On Camera Quotes & Sayings

The cast of 'Lemonade Mouth' was picked so perfectly. A lot of people see us as a band on camera, but not a lot of people know that Lemonade Mouth was a band off-camera, too. — Adam Hicks

The act of photography is like going on a hunt in which photographer and camera merge into one indivisible function. This is a hunt for new states of things, situations never seen before, for the improbable, for information. — Vilem Flusser

You find that you have to do many things, more than just lift up the camera and shoot, and so you get involved in it in a very physical way. You may find that the picture you want to do can only be made from a certain place, and you're not there, so you have to physically go there. And that participation may spur you on to work harder on the thing, ... because in the physical change of position you start seeing a whole different relationship. — Jay Maisel

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

A photocopier is a camera in its own right. I was fortunate to grow up in the time and culture that I did. I was allowed to develop an awareness that the art that really moves me is actually based on an original image. — Wolfgang Tillmans

I learnt a lot about how to negotiate the camera: everyone had told me an actor doesn't really need to do anything on screen, but I realised that wasn't true. If you do nothing, it's boring. — Stephen Mangan

One of my favorites:
Robby gave her a skeptical look. "Ye're an angel of death. No offense, but I would call that a wee bit of harm."
"We're called Deliverers, actually. And we're not supposed to take someone before their time."
"How does that work?" Gregori lifted his camera, focusing on her. "I mean do you just go down a line, saying, 'Eenie meenie mynie moe, sorry, dude you gotta go'? — Kerrelyn Sparks

I love acting; I don't want to give up on it at all, but it would be nice to step behind the camera once in a while as well. — Lee Norris

Film, television, and working with a camera is such an intimate art form that if a camera is right on you, and I've got your face filling the screen, you have to be real. If you do anything that is fake, you're not going to get away with it, because the camera is right there, and the story is being told in a very real way. — Paul Feig

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee. — James Cameron

On practical level I can't pick up the camera until I think I know what I want. I don't wander around. It's almost impossible for me to pick up a camera ... it's really hard. — Bill Henson

I guess people wonder if I'm the same on camera as I am off, and I'm pretty much the same, I really am. But that's always asked of me. — Regis Philbin

I don't believe space exists. You're not gonna put a camera on a roomba, stick it in the desert, and tell me it's Mars. — Daniel Tosh

In the theater, you're so much more in charge as an actor. For better or for worse, you know what the audience is seeing. But you can be acting your socks off on film, and then you see the movie, and the camera is on the other actor, or they've cut out the lines you thought were significant, or they've adjusted the plot. So much of it is out of your control. — Susan Sarandon

Kaushik, what about a picture?" my father suggested. I shook my head. I had left my camera, my father's old Yashica, at school. "But you always have it with you." That look of irritated disappointment, the one that had appeared the day my mother died and was missing now that he'd married Chitra, passed briefly across my father's face. "I forgot it," I said. It was true, I did always have the camera with me. Even on quiet weekends when I came home and my father and I saw no one I would bring it, taking it with me on walks. This time I had left it behind, knowing that I would not want to document anything. "I don't understand," my father said. "Neither do I," I replied. "You haven't wanted a picture of anything in years." "That's not true." "It is." We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend. — Jhumpa Lahiri

I like telling stories, I like movies, and I want to work on films. I think I would feel safer behind the camera. — Suraj Sharma

I do voiceovers, but being on-camera and selling something? I wasn't really interested. And then I thought, well, wait a minute. Everybody's selling something. When you turn on the tube ... And then if you go to Europe or Asia, everyone is selling something. All the guys that don't want to be seen selling something here are selling something there. So I thought what the hell? — John Slattery

I do very little on-camera acting, so within a phrase as a voice actor you have to know how to convey when someone is 95 years old or 19 years old ... When I was the lead singer of the California Raisins commercials there was a traditional actor there as well and he would do all these body movements without saying anything because he was "acting." And the only acting the microphone picked up on was silence. — Jim Cummings

I realized the exciting place was behind the camera with the producer, director and so on. — Dino De Laurentiis

