For me, being in front of the camera and training go hand in hand.
My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera.
In a way I feel completely frightened of dealing with other human beings at all, yet here I am sticking my face in front of a movie camera all the time.
I am interested in people. I'm interested in telling stories, whether that is behind the camera or in front of the camera.
I think a lot of the time these days people are so concerned about having the right camera and the right film and the right lenses and all the special effects that go along with it, even the computer, that they're missing the key element.
When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer.
In an ideal world, I'd be able to do my shows in my pajamas. Luckily I've got one of the best stylists in the business, Rebecca Allen - she knows what looks good on camera and gives it a sexy kick.
I don't know if I always want to be in front of the camera. I love producing, I love the camaraderie. I love the adventures. I love the stress.
Nothing could be recorded in those days except by aiming a movie camera at the television screen. It was at least another 10 years before they had any kind of recording medium.
When you are younger, the camera is like a friend and you can go places and feel like you're with someone, like you have a companion.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I loved being asked 2,000 questions a day, storyboarding every move, knowing as though by instinct exactly where the camera had to be, because it was my story.
I remembered a mantra that one of my teachers used to tell me at drama school, that every thought will pass across your face. Even if you're thinking about Shreddies the camera will read it.
And then we watched an amazing number of movies from the late '60s and '70s, which is my favorite time, and we studied their camera movements, their stocks, the way they lit stuff, the colors they used.
The camera fails to capture the 'business' in show business! We typically will give 10 percent of our salary to the agent, 10 percent to the manager, and 5 percent to the lawyer, plus the publicist gets a flat fee, which needs to be budgeted for.
I play football, and most football players are camera shy. We just want to be left alone; we just want to stick to what we do.
Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.
So anyway, I've learned a lot about myself just in terms of acting but just work ethic and interesting things like full-page monologues or talking straight into camera, which I had never gotten to do before.
I think half the battle is just being comfortable in front of the camera - and I already am, doing so many videos and interviews, so then it just takes that extra step of trying to get into character.
Music has its own emotional embodiment. It carries an emotion with it. When you associate a lyric with the music, it's much easier; but when you're standing there completely dry in front of the camera with no musical background, just a fine-tuned, get-this-emotional-story across, it's a very, very intense kind of focus.
Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye.
After the war, there was no industry. We lost the war. We had our whole city destroyed. No money. No studio. No film. No camera. No equipment. We would shoot in the street. We had no actors. Nothing. But we wanted to do movies. And we did the best movies in the world.
The goal is to have to do the shot again because the camera guy shook a little bit as he was laughing. Without that happening, I'm not happy because there's nothing better for me than a world that everybody's just trying to make each other laugh.
In looking at Hollywood and its structure, the director controls the medium, and I want to be in control of certain things. I want to be able to get my own ideas and my own feelings out there, and the only way to do that is to be behind the camera.
The audience is the camera. I don't want the audience to sit and watch, I want it to move.
I had gone to nursing school at Northampton Community College in my hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And nursing didn't feel quite right, and an old boyfriend gave me a 35-millimeter camera just to play with. So, I took a darkroom class.
I don't use film in the way that the great auteurs do. I use film, the camera, to record as effectively and as perceptive as I am able what I want to say through the actors.
I'm working 2 days a week right now, narration usually on Wed., and host on camera on Friday.
People can't imagine an enemy that would cut someone's head off before a video camera and spread it out across the world. But that has happened with the kind of enemy we are now facing.
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.
Usually you talk about directors in terms of the way they choose camera lenses or a kind of light to create a certain effect. But to me the most valuable commodity for a movie to create is a feeling of life, and that's what A Hard Day's Night has in spades.
As soon as I had the camera in my hand for the first time, I just fell in love.
Screen work always boils down to that moment between the camera and the actor or the actors. It always boils down to that, ultimately. You serve the camera.
When we were doing 'Freaks and Geeks', I didn't quite understand how movies and TV worked, and I would improvise even if the camera wasn't on me. I thought I was helping the other actors by keeping them on their toes, but nobody appreciated it when I would trip them up. So I was improvising a little bit back then, but not in a productive way.
I'm definitely a Polaroid camera girl. For me, what I'm really excited about is bringing back the artistry and the nature of Polaroid.
Although I was entirely relaxed on camera, if I had to stand up and say something to an assembled group of people, I was rendered all but inarticulate.
