I work, I really try to get absorbed in the character. Unless I want to do something playful with the camera, I'm not too worried about where the camera is or positions.

Nicolas Cage

#76. How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees everything at once. We don't.

David Hockney

#77. The hardest part is setting the camera on the tripod, or making the decision to bring the camera out of the car, or just raising the camera to your face, believing, by those actions, that whatever you find before you, whatever you find there, is going to be good.

Sally Mann

#78. You'll never see a good performance out of me, in terms of a character, when the camera isn't rolling.

Brendan Fehr

#79. Kurt Cobain, when he did his videos, you look into his eyes and he couldn't even face the camera; he was in pain and I'm angry about Kurt. This guy didn't have to die.

Steven Tyler

#80. I think one day I want to be on the other side of the camera-maybe directing.

Mary-Kate Olsen

#81. 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.

Cameron Crowe

#82. As I started to develop as a director, I wanted to do projects that were inherently more cinematic, where the freight was not so much in the dialogue, where it would be carried more by the camera.

Marshall Brickman

#83. With reality TV, sometimes it's amazing chemistry and you get these gems that turn out to be everything you hoped, and the camera loves them and they just blossom on the show. And then sometimes it's not all you envision.

Alison Sweeney

#84. When I over-prepare, I try to let it all go and forget all about it when the camera rolls, so I can just be present with the other actors and allow what's going to happen to happen without too much preconception.

John Hawkes

#85. Give me a problem, I'll give you a solution. I just love living. That's a feeling you can't fake. I'm glad every single day. I think that even the camera can feel that I'm a happy man.

Will Smith

#86. You can assume all photo and video is constructed as a fiction controlled by the person holding the camera and the person who is editing ...

Barbara Degenevieve

#87. I love when I go on set every day, because the camera people teach me camera terms and grip terms - I learn all these new terms from different people on the set and leave feeling all cool about myself when I go out places.

Ariel Winter

#88. More and more, as it becomes necessary to preserve the game, let us hope that the camera will largely supplant the rifle.

Theodore Roosevelt

#89. For me, the camera is like an entrance to the private lives of other people. And if you are curious like me, it is a fantastic tool.

Anders Petersen

#90. Working with children is a whole other ball game. They're like little animals. You have to keep the camera turned on them all the time. Sometimes it takes a 41-minute take to get one sentence out in a believable way.

Vera Farmiga

#91. So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.

Susan Sontag

#92. Click! In other words, I'm in a very controlling position, and I can bring ... and I've already ... if the camera's on you, your face is very concentrated. You're listening. You don't know what I'm going to say next, and now you're smiling. All these things are the things I work with.

Richard Avedon

#93. They both go together; you can't be in front of the camera hosting a fitness television show in front of 75 million households and not have trained 6 days per week year round - in a bikini no less.

Kiana Tom

#94. The experience of the individual has become the experience of the people, thanks solely to the camera.

Joseph Goebbels

#95. When I was a kid, I would make kung fu movies with the kids in the neighborhood, and I would be the guy behind the camera directing everybody, but they were all very silly little shorts and comedy bits.

Dan Fogler

#96. I was really relieved not to have to drag something in front of the camera; I could use a pencil and paper. A regular pencil and typing paper. That appealed to me.

William Wegman

#97. On practical level I can't pick up the camera until I think I know what I want. I don't wander around. It's almost impossible for me to pick up a camera ... it's really hard.

Bill Henson

#98. It ain't the picture and it ain't the camera - it's the operator.

Simon Travaglia

#99. I've always been involved with all aspects of my careers. Being behind the camera seems as natural as in front.

Sarah Brightman

#100. My creative process begins when I get out with the camera and interact with the world. A camera is truly a license to explore. There are no uninteresting things. There are just uninterested people.

Jerry Uelsmann