He regarded us with dark, evaluating eyes. "This can't be good."
"I'll go first," Dabria began, sucking in a rattling breath.
"Not even close," I shot back. I faced Patch directly, cutting Dabria out of the conversation. "She kissed you! And Dante, who's been tailing you, by the way, caught it on camera. Imagine my surprise when that's what I got an eyeful of earlier tonight. Did you even think to tell me?"
"I told her I kissed you, and that you pushed me away," Dabria protested shrilly.
"What are you still doing here?" I exploded at Dabria. "This is between me and Patch. Leave already!"
"What are you doing here?" Patch echoed to Dabria, his tone sharpening.
"I - broke in," she sputtered. "I was scared. I couldn't sleep. I can't stop thinking about Hanoth and the other Nephilim."
"You have got to be kidding me," I said. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Marlee has said a million times, "Wouldn't it be funny if there was a camera trained on the two of us?" because we get involved in some very interesting situations. We'll be on a plane and she gets handed a Braille menu because they think she is blind, or producers that turn to the director of a show she's on and say, "Marlee Matlin is great, but is she going to be deaf for the whole show?" She used to freak people out with the speaker phone in her car by having me sign what they were saying on the speaker phone and then she would speak herself. — Jack Jason

It's also important to remember that no one is "the bad guy" or "the best friend" or "the whore with a heart of gold" in real life; in real life we each of us regard ourselves as the main character, the protagonist, the big cheese; the camera is on us, baby. — Stephen King

Everywhere we walked we got plenty of attention due to the camera and sound men. The locals love to get on camera. [ ... ] I'd seen footage of Gandhi surrounded like this and always thought it was because he was very popular, but now I wonder if it was just because he had a camera crew with him. — Karl Pilkington

I think the theater work and the on-camera work feed off each other. My theater work has become more simple, and my on-camera work has become more energized or more spontaneous. — Michael Stuhlbarg

It doesn't matter if they're in front of the camera or behind the camera. I know women who are producers who are surviving on nothing but juice and almonds. — Diablo Cody

With non-professionals, there's a lot of time you have to allocate to getting what you want with them, but also you cast based on who they are, to bring out their real personalities. So it's less about working on character and more about just getting them comfortable in front of the camera to be themselves, and understanding the process. — Charles Burnett

Actually, I would love to make a music video. Maybe it would finally put to rest those persistent rumours that have followed me throughout my career - particularly when I was on camera performing - that I had died. — Perry Como

As a relentless gatherer of moments, I find that my favorite images, although grounded in the present, are like spirits shaped by memories. They whisper of fairy tales, poetry, and other lives, as each gesture connects with another and raises yet another from the dead. Shadows flicker on film to an inner melody as I navigate, camera at hand and at the speed of light, through unimaginable worlds - desperately trying to make sense of the joy and suffering before it all disappears. — Sylvia Plachy

There's a subtleness to camera work. You can really create intimate moments on camera, and sometimes that requires a little more precision from an actor because you have to pull people in as opposed to throwing it to them. — Corey Reynolds

When I got the camera on the shoulder, they give me a nickname. They call me 'the tripod' because I'm kind of short and kind of strong. So if I take the camera and I lock myself, you think that you're on a crane. — Luc Besson

NASA's training philosophy is "no surprises." So what they did is put a simulator on Earth where it looks exactly the same as a shuttle toilet and they put a camera down in the bottom of the opening for solid-waste collection, with a light that basically illuminates your asshole. — Mike Mullane

Spontaneity is great when the opportunity is there, but what I'm really saying is you need to trust yourself. Instead of checking and rechecking your camera and the lighting and everything else, just set it up once and trust that you've done it right. Then focus more on capturing the emotion of the photo and less on how technically perfect its composition will be. — Nicola Sinclair

Eve supposed everything about Nadine looked mag, from her sweep of streaky blonde hair to the toes of her jazzed shoes. She had a foxy, angular face, observant green eyes, and a slim body that curved appropriately in her on-camera suit of power red. She was smart, she was sneaky, she was cynical. And for reasons Eve imagined neither of them fully understood, they'd become friends. — J.D. Robb

