Roger Deakins Quotes

I was never one for multi-cameras; my approach was always... I always considered there was only one place to be to do a shot.

You ought to have a perspective when you're making a film.

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

I feel every shot, every camera move, every frame, and the way you frame something and the choice of lens, I see all those things are really important on every shot.

In the past I've worked with directors who saw very much their scene in their head and knew exactly how they were going to cut it.

I design my shots. I walk the rehearsal as the camera and say 'this is where I want to be... I want this look.

I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look.

I love staging action and wide-shots, not necessarily going to close-ups.

I love directing more than anything in the world, and I love being in the editing room. I love cutting. When I'm shooting, I cut it in my head anyway. That's not to say that it always turns out that way, but you have a sense when you're composing a sequence or a scene how you want it to look anyway.

Visual elements are, of course, the director's job.

Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!

I don't have a style. I've never thought of myself as a stylist like the visual stylists I admire enormously - Adrian Lyne, Ridley Scott, Alan Parker - in which every shot has a great idea in them.

I don't think there is a movie that I've been on that I wasn't sure I could direct it better. But certainly also, as a director of photography, I have to serve the movie in whatever way I can as a filmmaker.

Having been a cameraman, I think about, 'Well, if this was real, how would this be shot?' I try to inject as much realism as much as possible.

For a cinematographer, every frame has to be important.

When I started, you didn't focus so much on production, certainly not - gosh - down to the finest little detail of how you shifted your eyes or how you turned to somebody. A lot of the shots were far away from a still camera. There weren't as many close-ups and intimacy.

Try to place the camera somewhere where you get most of the information from there, so you don't need to have too many shots and be too explanatory and expositional about the scene.

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.

I've always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he's been in front of the camera. He doesn't have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

I've always had the utmost respect and awe of what the lens can do and what a director can do with just a camera move.

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

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

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

Whenever I arrive on a real location, I have to move around and work out what the best angles are going to be. When I was moving around with the lens, I discovered things that the naked eye would not have.