Christopher Nolan Quotes

As a director, you're looking for ways to tell the story with the whole image and not primarily dialogue.

The sizes and shapes of the panels have never been important to my stories. It has always been the words and images that drew me in, kind of like watching a movie.

It is the single image, as used in a photograph or a painting - or the frame of a film - to which words have been added to enlarge the context. The method is not the same as that by which most paintings are named. It is closer in its performance to what dialogue does to a movie, to what the caption does to a good poster.

A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In Brick, the world is born from the words.

I believe that the best cameraman is one who recognizes the source, the story, as the basis of his work.

I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move!

A shot is only as every as good as how well it tells the story.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

All my films have been larger-than-life. And since I've sat on almost all the scripts of the films I've produced, I do not compromise on aesthetics and visuals that could add to a scene.

My films are based on themes, so I always go for theme tracks and background score.

Every photo, every 'ONCE' in time is also the beginning of a story starting 'once upon a time...' Every photo is the first frame of a movie.

Sometimes I think I prefer the storyteller in [Roman Vishniac] to the photographer. But aren't they one and the same?

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.

I've always been a relaxed person on set, but I think the main thing is I think about it from an editing point of view way more than I did before.

Film is definitely a director's medium. They're responsible for the look and everything, and you're a part of that process as an actor, and you try to contribute to the story. But I think it might sound a little pretentious for me to say I think of myself as an artist. I think of myself as a creative person.

When you're making a film you're thinking about how to tell the story visually.

I would recommend that any writer get off their ass at least once and just try it. Directing is a completely different set of muscles. It also affects your writing because, once you start directing, you tend to write your scripts with directing in mind.

I keep trying to train myself to stop saying 'filmmaker' and start saying 'storyteller.' We're telling stories.

There is a very particular feeling I get when I have the camera in my hand, looking at an actor talk, knowing that what I’m shooting will end up on the screen.

The job is trying to create movie shots that have depth, that have the meanings you need them to have, and then good enough so that they will add something to the final picture. They will make the picture; they'll get into the picture, and give them what they need. It's an interesting job.

When I'm making a film, I'm the audience.

I'm not an artist. I set the camera up and tell my story.

Even the pictures I was doing at college - a little narrative based on a butterfly catcher, or a chimney sweep - the images were always telling stories. They were all scenarios and moods which I storyboarded and worked through - it's exactly what I do now.

There are some sequences in films that I think work filmicly, that stand out to me, but that's much more to do with the staging and the cutting and the mood of the thing as a sequence, the way everything comes together.

I think from an early age I was aware of how a camera can tell a story, how a movie camera can affect how the narrative is told.