Derek Cianfrance Quotes

If you have something to say, a movie is a really great medium to say it. It doesn't matter what the message is.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

I fell in love with film and its potential. The idea of putting one image next to another image and creating meaning blew my mind.

Play is a medium of word and film is a medium of picture.

When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there's something innate in my music where it partners well with images.

I learned first of all not to be intimidated by any visual effects that I don't understand. It can all be learned. You can then use them as tools to tell your story. I also learned that you have to be really vigilant, the more complex the movie, to not lose yourself and to not lose sight of the priority.

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.

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.

I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.

It's not a film-maker's job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way he can.

Film is the only language I speak, and I have been lucky to be involved in some great stories. You don't want to preach to people, but you want them to think about why things are the way they are, the history that is there as well as the possibilities.

In film, you have the luxury of accomplishing what you need in 24 frames every second. Comics, you only have five or six panels a page to do that.

Cinematography is infinite in its possibilities... much more so than music or language.

Comics is a language. It's a language most people understand intuitively.

I look at the film as an opportunity to see some bountifully creative minds do something that I could not do - tell the story with images. I can't wait to see what they do.

It's incredible to see the creativity, beauty and hardships people capture when filmmaking is opened up and shared with the world.

My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.

When I write a screenplay - and I think it's one of the reasons why it was frustrating for me just to be a screenwriter - I'm not thinking of it in terms of words on a page; I'm thinking in terms of visual images - basically, a comic book. I'm thinking of it in a series of shots.

If I really believe that visual representation and narrative are ways to convey important, complex ideas, and if the world is gravitating toward this form, then geez, I better do it myself. I want to do it myself.

I don't believe in one slow panning-shot to show a place. It should unfurl in the story itself.

At any filmmaking class, you learn the power of the visual medium and are always trying to minimise the words.

Cinema is a visual medium one has to communicate through visuals, and therefore, dialogues should be less.

I think you can make a gorgeous movie on any piece of equipment. Look at 'Tangerine,' which is a beautiful movie shot on an iPhone. You see so many movies that are impeccably shot but are vapid, and there's no audience for that except for other cinematographers who just like to watch two-hour-long music videos.

When I went to Jamia, I thought I wanted to be a cinematographer or photographer because I liked telling stories in pictures, but my teachers explained that if you want to tell your own stories then that is what a director does.

Go home, pick up your video camera, and make a film.