Zitat des Tages über Kameramann / Cameraman:
One thing I learnt was that you don't have to spend all day shooting: you can get it done in half an hour if you're that talented as a cameraman.
Abu Musab al-Suri is someone I got to know pretty well because he's a Syrian. Very bright guy, lived in London. He actually was the person who took myself and correspondent Peter Arnett and the cameraman, Peter Juvenal, to interview bin Laden for his first TV interview.
In 2009, I served as AARP's Ambassador of Caregiving. With a producer and cameraman, I traveled the country for months, interviewing hundreds of caregivers.
Often I pretended to a cameraman to know less than I did. That way I got more cooperation.
I believe that the best cameraman is one who recognizes the source, the story, as the basis of his work.
Yes, if I had it my way I would do all the shots myself - I used to do that when I was just a cameraman, an operator - but there's no way; you can't do that anymore.
My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful.
I was doing well in TV as a freelance cameraman, but it wasn't the direction I wanted to go in. I directed videos and tried to put something cinematic in every one. Dialogue, action sequences, helicopter, Steadicam.
There is the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity; over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine. We do have a very close association between costume and set designer, though. And the cameraman is very important, of course.
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.
People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team - make-up, costume and a driver - but usually, in a war zone, there's only me and the cameraman.
Usually in TV... A TV director could be anything from a main grip to just a glorified cameraman, and sometimes a director can be the person who is hired last. It's very much a producer's medium.
Having been a cameraman, I think about, 'Well, if this was real, how would this be shot?' I try to inject as much realism as much as possible.
I keep working with fairly inexperienced directors. You know, if you have a good crew, a good cameraman, you know, I know what I'm doing. If the actors know what they're doing, we can all pull together, and it works.
As a cameraman, I was paid to stand within a few feet of Yehudi Menuhin performing. I saw Rudolph Nureyev dancing. I couldn't believe I was being paid for that.
Deep down, all directors feel like frauds - because it's built into the nature of the job. You're the jack of all trades and the master of none. The cameraman knows the camera, the sound man knows the sound equipment - and you? You can't do anything: You can't do the acting, you can't dress the set, you don't record the sound or shoot the images.
There are times when it's absolutely appropriate to march up to someone, stick out your hand and introduce yourself, and times when it's best to let your male cameraman or producer do the talking and hang back until you've felt out the situation.
Anyone with a smart phone is a potential eyewitness cameraman capturing and transmitting stories at speeds that turn Reuter photos and traditional reporting into, well... yesterday's news.