Gordon Willis Quotes

12 quotes in 229 categories

• 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.
• Grips and electricians have done more to help me shoot good movies than any other craft.
• Complexity is not good. People don't understand the elegance of simplicity.
• Don't get simple mixed up with simplistic.
• 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…
• 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…
• A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist - moving an audience through a movie ... making them think the way you want them to think, painting…
• If you take a sophisticated idea, reduce it to the simplest possible terms so that it’s accessible to everybody, and don’t get simple mixed up…
• 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…
• 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…
• I'm a minimalist. I see things in simple ways...It's human nature to define complexity as better. Well, it's not.
• 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…

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