Director Of Photography Quotes

No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It’s the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.

That, really, was Sandy’s choice: Tommy’s naked ass or Steven Spielberg’s director of photography.

The last week of shooting, we did a scene in which I drag Amanda Wyss, the sexy, blond actress who played Tina, across the ceiling of her bedroom, a sequence that ultimately became one of the most visceral from the entire Nightmare franchise. Tina’s bedroom was constructed as a revolving set, and before Tina and Freddy did their dance of death, Wes did a few POV shots of Nick Corri (aka Rod) staring at the ceiling in disbelief, then we flipped the room, and the floor became the ceiling and the ceiling became the floor and Amanda and I went to work. As was almost always the case when Freddy was chasing after a nubile young girl possessed by her nightmare, Amanda was clad only in her baby-doll nightie. Wes had a creative camera angle planned that he wanted to try, a POV shot from between Amanda’s legs. Amanda, however, wasn’t in the cameramen’s union and wouldn’t legally be allowed to operate the cemera for the shot. Fortunately, Amy Haitkin, our director of photography’s wife, was our film’s focus puller and a gifted camera operator in her own right. Being a good sport, she peeled off her jeans and volunteered to stand in for Amanda. The makeup crew dapped some fake blood onto her thighs, she lay down on the ground, Jacques handed her the camera, I grabbed her ankles, and Wes called, “Action.” After I dragged Amy across the floor/ceiling, I spontaneously blew her a kiss with my blood-covered claw; the fake blood on my blades was viscous, so that when I blew her my kiss of death, the blood webbed between my blades formed a bubble, a happy cinematic accident. The image of her pale, slender, blood-covered legs, Freddy looming over her, straddling the supine adolescent girl, knife fingers dripping, was surreal, erotic, and made for one of the most sexually charged shots of the movie. Unfortunately it got left on the cutting-room floor. If Wes had left it in, the MPAA - who always seemed to have it out for Mr. Craven - would definitely have tagged us with an X rating. You win some, you lose some.

I believe that design must be integrally wedded to editorial content. Some people read images, others read words, but most of us read both. So the overall design, art, photography, text, and sometimes even the typography should be, in the best of cases, considered “content.” Hence the art director’s content must complement the editor’s content.

Cinematographer.” Such an ornate term, yet still so vague. I often wonder if that’s to blame for how overlooked we are as a profession. Or even worse, that dry title, “Director of Photography.” But we are the true artists. A director may quite literally call the shots, but it is the cinematographer that makes them. We choose the angles, the lighting, pretty much everything that you see on the screen. The camera is a brush, and we are the hand, the arm, the eye. The director’s basically just the mouth, making pointless noise while the hand does the actual work. Almost every famous director that you know who has a distinctive visual style has simply managed to lock down a talented DoP.

Frankly, the racial-harmony shit put Pepper on edge. The majority of the film crew were hippie freaks, but Zippo and the director of photography and Angela, the lady who did the wardrobe and makeup, were black. The white people did what they were told. This was America, melting pot and powder keg. Surely something was about to pop off. It kept not happening. Pepper had never worked jobs with white people before. Pulling shit in Newark, then uptown in those days, that was the reality. It was not done. Occasionally he'd get asked to join a crew with a white wheelman or a bankroll and that was a sign to wait for the next gig. His current refusals were simple common sense. Pepper barely trusted Negro crooks--why extend the courtesy to some cracker motherfucker who'd fuck you over first chance? Sometimes black people fell over themselves trying to vouch for a white man who hadn't wronged them. Yet.

In 1987, he landed a gig as the director of photography on the video for R.E.M.’s song “The One I Love,

Land was not surprised by digital photography. He’d argued for that loonshot in front of the president of the United States. He did so before anyone else was even in the game. In a 1988 ceremony honoring Land, the director of the CIA, William Webster, declared, “The contributions Dr. Land has made to national security are innumerable, and the influence he has had on our present intelligence capabilities is unequaled.” So what happened with Polaroid? Why didn’t Land jump on digital for his own company, exploit the head start from his national intelligence connections, and use those advantages to beat Sony, Canon, and Nikon to the punch? FALLING IN LOVE Moses Trap: When ideas advance only at the pleasure of a holy leader, who acts for love of loonshots rather than strength of strategy

I feel like flying when I take my drone out into the desert or over the tall skyscrapers in the UAE (Dubai) to capture beautiful imagery.

The Doors music has been included in movies and their career has inspired feature films. Chapter 8 - The Doors at The Movies Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison were film students at UCLA when they met. They both had an abiding interest in film and the past masters as well as creating a new cinema. Through The Doors they did create cinema. At first, one strictly of The Doors, but as their influence and legend spread through culture they, in turn, inspired those that were creating movies.   The Doors Film Feast of Friends Late in March 1968 (the exact date is unknown) The Doors decided to film a documentary of their forthcoming tour. The idea may have come about because Bobby Neuwirth, who was hired to hang out with Jim and try to direct his energies to more productive pursuits than drinking, produced a film Not to Touch the Earth that utilized behind the scenes film of The Doors. The band set up an initial budget of $20,000 for the project. Former UCLA film students Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek hired film school friends Paul Ferrara as director of photography, Frank Lisciandro as editor, and Morrison friend Babe Hill as the sound recorder. The first show shot, for what would be later named Feast of Friends, was the April 13th performance at the Santa Rosa Fairgrounds. Overall shooting of the film lasted for five months between March and September, and captured the riots in Cleveland and the Singer Bowl. Filming culminated in Saratoga Springs, New York, where backstage Morrison goofed around on a warm up piano and improvised a hilarious ode to Frederick Nietzsche. After filming started, the concept grew and Feast of Friends was to incorporate fictional scenes (some version of HWY?). But problems started to arise. The live sound, in parts, was unusable so the decision was made to use the album cuts of Doors songs. The budget grew by another $10,000 and the film still wasn’t finished. A decision was made by Ray, Robby and John to pull the plug on the film, but Paul Ferrara appealed to Jim and a compromise was worked out. The fictional scenes would be dropped and another $4,000 was added to the budget to complete the editing. The completed film runs to about thirty-eight minutes and is mostly images taken from different shows, or the band prior to a show. It has some footage of the Singer Bowl riot, which shows the riot in full flower, the stage crowded with policemen and fans. Occasionally, Morrison comes out of nowhere to encourage it all. The centerpiece of the film is The End from the Hollywood Bowl show. The film suffers a bit from not using live sound, the superimposition of album cuts of songs (except the Hollywood Bowl footage) removes the viewer from the immediacy and impact of The Doors. Feast of Friends was later accepted at five major film festivals, including the Atlanta International Film Festival that Frank Lisciandro describes in An Hour For Magic. In later years Feast of Friends was shelved, missing the late 70’s midnight movie circuit showing rock films. In the 80’s with the advent of MTV, Ray Manzarek started producing videos of Doors songs for showing on MTV and they relied heavily on the Feast of Friends footage. Chances are that even if you haven’t seen Feast of Friends you’ve seen a lot of the footage.   Jim Morrison Films HWY The Doors had laid low for just over a month. On March 1, 1969, the ‘Miami Incident’ had occurred, at first with no reaction more than any other Doors show, and the band went off on a prearranged Jamaican vacation in anticipation