There were a lot of times in the Cleveland and Chicago organizations when I did something, they wanted to make sure the camera was there. I really didn't want that. This isn't something my parents told me to do. Or something my family told me to do. Or do things for publicity. I do this on my own. I do this from my heart. — Albert Belle

But what does the camera monitor? Some cameras today can identify faces (to match the profile of a runaway), body heat (to trigger an alert when detecting an anxious - and thus presumably a suspicious - person) or logos of cars (to identify the economic status of a person, in order to prompt the appropriate advertising on a billboard). But the vast majority of security apparatuses today monitor movement.1 — Hagar Kotef

We were in production on a movie called All the Real Girls, which filmed in the Fall of 2001, and we really discovered who Danny McBride was, as an actor. When I say we, I mean me and a crew and a small audience that would hit the art house. He'd never acted before, and it was a really refreshing, eye-opening experience to watch him unleash, in front of the camera, all this comedic potential that we knew he had, as a human being and as the guy doing keg-stands at the party. — David Gordon Green

My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes. — Steve Prefontaine

I wish I could be the black woman Soderbergh, and put the camera on my shoulder and shoot beautifully while I directed. — Ava DuVernay

Biologically, I'm lucky - an angular face and dark colouring which shows up well on camera. — Robert Carlyle

When I look out [the window] at the big houses on either side of the road, it's obvious we've entered the rich side of town. Poor people don't post signs like NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE DRIVE, PRIVATE PROPERTY, MONITORED BY CAMERA SURVEILLANCE. I should know because I've been poor my entire life, and the only person I know who ever posted a sign like these is my friend ... and he actually stole the sign off a rich guy's yard. — Simone Elkeles

Things seem more obvious behind the camera. Like the way Corgi keeps one eye on the game and the other on Happy. The way Yelp's hands are shaking and his eyes are shadowed, and the way Jorge watches him without seeming — Dot Hutchison

They took 3-D digital photographs of my entire body. I had to pose stark naked, assuming a kind of Spider-Man position. After a minute, one of the technicians pointed to my genitals and said, Um, we're not getting enough data there ... It wasn't what you think. It turns out that the fancy digital camera doesn't pick up dark areas too well, and they were having trouble because of the hair down there. I actually had to spray on this highlighter stuff. (On having digital photos taken for the invisible man role in the film Hollow Man) — Kevin Bacon

Someone comes and drags you in front of the camera, and they're already saying, "Okay, we got it. Moving on." You get one or two takes. So it's a tough job. — Kurt Voss

I have nothing snarky to say about Joan Rivers' appearance. We should all be that happy with how we look on camera, frankly. — Julie Klausner

Usually I work with a digital camera and compose my works digitally or give them a finish on the computer, in order to make them meet my ideas perfectly. — Loretta Lux

I think that if you can convey a kind of a complexity, a mystery, a truth in stillness, that, to me, is really worth striving for, and I totally agree with Michael Fassbender in that less is more. If it's going on inside you, the camera will find it. — Gabriel Byrne

Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts. — Billy Wilder

I started with the Oakland A's back in 1971 and there was press at every game and there were cameras on me when I was that young. So with 20 years being MC Hammer, I'm comfortable with cameras so when the camera goes on, I continue doing what I'm doing. — MC Hammer

Photography is unlike any other art form. In the other arts there is always a continuous interplay between the artist and his art. He has the painting or sculpture before him. What we have tried to do is to provide a medium for "artistic expression" to anyone with only a reasonable amount of time. By giving him a camera system with which he need only control his selection of focus, composition and lighting, we free him to select the moment and to criticize immediately what he has done. We enable him to see what else he wants to do on the basis of what he has just learned. — Edwin Land

When you're kissing on camera, it becomes an issue visually. It looks like a skinny dinosaur creature is trying to kiss someone. It doesn't look good. It does not look like the classic romance kisses. If an actress is 5'3 and I don't bend down to kiss her, she would probably be kissing my lower sternum. — David Walton

I just gravitated toward (working behind the scenes by) growing up on the different sets and watching my father and other people in their different capacities ... When I was 13 years old, I asked for a Super 8 camera. — Michael Landon Jr.

