Quotes About Camera

The camera has a mind of its own--its own point of view. Then the human bearer of time stumbles into the camera's gaze--the camera's domain of pristine space hitherto untraversed is now contaminated by human temporality. Intrusion occurs, but the camera remains transfixed by its object. It doesn't care. The camera has no human fears.

Some comedians you work with, they only turn on when the camera turn on, and they're like sad-faced clowns when the camera's off. And then, they come alive when the camera come on. And you be like, "Oh, damn. You're not a depressed ball of depression, but you are actually funny."

I love to just listen and watch. I could happily watch a security camera at a store. Often during a day I'll see a guy selling pretzels or an argument that somebody's having on a stoop and I'll think, "Oh I wish I had my camera, I wish I could capture this moment." There's something about people being people and interacting that can be so beautiful when it's framed by a camera. That desire to capture people as they are, and the stubbornness to keep going when they don't necessarily want you to capture them being who they are, are key.

I hate cameras. I hate cameras and I hate camera phones. The camera's my worst enemy and my best friend. It's the way I convey my emotions to the world without saying a word, so I use it. People always say, 'You come alive as soon as the camera's on!'

The camera course was a bit crap. But when I was in drama school, I wasn't interested. I wanted to be a stage actress. I was not interested in learning camera craft. But then you throw yourself in the deep end when you do get a job in front of the camera because you have absolutely no idea what you're doing, and it is a skill.

The film camera's ability to physically move through space, not zoom through space - every time we have a video camera the movement is through zoom; every time we have a film camera it is a physical movement.

Depending on the budget [whether to use 3D on future movies]. I think I prefer 3D to 2D now. Also, because of 3D I have to use a digital camera, which is the way it's going anyway. That still confuses me, a digital camera versus film.

I could take a cow and implant a camera in it and let it amble around the city or in its own domain (I say a cow because a human being I would not trust). If the camera was programmed to go off at an indeterminate series of moments, the samplings would be fantastic.

It's the angle that shows how we see differently. I have always believed that all documentaries are fictional. It's really the angle of the camera, the owner of the perception, that makes the story what it is. The video camera is a fiction.

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.

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

My first pieces, in an art context, were ways to get myself off the page and into real space. These photographic pieces were ways to, literally, throw myself into my environment. They were photographs not of an activity, but through an activity; the activity (once I planted a camera in the instrument of that activity - once I, simply, held a camera in my hands) could produce a picture.

I'm always going to hear people make that connection and I've just accepted it. It's alright. I'm just happy that I get to do my own thing now. I learned a lot from the show [the Voice] as far as being in the TV world and being in front of the camera, which is really great because I'm not as nervous in front of the camera as I was before.

What you think is fake in your head comes off as not enough on camera, a lot of times. You almost have to overdo it, in this overly, sort of Broadway, large-gestures kind of way to come off as being realistic on camera. It's strange. You almost have to act really fake to come off looking real.

You're talking about a whole camera crew and being mic'd up professionally everyday and just having another group of people following you around. It's a little different than having friends pick up a camera and follow you around.

I do believe that a film like Ten could never have been made with a 35mm camera. The first part of the film lasts 17 minutes, and by the end of that part, the kid has totally forgotten the camera.

Editing can alter the original meaning and context, and computers can alter the image itself. The camera can also be manipulated. At the very least, it must be turned in one direction - only one direction at a time ... Who chooses what direction to point the camera, and why?

Most people assume because I'm an actor that's all I know about and care about, I'm actually a camera geek and a film geek. I grew up making short films the same time I was acting. For me, it's a motion picture, not a play. I'm just as interested in what the camera department is doing and world building through costume design and production design as I am in acting. I think all good directors do that whether they're an actor or not.

I got a unicorn horn on my head once. I said, "Can you really see that on camera?" My producer said, "You can see it from space." I would have to angle my head a certain way so that I didn't look misshapen on camera.

There's a certain way people are used to seeing nude women, and that's in a submissive, coy pose, not looking at the camera. And in this poster, I'm looking dead into the camera with no expression on my face. I think it freaks a lot of people out.

