Sam Taylor-Johnson Quotes

It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

Tim also has enough confidence so that it always looks like a Tim Burton film, but it really is collaborative. You're allowed to do it your way but of course he's always going to choose his way.

The idea of an animated film is you always kind of get a little bit daunted by it as a filmmaker because it feels like a lot of your communication is going to be with computer artists, and you're going to have to kind of channel the movie through extra pairs of hands.

I've worked with a lot of directors, some of them you wouldn't really attach the word 'artist' to their name.

All you can really do as director is sort of set a tone.

When the director has a vision for a piece that I've never heard before, and they can back that up with visuals, and they talk a good game, I get really interested in the world that they're trying to create.

As a director, I love being able to really be a contributing factor to the overall vision of a project.

Film is always a fight because you're the person, as the director, with a clear picture in your head of what you think is really exciting, and you're just trying to convince a bunch of other people to buy into that.

I went to art school, and I studied drawing and video art, and I've always approached music so visually as a result that I found it really difficult in the past to kind of hand off music to another director, 'cause it just ends up being this kind of mid-zone where it's nobody's vision, really.

The key is you don't want to control the controlled stuff too much and you don't want to be too free flowing in uncontrolled situations. That can be a contentious issue with some directors. The joy of my career is I've gotten to work with great directors who get that balance.

In my mind's eye, I visualize how a particular... sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.

I've been taking photographs since I was a teenager, and fashion has taught me a lot more about photography. It's definitely inspired me.

Directing is really exciting. In the end, it's more fun to be the painter than the paint.

One of the difficulties of photography is that it is much better at being explicit than at being reticent.

I think I would like directing. I really like coming at the work that way.

It was a very critical moment for me when I began working with David Cronenberg and seeing this amazing director and creator choose to base himself out of Toronto.

There is a company in Barcelona called Headless, and I was a huge fan. I love their style. I had been trying to work with them for years. 'A Monster Calls' was the perfect project to work on with them.

I always feel that the best kind of producing - and frankly, it has to do with what I like to do - is you're the big-picture person.

I haven't worked with a director who is a crazy person at all.

I've liked all the directors I've worked with a lot. And the ones I like best are the ones that have really good taste about what take was best.

As an actor, you have to believe in the point of view of a director; as a director, you have to be able to express what your point of view is and invite everybody to join you on that journey. So it's always about opening up.

It's really empowering when, as an artist, you can visualize something and then have the final product turn out the way you wanted it to.

If I wanted an open space, I could do a documentary about fishes. Then I would have an open space to play my music. That's not how I visualize the work I'm doing.

I just do things that I'm interested in making and work with the people I'm interested in working with, and it's very important for me to maintain the creative control because, otherwise, I just don't want to do it.

I think that, again, filmmaking is the director's medium in the end, and the best thing a producer can do is stay out of the way and support the director one hundred percent.