Benjamin Millepied Quotes

My tools, my medium, include pictures and live actors.

In a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.

Film directing has perfected my theater directing. I think when I first started directing, a lot of my stuff was very lateral; I was afraid to have the actors' backs turned away, afraid to put them too far upstage, and I think once I did more things with film, I got more interested in composition.

A movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas. They're in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, the pacing.

'Mercury' is one of the most challenging projects I have worked on. From the nuances of the actors' expressions to the minute technicals of the movie, everything needed to be monitored and looked into. The actors were required to emote purely with their face.

As far as lighting and blocking, camera angles and facial expressions, all that stuff that has to be very specific in film, as opposed to in wrestling where everything is larger than life and you're performing to the masses.

I don't like to watch playback. But being on the set, watching the way the camera is being moved and the way the light is being used, you do get an idea of it.

I think that's the key to being a director: to be able to get the shot and move on quickly.

I really love diving in, head first, with directing and not having to worry about hair, makeup or lines.

My phrase has always been that I am looking for the versatility of theatre in film. I think I have been quite lucky in that so far.

I'm very interested in directing actors - many directors direct cameras.

Architecture has a strong link with the movies in terms of time progression, sequencing, framing, all of that.

Especially as a director on 'West Wing,' I directed a lot of different things in a lot of different ways and really stretched my wings.

I love acting. I've been doing it since I was 16, and it's in my nature. It's the thing I do best. But as much as I love acting, I love cinema more. I always had a thing about creating images.

TV, it's a director's medium, and they wanna make it look interesting. To be rehearsing mostly for the sake of where you're standing so they can do the lighting, that's what I don't like.

In TV, sometimes you get lost in the fog of the scene, and when you're working with such good actors, they can bring you into the scene.

It's hard to incorporate dance into movies I think.

I went to film school, trained as a director, have made a lot of movies, and taken a lot of photographs, so I tend to envision things spatially. As I'm working, I need to have a map of the space. I need to know what's happening in all corners simultaneously.

'Twelve' was a total indie drama character piece. It wasn't that it was more about the performance, but it was just a very different thing where, with horror, there's this whole added element of the visual and the technical and the choreography.

I think directing is something I would really enjoy.

I love the process of working with a filmmaker and the writers and the actors.

Some directors are interested in acting, and others are only interested in cranes and moving the camera.

As a cinematographer or director, I'm always looking for projects that are able to say a lot with the actor's expressions.

For me, it's all about having the performers feel confident in their movements and surroundings. And then I'll figure out how to photograph it afterward.

I've admired Lawrence master from his choreographer days. I love how he experiments and makes it work. I like his attention to detail and the intrigue in his movies.