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The thing about film is that your eye is selective. Film isn't. You have to make film do what you want. Simply photographing something doesn't do it. You have to know how to apply light and know what it does on film.

Gordon Willis

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Gordon Willis
Age: 82 †
Born: 1931
Born: May 28
Died: 2014
Died: May 18
Cinematographer
Film Director
Gordon Hugh Willis
Jr.
Doe
Photographing
Thing
Selective
Something
Apply
Make
Simply
Eye
Doesn
Film
Light

More quotes by Gordon Willis

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I'm a great believer in relativity when making movies. Relativity, in my mind, meaning Light to dark, big to small, good to bad. You visually embrace these things to enhance transitions and instantly paint environments and moods.
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Don't get simple mixed up with simplistic.
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I don't really like directing. I've had a good relationship with actors, but I can do what I do and back off. I don't want that much romancing. I don't want them to call me up at two in the morning saying, 'I don't know who I am.
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I hate when somebody says, This may not work. You'll never get anywhere with that. I've pushed a lot of people out of my way - I don't mean physically - over them being afraid something isn't going to work.
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A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist, moving an audience... making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark.
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Zooms are lazy closeups. And too many people hang their hats on video assist it's a way to avoid too much. Video assist helps people dissociate from the scene that they are directing. Pretty soon the director will be directing all the way from his apartment.
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Good films are not made by accident, nor is good photography. You can have good things happen, on occasion, by accident that can be applied at that moment in a film, but your craft isn't structured around such things, except in beer commercials.
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Complexity is not good. People don't understand the elegance of simplicity.
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I'm a minimalist. I see things in simple ways...It's human nature to define complexity as better. Well, it's not.
Gordon Willis