Cinematography is all about using a camera to capture motion and still images in movies.
It’s key to creating a film’s look and feel focusing on things like lighting, how scenes are set up, colors and various camera angles.
Great cinematography really boosts a movie’s story and its effect on viewers.
It’s a skill that combines a strong grasp of visual storytelling with the know-how to bring a director’s ideas to life visually.
Here are some quotes about cinematography.
Cinematography Quotes
I had a love for photography, which of course rolled into cinematography. ~ Scoot McNairy.
I started out with this dream of being a director and doing cinematography and bought my first film camera at 15. ~ James Brolin.
Everything that is somehow related to direction and filmmaking fascinates me, like cinematography. ~ Sushant Singh Rajput.
Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle. ~ Robert Bresson.
I like the powerful story, the excellent performances the beautiful cinematography and the vision of the “The Piano”. ~ Mabel Cheung
In old movies, the cinematography is a thousand times better than anything today. Writing, a thousand times better. ~ John Kricfalusi.
Cinematography is infinite in its possibilities. much more so than music or language. ~ Conrad Hall.
I am very much open to doing cinematography for any talented filmmaker, if the script is good. ~ Rajiv Menon
Eventually, I think cinematography for every culture is a way to explore different stories, different ways of also delivering a story. ~ Violante Placido
I don’t really believe in the mystery of cinematography – what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense. ~ Roger Deakins
Light can be gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, bare, living, dead, misty, clear, hot, dark, violet, springlike, falling, straight, sensual, limited, poisonous, calm and soft. ~ Sven Nykvist
Depressed, anxious, sad, frightened? Yes. But I’ve never been bored. ~ Dustin Hoffman.
Cinematography is so much about instinct and intuition – you want the same range of experience going into behind the camera as what you see in front of it. Your life experience will come through the lens. ~ Rachel Morrison.
Best Cinematography Quotes
I think the point of cinematography, of what we do, is intimacy. Is intent, is the balance between the familiar and the dream, it is being subjective and objective, it is being engaged and yet standing back and noticing something that perhaps other people didn’t notice before, or celebrating something that you feel is beautiful or valid, or true or engaging in some way. ~ Christopher Doyle.
When you move the camera, or you do a shot like the crane down (in Shawshank) with them standing on the edge of the roof, then it’s got to mean something. You’ve got to know why you’re doing it; it’s got to be for a reason within the story, and to further the story. ~ Roger Deakins.
I believe that filmmakers have to internalize the story and subtext so well that all of the departments can start to speak to each other – that music can speak to cinematography can speak to writing and back again. ~ Shane Carruth.
Not all pictures but some pictures you’re like, “Wow, I wish I could be there” or you feel like you are there. I don’t know what it is about cinematography. ~ Scoot McNairy
In ‘Tree of Life,’ the cinematography records a small story, a celebration of the courage of everyday life. But it does it so up close and so effortlessly that it has the effect of elevating the intimacy of the story to a grand scale. ~ Caleb Deschanel
I think there were some dubious feelings about it, that the first ‘Scarface’ would not be surpassed by the second ‘Scarface.’ We were wrong; it surpassed it. The acting talent, the cinematography – we were propelled into a real class action film. Long after I kick the bucket, it’ll be played. ~ Robert Loggia
I was not getting work, even after auditioning for films. So I started working in a studio as a photographer; I assisted a cinematographer for two ads. I was thinking that I will get into photography or cinematography or assist someone. But then the ‘Dangal’ offer came, and I was busy with the auditions. ~ Fatima Sana Shaikh.
I think people just see cinematography as being about photography and innovative shots and beautiful lighting. We all want our movies to look great visually, to be beguiling and enticing, but I think that what really defines a great cinematographer is one who loves story. ~ Seamus McGarvey
To the question, ‘Is the cinema an art?’ my answer is, ‘what does it matter?’… You can make films or you can cultivate a garden. Both have as much claim to being called an art as a poem by Verlaine or a painting by Delacroix… Art is ‘making.’ The art of poetry is the art of making poetry. The art of love is the art of making love… My father never talked to me about art. He could not bear the word. ~ Jean Renoir
All drama is conflict. Without conflict, there is no action. Without action, there is no character. Without character, there is no story. And without story, there is no screenplay. ~ Syd Field.
Top Cinematography Quotes
People confuse ‘pretty’ with good cinematography. ~ Roger Deakins
I’m not sure that I could give notes to someone that I revere. That’s a general challenge of directing, giving notes to someone you revere. The other big contribution to this, which most people I show footage to take note of is Mauro Fiore’s cinematography is unbelievable. ~ Shawn Anthony Levy
There are a lot of cameramen but not so many photographers. And a lot of cameramen attack from a technical approach without much imagination. They look, but they don’t see. ~ Gordon Willis
My best film is always my next film. I couldn’t make Chungking Express now, because of the way I live and drink I’ve forgotten how I did it. I don’t believe in film school or film theory. Just try and get in there and make the bloody film, do good work and be with people you love. ~ Christopher Doyle
Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc…) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create. ~ Robert Bresson
Music is, for me, a great tool of a filmmaker, the same way cinematography, the acting, editing, post-production, the costumes are. You know, to help you tell a story. ~ Spike Lee
The audience I’m targeting doesn’t care about the language spoken in the films they watch. They’re interested in more important things like story, performance, cinematography etc. ~ Chika Anadu.