Anyone who looks for life can find it... and they don't need to photograph ashcans. The average camera fan reminds me of Pollyanna, with a lollypop in one hand and a camera in the other. You can't be a Nice Nelly and take news pictures.

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.

The contemporary artist...is not bound to a fully conceived, previsioned end. His mind is kept alert to in-process discovery and a working rapport is established between the artist and his creation. While it may be true, as Nathan Lyons stated, 'The eye and the camera see more than the mind knows,' is it not also conceivable that the mind knows more than the eye and the camera can see?

When I put the camera back to my eye, I noticed a particular guardsman pointing at me. I said, "I'll get a picture of this," and his rifle went off. And almost simultaneously, as his rifle went off, a halo of dust came off a sculpture next to me, and the bullet lodged in a tree. I dropped my camera in the realization that it was live ammunition. I don't know what gave me the combination of innocence and stupidity... but I never took cover.

There's nothing sillier than fake rough edges, like the handheld camera you sometimes see on "NYPD Blue," shaking and jittering around, unmotivated, way more than any actual documentary camera would.

I don't like to put too much effort into things. I find that once you get involved with special effects it is no longer about what is happening in front of the camera and I really want to concentrate on what is happening in front of the camera, like the man apparently peeing on the surface of the screen.

Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye.

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.

Both those taking snaps and documentary photographers... have not understood information. What they produce are camera memories, not information, and the better they do it, the more they prove the victory of the camera over the human being.

The camera’s not a camera, really. It’s an open door we need to walk through. It’s up to us to keep moving our feet.

I've always had two principles throughout all my life in motion-pictures: never do before the camera what you would not do at home and never do at home what you would not do before the camera.

I've often said, not totally jokingly, that screenwriting doesn't really qualify as real writing at all. You don't string sentences into paragraphs. You don't maintain a constant breath, or create internal rhythms, or even develop a fully-formed thought. The camera does all that work for you!

As a director, you want to be really connected to every part of your set, from your actors all the way to your camera operators. Everybody is a part of the creative process, and if they feel like they're part of a team versus just being a tool, they're going to give you something special.

You can start a documentary with just a camera, as opposed to a fiction film where you need actors, a crew, a script, a lot more start-up resources. It may be self-perpetuating.

I know the pleasure you get from making your films. The intense involvement in every aspect: the acting, the camera, the colors, the costumes, even the hair and makeup. Editing is thrilling. Everything to do with films is absorbing - everything but the money part, the business. But I'm deeply glad I've had that experience.

The naked figures in the landscape have willingly undressed for my camera. They are either perfect beings heroically occupying their Edens, or else they are gardeners after the Fall, lost and exposed to both the elements and the lens.

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.

Computer images, like camera images today, will be seen as representations of a simulated, second-degree reality with little or no connection to the unmediated world. This is one lesson we can learn from photographs, and especially from those of the last 25 years: images exist not to be believed, but to be interrogated.

No matter how advanced your camera you still need to be responsible for getting it to the right place at the right time and pointing it in the right direction to get the photo you want.

I'm not used to being in front of a camera as myself. I'm not used to watching myself as myself.

Many of my family members are teachers in the arts, and I picked up the camera years ago, in high school.

When you grow up on camera and in the public eye, you feel you have to put forth this image. I just took that to the extreme and there was a lot of pressure on me

In the theater you rehearse in order to do the performance. And in the movies the rehearsal and the performance are kind of the same thing. You're figuring it out and hopefully the camera is pointed at you when you're doing it.

I know a lot of people who are very good at their craft who have learned - people behind the camera - who really have a lot to offer because they know what they're doing, they know what to do, they've made their mistakes.

You have to really think about what kind of guy the character is and decide on a style that works, that complements my physicality and that's going to be believable, but also be compelling for the audience and for the camera.

Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.

I'm a very creative person, and you know when I hooked up with Benny Boom, I said I want it to be a different kind of video. I want it to be crisp, and I want it to relate, [and] not to be so far over people's heads. And that's when we came up with the p-t-d-d-d-d-d (camera flashes.) You know with the picture changing, and that's it.

I had to learn how to modulate my performances and interpretations of these roles in auditions for the camera.