Roger Deakins Quotes

It's great to have a good relationship with the directors and learn about things you do with cameras, and how you direct.

I am eternally impressed and amazed by what directors do.

When I'm shooting a film, I don't look at playback. I don't go and do a scene and then hurry up and watch what I just did. I never look at it so I haven't seen any of it.

As a filmmaker and film student, I think it's really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things.

I think you cannot make films without choosing everything.

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

Film work can be very interesting, but it also can be awfully boring because who creates the film? The actors? No. It is the director. It's his piece of work.

Filming is a funny combination of having a good time and not being able to wait until it's over.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

When you shoot a movie, the camera is always taking, taking, taking and not giving anything back.

Directors tend to be more underrated than overrated because it's a quiet job and people don't really understand it.

'The Bank Job' was great fun to work on. Roger Donaldson is a top director, and working on HD was a new experience. It picks up every detail, which is a blessing and a curse if you think about it.

Some directors work from day to day. I work from moment to moment.

There are certain directors who will start talking to you about something, and suddenly you'll be ready to roll, and you'll realize it was very specific.

The idea of directing my own movie is definitely more challenging than choreography.

My job is to kind of nudge them. Who said it, where, like, '90% of the job is casting,' so all I do is try to come to set and focus on getting all the best shots to cover the story; that's really it.

A director should be in a position where he is only directing. On the sets, he is only looking at the performances, thinking 'How I am going to shoot this?'

The experience of shooting a film is about the script, the captain of the ship who is the director, and the way they push their actors and teams to give their best. It's not about the language and the region.

You have more time to work in movies. My experience with movies is that you have more time to experiment with the character and camera angles and things like that.

I really thought the process and what I'm used to doing on film would be different. I thought that because I wouldn't have the same amount of time, I wouldn't do all of the tracks that I like to do or the lighting that it takes. And then, I got there and realized that I don't know any other way. I just do all that stuff really, really fast and under a lot of stress.

I don't know necessarily that I would produce under my own company right now. Producing is not something that I'm thinking about. Directing is something that I will be doing very shortly, trying to figure out what to get my hands on. And I can't imagine writing a script and wanting to direct it and not having a producing credit, because I would want to have a big chunk of power on that end, if I wrote something.

I had a whole new respect for directors.

It'll take me a lot longer to read a script if there's no director attached.

Get the overall. Some of my films may have been crude at times, or tough, or missed the points, but I've tried to get the overall in. I think that's more important. You may miss a thing or two, but you move faster. If you can do it in three takes, do it in three takes.

In film school, I knew I wanted to be a director, but I found out pretty damn quickly that nobody was just going to hand me a script to direct.