Lens Quotes

There are certain directors - Spielberg, David Fincher, John McTiernan - who sort of see things in three dimensions, and I was watching their films and sort of breaking them down to see how they laid sequences out, and how they paid attention to things like lens length, where the eyelines were, when the camera moved, how they cut, how they led your eye from one part of the frame to another.

They say a lot of women would like to see me naked, but there`s not a lens long enough for that.

It`s a great thriller or mystery, but on another level it`s a film about the fact that, if you only look at a person through one lens, or only believe what you`re told, you can often miss the truth that is staring you in the face.

Every year or so, I try to do something; it keeps me refreshed as to what`s going on in front of the lens, and I understand what the actor is going through.

(On whether he operates camera in his movies): The criterion is when I want to see what`s going on through the lens. Usually, it comes down to performance more than technique...I`ve also worked with the same camera crews, even down to the assistants, on the last four films. (1999). So, we`ve developed a family in camera. A family that picks right up where they left off every few years. I see the world from the perspective of a 5`8" person, not someone who is 6`4". so naturally, I`m going to choose certain lens heights over and again...Sometimes nature makes choices for you.

Marilyn Monroe wanted to be this great star but acting just scared the hell out of her. That`s why she was always late - couldn`t get her on the set. She had trouble remembering lines. But none of it mattered. With a very few special people, something happens between the lens and the film that is pure magic. And she really had it.

On acting: "You don`t need talent to star in a motion picture. All you need is some intelligence AND the ability to work freely in front of the lens. Why do I always freeze? I went through the war. I jumped out of bombers. I played kick-the-can with E-boats when all we had was a lousy forty-foot dragger with six machine guns and a top speed of six knots. Yet whenever I get a closeup in a nice warm studio, I curl up and die."

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

Whenever I arrive on a real location, I have to move around and work out what the best angles are going to be. When I was moving around with the lens, I discovered things that the naked eye would not have.

My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can`t come in closer with the 35 mm.

I always wanted to know what lens they were on, how close they were. I didn`t do it with a plan in mind, but I would instinctively gear what I was doing toward what lenses they were using.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

It`s like that with what sort of ideas people outside of the band have of HIM. They all see it through a different lens as well which is beautiful. Hopefully, it makes it an endless topic of conversation.

I`d love to have a zoom lens and add some extra capabilities for gosh sake, and I`m not allowed to do it.

Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the `ah-ha`.

I`ve wanted to see beyond the Western, mechanical view of the world and see what else might appear when the lens was changed.

The data, however, do indicate that Christians who see Jews through a 17th-century lens, believing that most are thoroughly religious, are thoroughly wrong.

I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.

Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.

It`s the outfit or the face; you`re constantly working the lens (and) bringing it in and out like that.