Gordon Willis famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

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

#Imagination #Looks #Photographer
A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist - moving an audience through a movie ... making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark.
-- Gordon Willis

#Moving #Dark #Thinking
If you take a sophisticated idea, reduce it to the simplest possible terms so that itâ€™s accessible to everybody, and donâ€™t get simple mixed up with simplistic, itâ€™s how you mount and present something that makes it engaging.
-- Gordon Willis

#Simple #Ideas #Sophisticated
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

#Simple #Way #Human Nature
I don't believe in doing thousands of cuts, then giving it to the editor to make the movie. 'Dump-truck directing' is my reference to that style of moviemaking. You have to know how to cut before you can shoot well. The lack of definition in movies today is appalling. Very few people know how to mount a narrative anymore. If a scene works in one cut, you don't need 10. Or it might need 10. Let's not make it 20.
-- Gordon Willis

#Believe #Cutting #Editors
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.
-- Gordon Willis

#People #Lazy #Directors
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.
-- Gordon Willis

#Morning #Who I Am #Two
Don't get simple mixed up with simplistic.
-- Gordon Willis

#Simple
I wasn't trying to be different; I just did what I liked. Don't misunderstand when I say I really had no particular DP I was aspiring to be. I really fell in love with the movies as I was growing up, and I must say, I was emulating things that I saw others doing, thatâ€™s how you learn, but you soon have to push past that, and do things that you feel are rightâ€¦ or better.
-- Gordon Willis

#Growing Up #Past #Trying
Complexity is not good. People don't understand the elegance of simplicity.
-- Gordon Willis

#People #Simplicity #Elegance
Grips and electricians have done more to help me shoot good movies than any other craft.
-- Gordon Willis

#Good Movie #Done #Crafts
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.
-- Gordon Willis

#Photography #Beer #Crafts
The lack of perfection, that's the hardest quality of all, because you're fighting your instincts. You're trained to want to do things perfectly.
-- Gordon Willis

#Fighting #Perfection #Quality

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