Nobody put the camera on the background singers who were singing. It was on Stevie Wonder. It was on Elton John. It was on whoever was the lead singer out front. We were 20 feet from stardom. — Darlene Love

The true excitement comes from the actors - that gives you the true drama - and whatever I can do with the camera, that's icing on the cake. — Tony Scott

Her phone lay on the table, so I picked it up, turned on the camera, made a stupid face, and snapped a picture. "What the hell are you doing?" Abby said with a giggle.
I searched for my name, and then attached the picture. "So you'll remember how much you adore me when I call. — Jamie McGuire

Having been in front of the camera just a couple of times, I'm empathetic, because it's very disconcerting. Someone shuffles you off to the trailer; you sit there for eleven hours wondering what the hell's going on. — Kurt Voss

Suddenly this camera, this thing, allowed me to move around the world in a certain kind of way, with a certain kind of purpose. (On receiving a camera for her twenty-first birthday) — Carrie Mae Weems

My house is full of antics, mayhem, foolishness, carrying on, cutting up, shucking and jiving, and I have that whether cameras are there or not. Our youngest just had us up with her shenanigans and hijinks all night. So, it's all the time, even off camera. — Niecy Nash

This acting's serious! And I really respect those actors. It's a tough business to be able to be something you're not and be natural and convince people on camera. — Michael Strahan

I think what's exciting about doing it as found footage - if we all are being honest, found footage gets a little bit of a bad rap sometimes, but I think that there's a lot of potential in the medium in taking it seriously and in treating the audience with respect and in treating the characters with respect in terms of, why is the camera really on? Where would the camera be when it is on? — Dean Israelite

On 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' we started exploring shots that are longer, where the camera is moving around the actors, and there are no cuts, and you feel like you're there. — Emmanuel Lubezki

The plane touches down on very rough ground: its wheelbarrow wheels bounce and one set of wings rises alarmingly while the other dips. Now the Masai and the plane are converging. It's a magnificent shot: the Masai run, run, run, run; because of the optics it is dreamlike. The little plane bounces, shudders, slews and finally makes lasting contact with the ground. At exactly the right moment, as the plane comes to a halt, the Masai warriors, in a highly agitated state, reach the plane, and the camera closes on the pilot, whose face as he removes his leather flying helmet and goggles, appears just above the bobbing red ochre composition of plaited hair and fat-shone bodies. It is Mel Gibson, with a grave expression, which can't quite suppress his unruly Aussieness. — Justin Cartwright

I grew up watching Lindsay and it made me want to do what she does. Just the whole vibe. Being there, being on camera, or on stage, with everybody listening to you it's so cool when people look up to you. I've already been asked for my autograph and it's just a really good feeling to have. — Ali Lohan

I'll make fun of anybody. We're all about falling down and going boom on camera. — Stephen Colbert

I suspect it is for one's self-interest that one looks at one's surroundings and one's self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs. The camera is not merely a reflecting pool and the photographs are not exactly the mirror, mirror on the wall that speaks with a twisted tongue. Witness is borne and puzzles come together at the photographic moment which is very simple and complete. The mind-finger presses the release on the silly machine and it stops time and holds what its jaws can encompass and what the light will stain. — Lee Friedlander

Well, getting behind the camera is something I've always wanted to get involved with. Ever since I was doing movies like 'Zathura' I was very interested in all the different jobs on set and kind of soaking all the information up like a sponge. — Josh Hutcherson

We changed our rules. If a player does not have some sot of altercation on or off the court once each month, we fine him ... The guys that are our top four scorers, each of them will be required once every two months to appear on MTV. The guys who shoot the worst free throws over a one-month period, next time we have a TV game they're required to look into the camera and beat their chests after they make a good play. — Gregg Popovich

The people in makeup would buff away the shine on the face of anyone in front of the camera, and the sound blokes would clip a microphone onto the lapel of a jacket so it looked like something other than an insect about to crawl onto the presenter's chin, but Steven Spielberg this group was not. This was a low-budget operation, thank you very much. — Elizabeth George

So about twenty years ago I gave up on painting - and got into terrible debt after buying a load of camera gear! — Nigel Dennis

