Nate Powell Quotes

There has to be the right pacing of images to tell the story. I'm always stunned at how little you can put in.

Cinema is a visual medium one has to communicate through visuals, and therefore, dialogues should be less.

Every frame and every scene has to have an intention.

It's too bad for us 'literary' enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless - pictures tell any story more effectively than words.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

What's great is that each medium has a unique set of things that it does and does well. Film is a visual medium, and obviously, you can't fit a whole book into two hours unless you're really economical about it. Obviously, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and on some level, it's sort of true.

If you have something to say, a movie is a really great medium to say it. It doesn't matter what the message is.

I find movies rely upon dialogue too much sometimes, and you lose the power of what really the most basic cinematic language is, which is the visual language.

I don't believe in one slow panning-shot to show a place. It should unfurl in the story itself.

An editor does not just join shots. He creates emotions out of the shots.

It's great when somebody is able to communicate an actual shot sequence to you and you know the world you're inhabiting with that. It's literally a haunting tune.

The language in a comic book or a graphic novel and the cinematographic language are really not the same language. They are false brother and sister. It's not at all the same.

“One picture is worth a thousand words,” said an ancient Chinese; but it may take ten thousand words to validate it.

How you carry a story in pictures is different than how you do it in text.

I understand the visual media very well, as I used to write comic books for Walt Disney, and I've written a graphic novel. How you carry a story in pictures is different than how you do it in text.

Comics, in a sense, the style, the images - it's almost like music. They say music is a universal language, but when the eyes behold something, a figure, somebody moving; it's real, and it cannot be denied.

I've often been accused of, 'Oh the movies looked good but there's no story,' but I disagree with that in theory, and '9' is a perfect example for me because the feel, the texture, and the look of that world, and those characters, is the story. That's a major component of why you feel the way you do when you're watching it.

I fell in love with film and its potential. The idea of putting one image next to another image and creating meaning blew my mind.

I hope for quick, fluent copy and memorable pictures. The words would not 'describe' the pictures; the pictures would not 'illustrate' the words. Together, they would carry a stamp and tell a story.

Visual storytelling is at once immediate and subversive.

If I really believe that visual representation and narrative are ways to convey important, complex ideas, and if the world is gravitating toward this form, then geez, I better do it myself. I want to do it myself.

I'm a big veteran of being able to, in one comic, explain to you everything that you need to know to get forward in the story without you having to refer back to years of continuity and a universe in these superhero comics.

Images can make realities out of people and struggles - the reality we give them. Images really matter.

I love being able to tell a story visually. It's something I love about making commercials, where you put a magnifying glass over the mundane and make it feel extraordinary.

Visually, I want to try everything. But I believe that every shot of my films really expresses what I think about the story and the character. The most important thing is the story, not the images.