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The best way to know when there's good lighting is when you don't notice it.

Vilmos Zsigmond

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Vilmos Zsigmond
Age: 85 †
Born: 1930
Born: June 16
Died: 2016
Died: January 1
Cinematographer
Film Producer
Segedo
Way
Good
Lighting
Notice
Best

More quotes by Vilmos Zsigmond

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In a period piece, particularly a fantasy, the lighting is your own choice, the lenses are your own choice. It's really a great thing for a cinematographer to do. Everything is open for you. You can even be more creative and you can use more shadows than usual.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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When we came to America, the movies here needed a new wave. European films looked totally different than American movies, which were these lush, glossy pictures with this elaborate production design.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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I think that the audience should not be able to tell if it is real or not real - it should be an enhanced version of reality, or an artistic view of reality, that captures not only what is physically there, but what is not visible - the mood.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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Sometimes the shots serve as homages to other movies and other directors, like Hitchcock.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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There are many, many different kinds of movies and directors and styles. I don't mind that a movie looks like a movie.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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I don't think there is any advantage to digital unless it's in a case like Slumdog Millionaire, where you have to get a shot and a big bulky film camera is out of the question.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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I am actually retired - yes, I am retired. But I like to work. So I'm retired until someone calls me up to work.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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I don't know the American photographers as well, but I admit I love Ansel Adams. His landscapes are so crisp.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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As an actor, Sean [Penn] is brilliant. And he's really an excellent director, as well. We got along really well.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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I love to make movies about young people - young scientists that are inventing things and all the writing they did was very funny and very true.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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I shot a lot of commercials and sometimes I enjoy the commercial shooting and sometimes I really hate it, but in thirty seconds or one minute, you can make some remarkable work shooting in one or two or three days.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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There is something missing in a lot of digital filmmaking, something I call poetic reality. That's something you see played out in film noir, where the technique establishes the mood.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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Telling the story with only a few shots, I love that style. It makes you feel like you're part of the action, part of the story. It reminds me of the theater, where one act is basically like one long shot. It almost makes you forget that you're seeing a movie.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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If you do not bother to take the time to compose and to light properly, then you end up with something almost less than reality. You end up without the soul, the heart, the art of the moment.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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I was really fortunate from the time I arrived in Hollywood to work with some of the greatest directors from the beginning. I worked with Robert Altman, John Boorman, and of course Steven Spielberg, Michael Cimino, Brian De Palma ... I couldn't pick one of them they were all different, but they are all so talented.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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Some movies are what I would call murky. Just because it's murky doesn't make it artistic. It makes it hard to see.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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The studios are never going to make $200 million a picture with those types of movies. It's not familiar to them, and it's not a model that can necessarily be sustained. Now, if they go back to making movies about people ... well, I hope they do that.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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When you are shooting a movie, you have to collaborate with many, many, many people. First of all, the director with all his own ideas and I can only just help him with that. I cannot change his idea.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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I am not against digital at all.
Vilmos Zsigmond
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In fact, I probably learned more about photography from studying black-and-white photography in those magazines [Look Magazine and LIFE Magazine] than I did from watching movies here. That's the truth.
Vilmos Zsigmond