I like to know where the camera is.
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.
The biggest battle for a lot of people who come out of the theater, which is where I was trained, is that they can never forget that a camera is pointed at them.
And, you run also video because to fly this arm, you’re relying mostly on some external camera views that may be coming from the arm itself or from the station.
I’m glad I took the leap away from acting into going behind the camera because it’s much more satisfying – I love acting and I still do, but it’s much more satisfying to be able to make the stuff.
I’m not in front of the camera, they are. I encourage them; I build up as much of their confidence and ego as possible. They’ve got to take control; I can’t act it out.
After I did nine years of a television series, I didn’t want to do anything really that involved going to a set and being in front of a camera for quite a while. And when I did start to want to do things, I wanted to focus more on film.
I did nothing but theater until, I guess, ’99. I was all the way through college the first time that I had stepped in front of a camera. And it’s weird; it’s definitely a transition.
To have an opportunity to get in front of a camera every single day is just priceless because it gets you closer and closer to being less self-consciousness in front of it and really being human and really making choices and standing by them.
I’m not so funny. Gilda was funny. I’m funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while. But she was funny. She spent more time worrying about being liked than anything else.
I began working with a family camera. It was called a Kodak Autographic, which was one of those things where you flopped it open and pulled out the bellows. And I’ve been at it ever since; I’ve never stopped.
I would definitely stay in the business, be behind the camera maybe.
I can often tell when drawings are done from photographs, because you can tell what they miss out, what the camera misses out: usually weight and volume – there’s a flatness to them.
I think most actors jump at the chance to do something where the camera’s on them all the time.
I think at this point, I’d eventually like to work behind the camera. That’s not to say I would never act again, I’m not quite sure to be honest.
There’s always a certain amount of camera improvisation.
A neighborhood friend showed me how it was possible to go to a camera shop and pick up chemicals for pennies… literally… and develop your own film and make prints.
There is nothing worse than when actors come to a set – and it happens a lot with big stars – and they are too aware of where the camera is. They are the show. And that becomes apparent and it affects the production. I am like ‘You should not know where the camera is – you should act, and I will do the rest.’
I used to fly around the stage without strings or camera tricks. That took seven years to create.
If I didn’t have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.
You know why I don’t like that camera? Because it prevents me from seeing you!
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.
I think I’m becoming more relaxed in front of a camera. I suppose I’ll always feel slightly more at home on stage. It’s more of an actor’s medium. You are your own editor, nobody else is choosing what is being seen of you.
‘Hollyoaks’ is where I learnt a lot of the craft, being in front of a camera six days a week. That’s certainly an experience you don’t get in drama school. It invites you to be comfortable in front of the camera.
But I can say what interests me about documentary is the fact that you don’t know how the story ends at the onset – that you are investigating, with a camera, and the story emerges as you go along.
! discovered photography completely by chance. My wife is an architect; when we were young and living in Paris, she bought a camera to take pictures of buildings. For the first time, I looked through a lens – and photography immediately started to invade my life.
I wasn’t interested in having to live with a camera – I have a hard enough time getting along with myself. I don’t need cameras around and all that action.
I used to hate doing color. I hated transparency film. The way I did color was by not wanting to know what kind of film was in my camera.
While all the other kids were out playing ball and stuff, I used to stay in my room and imagine that there was a camera in the wall. And I used to really believe that I was putting on a television show and that it was going out to somewhere in the world.
I feel very confident and empowered before the camera, after working with Arjun Rampal.
I just want to do more work. Every time I step in front of a camera I feel young again. I really do. It keeps your mind active and it keeps you going.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar – you pretend it’s not there.
I come from Venezuela, from the independent film arena, and you work with one camera.
I’m one of the few directors that actually shoots a lot in camera.
I don’t like to work with assistants. I’m already one too many; the camera alone would be enough.
The camera fails to capture the ‘business’ in show business! We typically will give 10 percent of our salary to the agent, 10 percent to the manager, and 5 percent to the lawyer, plus the publicist gets a flat fee, which needs to be budgeted for.
When I got on my first set, I watched what the cinematographer was doing, and at that level in film school, the cinematographer has the most control. They’re the one looking through the viewfinder, carrying the camera, framing the shots.
Cooking for me is a way to wind down. It’s different from cooking on camera, where you have to do everything twice, for a wide shot and a close-up.
When you’re even on a regular movie set, you still have to suspend your disbelief. You’re working there with only 3 walls of a room, and you’re in costume, and you have a camera 6 inches from you and have a crew of 75 watching you. So even there, you have to crank up your imagination.
Some people are directors and I think they should stay behind the camera.
You had to make a camera look like it’s traveling at 300 mph, but you couldn’t make it actually travel at 300 mph so you had to slow everything down and build devices to do that. So you were constantly engineering.
I haven’t grown since I was 13, and every girl cast opposite me isn’t allowed to wear heels on camera, for fear that I would look minuscule. In all of the casting calls for my best friends on every project, it says in big, bold, red letters: ‘Please no high heels.’ It’s a little embarrassing.
We’re not going the photography route. I think there is a real distinction between photos and images, and Flickr is for photos, and Instagram is for photos. You wouldn’t put a filter on a meme; you’d put a filter on top of a photo that came from your camera.
The incredible cinematography makes ‘A Walk to Beautiful’ almost like a poem; there is a tenderness on display that seems to emanate from the camera. There is also great sensitivity to the women whose stories are being told – never did I have a sense of the subjects being exploited.
I never studied directing and I never really thought about doing it, and then I just found myself in that situation and tried it. I like to be observing everything else, and I get self-conscious in front of the camera.
My mom had gotten a Super 8 camera to make home movies with, and my brother and me got our hands on it and ran with it.
You’ve got to love acting and that’s true for me. I love the idea of getting on stage and getting in front of a camera.
I learnt a lot about how to negotiate the camera: everyone had told me an actor doesn’t really need to do anything on screen, but I realised that wasn’t true. If you do nothing, it’s boring.
With modeling, you pose. You want to look your best all the time. With acting, you have to be aware of the camera, but the more you show your imperfections, the better you’re going to be.
If you’re not going to tell something if you’re not going to expose something it’s real easy to go in and photograph from behind the camera and not expose any of your weaknesses.
I did take my camera along, as I felt there wouldn’t be enough time to draw the things I wanted to do. I did some drawing and did a lot of photography but I was not part of Stryker’s outfit at all.
I worked a lot on ‘Conan’ as an actor, and when I moved to New York, a lot of my friends were on the first staff of that show. I started doing bit parts, which was the first thing I’d done on camera in front of a live audience.
My role, or anyone’s role in network news, is to make the person on camera look good. You don’t do that, you don’t work there.
I know what it takes to go from the point where someone’s looking at a newspaper article, and thinking, ‘Oh, this would make a great TV series,’ to the point where you’re actually on a set and there’s a camera aimed at someone.
