A Quote by F. Gary Gray
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.
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Most of music videos were short films - they had dialogue, action sequences. I shot with cranes and helicopters. I wanted to created cinema-like moments.
When they invented the Steadicam, every movie had to have a fight in a stairwell. Whenever there's a new thing, it's abused until artists realize what a Steadicam as a tool can be. And now I defy people to be able to see Steadicam shots, because we know how to do them and make them invisible.
I really loved 'Fast Five.' I thought it was a brilliant movie. I thought it was so well done, well directed. The action sequences were really well thought out. It looked fantastic.
I don't want to do something just to be on TV. If I did I might as well just go on and put a meat pie on my head! If I go on TV I want to be doing something I want to do.
Something that 'Game of Thrones' always does successfully is that action sequences are never just action sequences. There's always a point of view, and you're always identifying with one person or one group of people.
I worked on 'Blue Peter' and 'Tonight' and lots of TV plays, filmed people like Rudolf Nureyev and Ted Heath, and ended up a senior cameraman with my own crew. I'd had my first short story published in 1947, and when my writing really started to take off I decided to go freelance, and eventually left the BBC in 1965.
I try to stay away from stuff that's just action, action, action, action, action, and you kind of fast-forward through the dialogue scenes. I'm not interested in doing that. Give me a reason to fight, and I'll go there. But don't just make it, 'You touched my pen! Haaa-yah!' I've done that before.
My friend Phil Morrison directed a lot of my favorite videos back in the mid- to late-90s - all the Yo La Tengo videos that were funny, a Juliana Hatfield video. He was such an influence with me, and I wanted to do a video the way Phil used to do videos. I did that for Phil.
Most fight sequences on a television show, probably any action adventure show that you know of, if you asked them how long they probably spend, [it's] one or two days doing the fight. Where we were spending eight days concurrently with an episode doing our fight sequences.
Going as far back as 'Dexter's Lab,' we've always had these sequences with no dialogue. The interesting thing is those sequences got the biggest reactions.
When I go to the cinema, I want to have a cinematic experience. Some people ignore the sound and you end up seeing something you might see on television and it doesn't explore the form. Sound is the other picture. When you show people a rough cut without the sound mix they are often really surprised. Sound creates a completely new world. With dialogue, people say a lot of things they don't mean. I like dialogue when it's used in a way when the body language says the complete opposite. But I love great dialogue I think expositional dialogue is quite crass and not like real life.
In my films that I've directed, and my work in commercials and videos, I've rarely used handheld. It's just not something I'm drawn to, but I've seen it done very well.
I tried to get a job as a TV cameraman and they basically told me, 'You're mad, everyone wants these jobs - and if you go to England, you're doubly mad.' But I worked in abattoirs for 10 months to earn my money, then left for London. I didn't even know what a director did.
I am a helicopter pilot. Something that gives me pleasure sometimes is taking my helicopter to go high, 2000 meter, 6000 feet, to go there and feel like a bird. In this moment I feel free.
I never know when I'll find myself jumping out of a helicopter or something. It's like we're making a new action movie every week, which is pretty thrilling.
I approach an action sequence almost like a mathematical problem. Sometimes you get these action sequences that you read and go, 'Oh my God, this is huge, how do I do it?' and I go, 'Just a step at a time. Sit down and plot each piece of it out.'
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