"HE LET THE SCENE & LOCATION TELL HIM WHERE TO PUT THE CAMERA AND WHEN TO CUT"
Yesterday, Tom Gregory directed a tweet to Christopher McQuarrie, who has written and directed the two most recent Mission: Impossible movies, and who will also be directing the next two films in the series back-to-back. "Watching the first M:I on tv in the UK," Gregory tweeted to McQuarrie, "and De Palma uses a lot of low and/or Dutch angles which fits the story/emotion etc perfectly. Do you find your camera positioning is an instinctive thing or an intellectual decision?"
McQuarrie, responding via two tweets, wrote back, "DePalma, while he certainly has flair, doesn't do anything in Mission just for show. His low angles in the fish restaurant, for example, create an intense sense of pressure and keep the fish tank above them in the story. He's not showing off. He's setting up. He let the scene and location tell him where to put the camera and when to cut. He understands that a scene is not just a series of lines, but a series of emotional impulses. The *visuals* tell the story. The dialogue is merely score. Watch the scene again without sound."
