Quotes About Camera

While working with a camera crew supervising flight testing of advanced aircraft at Edward's Air Force Base, California, the camera crew filmed the landing of a strange disc object that flew in over their heads and landed on a dry lake nearby. A camera crewman approached the saucer, it rose up above the area and flew off at a speed faster than any known aircraft.

Live television drama was like live theater, because you moved without thinking about the camera. It followed you around. In film you have to be more aware of what the camera is doing.

Being behind the camera you have control; you have the ability to make decisions for characters, for where the story line's going to go, how you want to put it out there, how you want to edit it. Acting is like where you paint on the canvas, and being behind the camera is like being either the paint or the paintbrush. They're both a part of the creative process, it's just that they have two different functions.

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 like people who are hypocritical, who pretend to be nice, particularly in show business when they're nice on camera, and then off camera they're absolutely appalling to the makeup people, or the waitress in a restaurant, you know? I don't like - I can't bear those kind of people. So I like people who are, you know, up front in your face.

A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph.

It doesn't matter if they're in front of the camera or behind the camera. I know women who are producers who are surviving on nothing but juice and almonds.

I'm a narrative-minded actor. I'm thinking of the story. I'm not worried about whether the camera is on the right side of my face, or where the camera is. I'm just going for the story.

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.

McLeod's Daughters was my first regular job out of drama school, and my first full-time role. That was great because I learned a lot, in terms of working in front of the camera. I learned a lot of technical aspects that you take for granted once you know them, but you have to learn them somewhere, along the way. It was a bit of a training ground for me, working in front of the camera and also dealing with media.

I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.

What some highbrows call rapport is nothing more than a mild flirtation between photographer and the girl on the other side of the camera. Some models get so professional they can send hours flirting with the camera itself while the poor photographer is reduced to the role of spectator.

Screen work always boils down to that moment between the camera and the actor or the actors. It always boils down to that, ultimately. You serve the camera.

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.

It took two years of me telling Canon engineers that a camera is a thing between the human hand and the human eye, so it had to have ergonomics on both sides! They got the message, and we did it, and overnight it was the camera of the world. Everyone - Nikon, Yashica, Sony - all copied Colani.

And as an actor, just working with someone as seasoned and professional and kind as Richard Jenkins, it's always a learning experience watching him - on camera and off camera, just soaking it all up.

As far as digital technology has come, there's still one thing that digital cameras won't do: give you perfect color every time. In fact, if they gave us perfect color 50% of the time, that would be incredible, but unfortunately every digital camera (and every scanner that captures traditional photos) sneaks in some kind of color cast in your image. Generally, it's a red cast, but depending on the camera, it could be blue. Either way, you can be pretty sure-there's a cast.

A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they'll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won't do a thing for you if you don't have anything in your head or in your heart.

With the RED, I didn't have this impression at all. I felt that it was as heavy as a film camera. Having this great crew, with the DP and his assistants, I found it making as much of an impression as a very big film camera. I didn't relate to it as much. I remember avoiding it during the shooting rather than paying attention to it.

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.

I ask my assistants if they're retarded all the time. When the camera is on you, of course, actors have the ability to make it real. For me, if I'm not talking, it is a problem. I have so much more respect for actors after being in front of the camera, and I realize that the hardest part is when you're not talking. Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.

Ever since the invention of the camera, people have been trying to create 3D, because we see things in 3D, and everyone's aware that the camera doesn't.

I don't stand behind the camera drooling. Knowing that, the models are more likely to open up and relax.

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

I have a way to photograph. You work with space, you have a camera, you have a frame, and then a fraction of a second. It's very instinctive. What you do is a fraction of a second, it's there and it's not there. But in this fraction of a second comes your past, comes your future, comes your relation with people, comes your ideology, comes your hate, comes your love - all together in this fraction of a second, it materializes there.

I don't really believe in the mystery of cinematography - what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense.

I always try to create equal power between the subject and the object, so as not to end up creating a relationship where the camera is here and the object out there. This is for me a very difficult and sensitive balance. When I produce a work, cut and frame images, I realize that spectators can identify with the images and almost forget that someone else actually made them. This would be the optimal situation. I don't know whether I succeed in doing so, but that's what I would like to have happen.

The idea of working with Steven Spielberg was very attractive. He's such a master. He knows the language of the camera and of filmmaking, which gives him a great freedom.

I spent every day just praying that I didn't look like a big dork on camera.

I've been a soldier, I've been a bunch of little girls, all sorts of roles that I would not have been able to be with on camera context because I just don't look the part.

Although I was entirely relaxed on camera, if I had to stand up and say something to an assembled group of people, I was rendered all but inarticulate.

I'm gay. It feels so weird saying it on camera!

It's hard to put yourself in front of a camera, in front of the world, when you don't feel like you look the part. I've always had that problem. But I deal with it every day. When I'm interviewing, I'm like, "How do I look? Do I look all right?"

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.

I worked on 'Sarah Connor' even longer than 'Firefly.' And I always remembered how generous everyone was to me when I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know the rules, and I didn't know camera angles, and I didn't know lighting.

The one hour live debate in the West Wing that we did was one of the most exciting times for me on stage or on camera, because anything could go wrong.

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

Animators do amazing working translating and interpolating the characters [in the Planet of the apes], the facial performances. What we're creating on set - if you don't get it on the day, in the moment, on set, in front of the camera, with the director and the actors. The emotional content of the scene and the acting choices.

I definitely prefer the single camera better. For me it's the simple fact that I enjoy working in front of an audience, but when you're trying to create a suspension of disbelief it's much harder to do in front of audience because they become a partner. Moreso than that, they become in charge of the timing. From the simple, mechanical fact that you have to hold for their laughter. The actual timing of the scene is in the hands of the audience. As a control freak, I don't enjoy that as much as the ability to be able to control it in an edit room.

I don't want to disrespect hip-hop by being something I'm not. I'm Pooch Hall. My strength is in front the camera and holding dialogue.

You should always be taking pictures, if not with a camera then with your mind. Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident.

Aging on camera is just very hard. I love my age. I feel good about myself but high definition television is not kind. You don't even look like yourself in high-def. It just makes every little line on your face more exaggerated so it ends up aging you. It's like you're watching yourself seven years older.

My urge to photograph is activated by an almost biological instinct for preservation from disorder. The camera is a mechanical apparatus that extends my natural ability and desire for meaningful organization. I need it to survive.

There's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way.

When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.

I grew up in New York, so I fell in love with acting on a stage, not in front of a camera.

I want to allow others to reveal and celebrate aspects of themselves that are usually hidden. My camera is a witness. It holds a light up for my subjects to help them feel their own essence, and gives them the courage to collaborate in the recording of these revelations.