Bennett Miller Quotes

I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.

I love having 30 shots of every scene.

I'll reshoot a corridor 13 different ways, and you'll never recognise them.

Film is limitless, but some stage presentations on film can look too theatrical.

With today's fast films, you can light the way your eye sees the scene. You can abuse the film and create subtleties in contrast with light and exposure, diffusion and filters. That's what makes it an art.

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

Most people think of cinematographers as choosing subjects of an epic nature to show off what they do - big, sweeping images of war or pageantry.

If you know how to shoot a scene, then you know how to shoot an action scene. If you've seen an action movie, and you watched it, and you paid attention to how scenes are constructed and where the camera is and how the camera moves, then you know how to do it.

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

When you work as a cinematographer, the actors look to you for reassurance. When you're lighting them, they can never think you're making an adjustment because of the way they look. If they are nervous, it impacts their performance, which impacts the story.

Laszlo Kovacs was marvelous. He was very much in the same school as Bill Frake, who was, of course, a great cinematographer as well. They had a very similar style and similar sensibility.

Hitchcock loved long convoluted shots that contained a lot of tracking and camera moves.

Back-light is the cinematographer's friend.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend shooting a feature film on a still camera.

There's always the temptation, as a cinematographer, to make the shot look as perfect as possible.

I thought of learning cinematography, so I assisted a cinematographer for an ad.

What's funny is, I was always certain that I couldn't be a director because there are things about the physics of camera and lighting that I fundamentally cannot wrap my head around.

I've done all sorts of different kinds of action. We did a thing in 'Blood Diamond,' the attack on Freetown, where I carefully staged the action but did not show the camera operators what we were going to film - so it has the feel of documentary, trying to capture something, and that gave it a whole different feel.

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.

No question that 'Birdman' is a breathtaking technical achievement, not a stunt. Shot in 30 days after a long rehearsal period, with the actors' and the camera's movements calibrated to the inch and the millisecond so the action flows smoothly, the picture has the jagged energy of a long guerrilla raid choreographed by Bob Fosse.

Everything about camera movement, about how film was made, shot architecture, and time management... I was horrible at all that.

If you can make a color show or movie seem like it's in black-and-white, then you've done a really good job.

I love the visual medium of film and TV. I love the science of it, working with the sound and the lighting and every aspect.

Digital photography makes you a better photographer.

The cinematographer's basically translating the director's vision into imagery.