I just feel that I enjoy the work more than I ever have ... or just as much certainly. I enjoy making films behind the camera equally to making them in front of the camera on all those years. I just enjoy it, that's all. I've been lucky enough to work in a profession that I have really liked and so I figured I'd just continue until someone hits me over the head and says "get out". — Clint Eastwood

It helps so much being on location. It's like the difference between performing for the rectangle of the camera versus a world being created and then the camera finds things within that. There's a huge difference in that, because what it takes away is performance. You don't feel like performing. You're just kind of doing it. You're existing. — Christian Bale

And every camera in the room turned to focus on my horror-stricken, blood-drained face. — Meg Cabot

In a recent experiment, men were asked to rank how attractive they found photographs of different women's faces. The photos were eight by ten inches, and showed women facing the camera or turned in three-quarter profile. Unbeknownst to the men, in half the photos the eyes of the women were dilated, and in the other half they were not. The men were consistently more attracted to the women with dilated eyes. Remarkably, the men had no insight into their decision making. None of them said, "I noticed her pupils were two millimeters larger in this photo than in this other one." Instead, they simply felt more drawn toward some women than others, for reasons they couldn't quite put a finger on. — David Eagleman

So I was hugely thrilled that my first scene ever on camera was with Hal Holbrook. — Anthony Edwards

I've stabbed a man to death. Had sex with a stranger on camera. My soul was stained black with so many crimes, but I couldn't bear to watch him die. Maybe that made me a coward, worse than Vinny. He had been sadistic. I had been selfish. — Lana Sky

I wore a GoPro camera on my head for all three of my boys. — Nick Woodman

To go into more specifics regarding actors, whether they're from Korea or the U.S., all actors know if they are loved by the director. When they feel that love from the director, they respond by giving a great performance on camera. Also, everyone on set - the crew, the actors - they were aware of the film's message and its broad theme, so these big issues were never discussed on set. — Kim Jee-woon

I try to express in my films things that no other art can approach. In my monster films for example, I use special effects in the same way one would use a special film stock, a special camera, and so on. Monster films permit me to use all of these elements at the same time. They are the most visual kind of film. — Ishiro Honda

What then is the difference between film and theatre? Or should one not rather ask: what are the differences? Let us be content wi th the reply that the screen has two dimensions and the stage three, that the screen presents photographs and the stage living actors. All the subtler differences stem from these. The camera can show us all sorts of things
from close-ups of insects to panoramas of prairies
which the stage cannot even suggest, and it can move from one to another with much more dexterity than any conceivable stage. The stage, on the other hand, can be revealed in the unsurpassable beauty of three-dimensional shapes, and the stage actor establishes between himself and his audience a contact real as electricity. — Eric Bentley

All too frequently the amateur will purchase a fine modern camera and proceed to use it for making the most elementary simple snapshots. This surely is like playing 'Chopsticks' on a concert grand piano. — Sam Haskins

I moved to L.A. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but I really like the entertainment industry. I started to make videos on YouTube to get more comfortable being in front of the camera. The first video I filmed was with my sister. — Rosanna Pansino

Working on camera is a different ballgame in the sense that it's far more intimate work, but the basics and the foundations of being able to create something that isn't necessarily your own instincts - is a character that you have inside your head - whether you're talking about television or film or theater, that still has to be the grounding work. — Rose Leslie

This was not Newt's fault; in his younger days he would go every couple of months to the barber's shop on the corner, clutching a photograph he's carefully torn from a magazine which showed someone with an impressively cool haircut grinning at the camera and he would show the picture to the barber, and ask to be made to look like that, please. And the barber, who knew his job, would take one look and then give Newt the basic, all-purpose, short-back-and-sides. After a year of this, Newt realized that he obviously didn't have the face for haircuts. The best Newton Pulsifer could hope for after a haircut was shorter hair. — Neil Gaiman

The birds do not like this camera," Sveinsson said. "So they fly over it and shit on it. — Elizabeth Kolbert

He'd been an odd one, that boy with the camera. Such a distinctive physique: pale skin so taut on his skeleton, holding himself with a shy hunch, not ugly as such but certainly not handsome, with a demeanor eager to cause no trouble, to attract no attention. — Ali Shaw

