Claire Denis Quotes

People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at.

My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles - that's me. Everything that's in front of the camera, I bring you.

Before we start filming, I have a strong idea of the look and the feel that I want to create, and I'm happy to explore any means that will help me achieve that.

The color grading in 'Peaky' is a huge, huge element of the show's distinctive style, you know?

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 wife Victoria Harwood was art director on 'Far North,' and she had designed my student film, 'The Sheep Thief.'

Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer.

I want to direct, I want to be part of something creative, something with quality.

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.

Visually, I'm always considering shots and composition quite a lot, and I love putting art into films, and I do a lot of the art.

I like big, flashy production and videos.

As a director, I start with the visual.

I thought of myself as part of the general filmmaking effort. And as my scope broadened, I began to think about directing. I wanted to be the guy who got to say whether the dress is red or blue.

I really like photography, and I'd like to do more of that kind of thing. If I had to choose a different job within the industry and do it well, I would love to do cinematography.

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.

The visual architecture of 'Biutiful' is the most sophisticated of all the films I have directed.

In film, you're painting a canvas. I got really excited about that.

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

I don't like to watch playback. But being on the set, watching the way the camera is being moved and the way the light is being used, you do get an idea of it.

Usually when I'm making a movie, what I have in mind first, for the visuals, is how we can stage the scenes to bring them more to life in the most interesting way, and then how we can make a world for the story that the audience hasn't quite been in before.

When I was in pre-production for Trees Lounge, I was hearing the cinematographer talking with the production designer about colours and this and that, and feeling like I was losing control.

Writing, directing... anything behind the camera is what I want to do.

Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s.

Movie making is really, it's a director's medium, it's not even so much an actor's medium.

And then we watched an amazing number of movies from the late '60s and '70s, which is my favorite time, and we studied their camera movements, their stocks, the way they lit stuff, the colors they used.