Cinematography is a writing with images in movement and with sounds. ~ Robert Bresson.
I like movies where you can come back and re-watch them and admire the cinematography 25 years later. ~ Rob Zombie.
I’m proud of the way I rearrange and put things together, like a chef who makes a great meal, or a filmmaker who puts together a story – it’s casting, editing, cinematography. ~ Bonnie Raitt
The cinematography was of course incredibly important to me because I graduated as a cinematographer. ~ Pirjo Honkasalo
The quality of television is becoming so good from an actor standpoint, where you get to do these amazing scenes with amazing directors and cinematography. ~ Cobie Smulders
I like to say that lighting is about taking the light away. I often like to use the shadows more than the light. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond
There are particular images that I like. Allegro is composed of a series of still life photographs that has been put to speed. There is so much care that has gone into the composition of the cinematography. ~ Helena Christensen.
Interesting Cinematography Quotes
My father would tell anyone who would listen that this dentist thing he was doing was not his passion; cinematography was. ~ Lasse Hallstrom
The cinematography is as much involved with the physicality of the scene, so a lot of our shots are hand-held. I felt the cinematographer needed to be the fourth-character with the same drive as the actors. ~ J. Robert Spencer
And the best films feel like a fist punching you in the solar plexus and all elements of the filmmaking process – the acting, the design, the cinematography, the music, is all working to one end. ~ Ethan Hawke
The art of moviemaking seems to get thrown away. The cinematography is gone, and the look of everything becomes of little importance. You lose the memorable images; everything looks like it’s been shot at night with a security camera. ~ Rob Zombie
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. ~ Abraham Verghese
I feel for Veronica Mars so much when I’m watching at home. It is a wonderful story. The writing is consistently funny, biting, charming, heart-wrenching, etc. I also like the look of it. The cinematography – different from any other show. ~ Jason Dohring
The body moves through space every day, and in architecture in cities that can be orchestrated. Not in a dictatorial fashion, but in a way of creating options, open-ended sort of personal itineraries within a building. And I see that as akin to cinematography or choreography, where episodic movement, episodic moments, occur in dance and film. ~ Antoine Predock
The future of cinematography belongs to a new race of young solitaries who will shoot films by putting their last penny into it and not let themselves be taken in by the material routines of the trade. ~ Robert Bresson
Some directors don’t get involved in the cinematography and are just about story, but I’m definitely more tactile than that in terms of my involvement in the minutiae. ~ Cary Fukunaga
And later I thought, I can’t think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography. ~ Nicolas Roeg.
Quotes about Cinematography
What I found interesting writing a screenplay as opposed to writing a novel is not the obvious thing, which is having to pare everything down and find the kind of essence, the skeleton if you like, which can then be fleshed out by performance and cinematography. ~ Salman Rushdie.
Right before ‘American Dreams,’ I started to pursue these avenues, like short films and getting into a couple night courses to really study photography and cinematography, and the language of visual storytelling. ~ Tom Verica
I wanted to transfer to an art school, and ended up going to the University of Southern California. They had a cinematography school, and I said “Well, that’s sort of like photography, maybe that will be interesting.” And once I started in that department, I found what it was that I loved and was good at. ~ George Lucas
I think women have made progress in cinematography, contrary to women directors, who I think have regressed. There are many more women cinematographers than when I started. ~ Maryse Alberti
Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world. ~ Jean-Luc Godard
In the James Cameron blockbuster ‘Avatar,’ 3-D cinematography is the real star. The bugs and crawling creatures seem to slither into the theater seats. The floating mountains of the planet Pandora hover gloriously overhead. And the Na’Vi, Pandora’s 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned natives, come convincingly to life. ~ Adam Cohen
You make the movie through the cinematography – it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me. ~ Nicolas Roeg
The only consistency in the work I do is that I try to use cinematography to best tell the narrative and do justice to the character arcs, but not to do it in such an overt way that people are distracted by it. ~ Rachel Morrison
I don’t come from a film background. I haven’t learned anything about films or film-making. But I have a thirst to know everything about my profession. I want to learn about cinematography, about editing, about music recordings, about post-production. So when people in the know talk, I willingly listen. ~ Priyanka Chopra
We’ve tried to use some visual motifs [in Beauty and the Beast]. As far as the cinematography and the lensing and all that, we are presenting a different view into that world. It’s a little sleeker, but we’re keeping the gothic feel underneath it. ~ Brian Wayne Peterson.
