Susanne Bier Quotes

Every single discussion I have with a first AD, or producers, is time of day. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've fought for early-morning calls. The light is 90 percent of our job; we as humans respond to light and where it is at different times of day and not only in positive ways.

Zhang Yimou is an artist. Sometimes we did only two or three shots a day because we were waiting for the sun.

Yeah, Kubrick's a big influence. In something like 'A Clockwork Orange,' he is trying to use the practical light - I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they're not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In 'Elephant' we basically used no lights; we never really adjusted.

I never thought I wanted to direct. I love the control of it. I love to dream of scenes.

I view filmmaking as a director's medium.

I find that on most films it's very difficult to have a backlit movie in an exterior.

I don't have a director's mind.

I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well but is intensely rewarding.

I've always wanted to be behind the camera in some capacity.

We can't make movies without scripts, and there's no cost to writing a script, so my advice to newcomers is do it yourself: Write your own script, shoot your shorts, edit your shorts.

Once you turn on the camera, making a movie is making a movie. I don't care if it's $9 million dollars or $50 million dollars. You have bigger toys, bigger set, actors who are better paid, but once you turn on the camera, it's director and performance, and I don't find a big difference.

I wanted to try directing.

I am interested in all aspects of filmmaking, so I have an opinion on every aspect, so sound design, score, cinematography, editing - all that stuff I have experience doing myself, so I had a very strong idea of what I wanted, and I got, for the most part, people that were able to articulate that idea, which was nice.

In films, you have to follow the director's vision. Filmmaking is a director's medium. So everything happens as per the script and his vision.

The more I work in the film business, the more I see that those guys, the directors, have the most fun on set.

When you shoot in America, you have huge beams of sunlight in the windows, very vivid sunlight - it's faster in a way.

Its when the sun shines the brightest that our shadows appear the biggest

I was into writing and directing. I was a bit of a reluctant actor. I would always ask friends to shoot or direct their movies, but then they'd want me to be in them.

I would love to be able to get behind the camera and direct actors. I think that would be a lot of fun.

I wanted to be a director first to protect my writing. I'm a playwright and you don't need to protect your writing when you're in the theater because everyone's there to protect the writing. When I had an idea for a film that I really cared about as my own, I wanted to direct it, and then I immediately became interested in directing in and of itself because it's such a deep art. You suddenly have all these tools at your disposal to tell the story.

Emil Nava brother is Jake Nava, who did Beyonce's Crazy In Love and stuff. He's always lived in his brother's shadow, and this is the first time that he's just killing sh*t. I'm really just happy that he's on top and really doing well.

Long live the sun which gives us such beautiful color.

I thought of myself as part of the general filmmaking effort. And as my scope broadened, I began to think about directing. I wanted to be the guy who got to say whether the dress is red or blue.