Simon Baker Quotes

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

I feel every shot, every camera move, every frame, and the way you frame something and the choice of lens, I see all those things are really important on every shot.

The job is trying to create movie shots that have depth, that have the meanings you need them to have, and then good enough so that they will add something to the final picture. They will make the picture; they'll get into the picture, and give them what they need. It's an interesting job.

As a director, you're looking for ways to tell the story with the whole image and not primarily dialogue.

I believe that the best cameraman is one who recognizes the source, the story, as the basis of his work.

People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.

I have a great little camera, and I had a theory that if the story is interesting, it doesn't matter what medium you shoot it on. You just have to make a good film.

I don't study films particularly. I plan to direct, but I'm not watching film - I watch the entire film to see how the story goes, but I don't say, 'Oh, so he does a slow pan here, or he pulls here, watch the crane shot, or look at the composition,' because it's got to be my eye.

I've storyboarded for things other people have shot. So thinking in shots and orchestrating shots is not foreign to me at all.

Film gives us the luxury of deciding where the viewpoint of the audience is, and by knowing that, we can very effectively design around what is actually seen on camera.

At any filmmaking class, you learn the power of the visual medium and are always trying to minimise the words.

When I started, you didn't focus so much on production, certainly not - gosh - down to the finest little detail of how you shifted your eyes or how you turned to somebody. A lot of the shots were far away from a still camera. There weren't as many close-ups and intimacy.

If you shoot with a billion cameras, then there's no perspective. You want to use one shot at a time, so it's better to discover what that is before you shoot, rather than trying to make something in the cutting room, and then it just becomes generic.

I really got into filmmaking through photography.

With the work that I do as a director, I've got dialogue, camera movement, and character blocking to help create a tone to the piece. In photography, those elements are somewhat void so that tone becomes a bit more subtle but still equally important.

I was never one for multi-cameras; my approach was always... I always considered there was only one place to be to do a shot.

Visual elements are, of course, the director's job.

You know, when people talk about filmmaking and the techniques of filmmaking, we use them all the time in network television news in order to make our stories simpler, tighter and more understandable to the general public.

The process of shooting - of choosing shots - is intuitive for me, and I just feel my way towards what seems right.

I was always very interested in the storytelling decisions that went into directing. It just held this real allure for me. You know, if we're doing a scene at a dinner table, they weren't all shot the same. 'Why was the camera here for one moment and there for another?'

Finding where to put the camera is probably the most important thing you have to learn when you're a young director, and it's something that's a mixture of instinct and technique.

We build camera rigs tailored specifically to the story we're trying to tell or the shot we're trying to capture.

For a cinematographer, every frame has to be important.

TV helped me understand camera angles, close-ups, master shots.