When I'm about ready to press the cable release on the View camera, I've tried to anticipate some of the challenges I'm going to encounter in the darkroom. — John Sexton

Thank fuck the camera loved him more than he loved himself.
He could recline on silk sheets for cologne or seethe in a sportscar. His life became the silk sheet he had once reclined upon: smooth, compliant and without substance. In pursuit of that something, he enterprised. His upbringing on Lake Como receded as he found himself sipping sangria on a Monte Carlo balcony, basking on his cruiser in Cannes or cheering Chelsea within a glass suite above the stands. Whether he felt dead inside wasn't up for discussion. — Charles J. Harwood

Bizarrely, on movie sets, they don't really dig it when you look in the camera, which is a bizarre fact. — John Krasinski

I am in love with the idea of doing a movie in 3D. I think 3D would be great in a kind of realistic normal story without throwing objects to the camera, but using the 3D on the emotions in an intimate story. — Bernardo Bertolucci

I only wear heels when it's 100-percent required, and even sometimes not then. I have to talk myself into a bra. I've done an hour of standup where I've been like, "I don't have to wear a bra tonight." If you're going to be on camera, you have to get it together, but other than that, I am pretty lazy as a woman. — Amy Schumer

People who have never done theatre before, and have only worked in front of a camera, would find it very difficult, I think, to know how to command a stage and work with the logistics of being on stage. They're very different. The theatre is quite tricky, actually. — David Wenham

I've rarely played glamorous roles. I don't mind looking plain on camera. — Joanne Froggatt

I went to college and got my degree in acting, but because it was all theater, I really consider my first couple years on 'Mad Men' as amazing training for working in television and for acting on-camera. — Gillian Jacobs

I love the idea of documentaries. I love seeing documentaries, and I love making them. Documentaries are incredibly easy to shoot. The ease with which you can hear something's going on, somebody's going to be somewhere: That sounds so interesting. Pick up your camera and go. — Jonathan Demme

I try to express with the camera what the story is, to get to the heart of the story with picture. In battle I look at things first in terms of people, second in terms of strategies or casualties ... To tell a story, you don't photograph one hundred dead civilians to prove there were one hundred dead civilians. You photograph one dead civilian with an expression on his face that says, This is what it's like if you're a dead civilian in Vietnam. — Horst Faas

I fell in love with the place! You know, the people, the bourbon, the music ... it's in the air. It's something you can't describe on camera. — Brad Pitt

Gotten a good look at her face. But they didn't recognize her as Stark's cohort. They must not have been big on reading blogs or watching the news. Deirdre took the camera. "Sure. Where's the button?" He quickly showed her how to operate it, and Deirdre stepped back to get both of them in the frame. The camera had a telephoto lens. She aimed it at the top of the building, zooming in so that she could look at the skeletal upper levels, where they were preparing to moor a visiting dirigible. With such fantastic zoom, she could see that there were OPA guards in black suits waiting to receive the airship. — S.M. Reine

Instead I just stand there, tears running down my cheeks in nameless emotion that tastes of joy and of grief. Joy for the being of the shimmering world and grief for what we have lost. The grasses remember the nights they were consumed by fire, lighting the way back with a conflagration of love between species. Who today even knows what that means? I drop to my knees in the grass and I can hear the sadness, as if the land itself was crying for its people: Come home. Come home.
There are often other walkers here. I suppose that's what it means when they put down the camera and stand on the headland, straining to hear above the wind with that wistful look, the gaze out to sea. They look like they're trying to remember what it would be like to love the world. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Everything seems really simple on paper until you take a camera out of the box. — David Fincher

She is bending over her child. She can't leave her. The
child is laid out in state on a table. She wants to take one more photograph of the child, probably the last. In life, the child would never sit still for a photograph. She says to herself, "I'm going to get the camera," as if saying to the child, "Don't move. — Lydia Davis

They got a lot of kids now whose uniforms are so tight, especially the pants, that they cannot bend over to pick up ground balls. And they don't want to bend over in television games because in that way there is no way their face can get on the camera. — Casey Stengel