The great fashion photographer Helmut Newton once said that photography is “10% inspiration and 90% moving furniture.” The same can certainly be said of filming movies. Behind every scene, crews are busy moving mountains of equipment—furniture, if you will—to get the perfect take, and no piece of furniture is more important than the camera. It stands to reason, then, that an actor may want to develop a good working relationship with the person moving it.
Like any healthy relationship, the one between actor and camera operator is give and take. “By the time an actor has made a few movies, I would hope they’d have found the camera operator to be a source of comfort, stability, and clarity on the set,” says Matthew Moriarty, a veteran Steadicam operator who’s worked on over 80 films, including “Spider-Man,” “Divergent,” and “A Quiet Place Part II.”
“A good operator should make the actors feel safe—creatively, physically, and generally looked after,” he adds. “When an actor steps onto the mark, there should be the sense that someone has already thought about them. Where is their eyeline? Can they get to their marks without tripping on a c-stand? Will we see their feet, or can they wear their Uggs?”
Actors tend to assume that they should always focus on hitting their marks—that’s mostly true, Moriarty says. “It is an actor’s responsibility to be able to hit marks when necessary. And it’s not always necessary. Sometimes the whole point is for you to have a free playing field and cover a bunch of random real estate during a speech. But if we’re shooting a scene at dusk and we have exactly 15 minutes to get three shots, yes, please hit the mark so you’re not blocking your costar and costing us a take.”
Another thing for actors to consider is continuity—that is, retaining the same gestures, eyelines, and line deliveries between takes. Again, there are caveats.
“I’m personally rather ambivalent on ‘continuity,’ probably because I’ve done too many movies and I’ve gotten away with so much discontinuity, I know when it does and does not matter,” says Moriarty. “But, on the other hand, if making consistent gestures is a pathway toward structuring your performance, then I’m all for it. I can tell you that directors universally love it when an actor structures a performance. When you’re entirely different every time, both directors and camera crews will struggle to craft notes that are helpful because you didn’t do the last thing we asked for anyway and where do we even start?”
7 Need-to-Know Tips for Acting On CameraPerhaps most importantly, being there for the camera also means doing it even when you’re not the center of the camera operator’s attention. “Be good even when it’s the other actor’s shot,” Moriarty says. “I once did a movie with a young star who would often go home instead of doing his off-camera for his costar. It was a hideous thing to witness day after day. Word eventually got out and the kid’s career fizzled. When it’s your close-up, you get every advantage. We’ll bend over backwards to put the best possible you on film. But when the camera’s over your shoulder and the other actor’s in focus, be respectful.”
Back to furniture: Moriarty says the best moviemaking occurs when there’s an awareness of balance between actors and camera crew.
“Know that every day of your acting career, no matter how many Oscars you win, will be about finding a balance between your personal needs as a creative being and the needs of this gargantuan operation called a movie that’s happening all around you,” says Moriarty. “People talk about the camera work in ‘Birdman.’ I talk about the acting in ‘Birdman.’ Michael Keaton’s doing a huge emotional scene, acting his ass off, while three grips are sliding entire tables out of the operator’s way so he can pass the camera, the boom operator, the focus puller, and two other dudes right through Keaton’s eyeline, while he’s crying. And not one frame of his performance feels false. It’s the holy grail of film acting. Giving an audience something that feels absolutely truthful while just inches out of the frame is this carnival of utter fakery.”
Matthew Moriarty has served as a member of the National Executive Board of IATSE Local 600 for 12 years. In 2023, he was elected president of the Society of Camera Operators (SOC), an organization that has twice nominated him for camera operator of the year, in 2019 and 2021.
