I actually wanted to first direct and produce, but then I got this very cool opportunity to be in front of the camera once.
I've got a lot of weaknesses. One of them is that I often get scared and tense when I'm working - and fear is one of the big threats to any good performance, because it closes you down and makes it harder for you to produce life in front of the camera.
My dad and I used to shoot little one-stop animations on an old 8mm film camera when I was no more than 7 or 8, and when he was away at work, I would keep shooting nonsensical, short animated films using 'Star Wars' figures or Smurfs - depended what the narrative was.
I've been in beautiful landscapes where one is tempted to whip out a camera and take a picture. I've learned to resist that.
My two boys were the same ages as the kids in the show. In real life or in between the breaks I was raising two kids off camera who were not unlike the two kids who were being paid to be my kids.
The camera can photograph thought.
So much of comics are dictated by characters talking to one another - or in focused spaces where 'the camera' has to stay in pretty close on what's going on.
I did have a very advanced grandmother, my mother's mother, who wanted to buy me a camera. My parents wouldn't let her. Eventually she won, and I got a camera in about 1948, a Voigtlander.
At times those skills were really hard to do because not only was I having to contend with the camera, but I was having to learn these new skills and the ball was always kind of doing what you didn't want it to do. So it got a little bit frustrating at times but we got there.
I do think deception... There's something kind of odd about tricking people for a living, but ultimately, it's a remarkably honest profession, when you think about it. If you violate that code, and you say you're not using camera tricks, and then you do, I actually think that's a kind of serious moral issue.
I know every actor says this, but the people behind the camera are great. They always have answers.
I was bullied as a kid, and I got a job on television. And I had a camera. And so I wanted to go after those business bullies. And I just have been following that instinct.
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.
My manager and fellow YouTuber, Mike Lamond, encouraged me to start a YouTube channel as a way to practice speaking, entertaining, and being more comfortable in front of a camera. In the beginning, I used an $80 dollar flip-camera and edited every episode myself.
I've always been intimidated by the technicalities of taking photos, especially with a film camera - not just a point and shoot.
In the old days, before there was such a thing as film schools, directors learned the camera by watching other directors, and learning from their own dailies, and listening to the cameraman, and seeing what would work. Some of those guys could cut their movies in their head.
There's something inimical about the camera and song.
I went to theatre school for four years and just wanted to do theatre. I had no ambition to be on TV or to be on camera. I just wanted to go to New York or London and be on stage... I did a lot of theatre in Montreal, got involved in TV in Toronto and then moved to L.A. I hope that film and TV will take me back to theatre.
I thought that it would be easier to learn that if I worked in motion pictures. So I went to work with one motion picture producer who was developing a color system. This didn't do to me much good. All I did was pick filters for the camera.
Actors' performances in films are enhanced in a million different ways, down to the choice of camera shot by the director - whether it's in slow motion or whether it's quick cut - or... the choice of music behind the close-up or the costume that you're wearing or the makeup.
When I talk to the camera, mate, it's not like I'm talking to the camera, I'm talking to you because I want to whip you around and plunk you right there with me.
I've always known that I love directing but I was really aware of it while making 'Beginners.' I am my happiest when I'm on set directing. I am also my kindest. When the actors get in front of the camera, it makes them very vulnerable. I am so in love with them for trying so hard.
Off camera, I am not so quiet, I have a fun time, relaxed.
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.
I don't want to become a star. I never wished to become an actor, even when I am here. When you decide to become an actor, you've to choose why you're doing it. Are you doing it to become an actor or because you want to be famous? I am doing it because I love being in front of the camera.
I made a big mistake with him the first day I shot. We're shooting the scene where I come back from the party, the dance, in the sleigh with Julie Christie and we turn the corner and go past the camera and the camera follows us just a little bit and we disappear.
At the end of Requiem all I wanted to do was get a DV camera and just do a small film. But then the hunger comes back.
Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand.
If the breaking news event has something to do with young people, specifically with MTV's audience, there was a higher chance that I would actually go cover it with a television camera instead of just write the story myself and read it on the air.
I spent a lot of years just learning my craft and falling down in front of the camera.
Butte was once a grand city. To me, that city is like one big stage for Edward Hopper. You could put your camera anywhere, and you felt you were looking at his paintings.
In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.
We did very little improvisation on camera, and once in a while we did.
Performing has always been something I wanted to do. My dad had a video camera and I loved being in front of it.
It's kind of dangerous to cut in the camera, but that's the only way I know how to direct.
We can bring it all down to the subtleties of the shifting of an eye because we know the camera will catch it. That has been a great thing to learn, and it makes it interesting for a guy who has been in it as long as I have.
