Tom Cruise Quotes

In practically every film you experience, you can see the director following the text. Illustrating the words first, making the pictures after, and, alas, so often not making pictures at all, but holding up the camera to do its mimetic worst.

The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script.

My father was a film-maker. He always said he wanted to go like Humphrey Jennings, the legendary director who stepped backwards over a cliff while framing a better shot.

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.

I mean, Scorsese's a genius, and that's one way of shooting.

I think we've shot scenes from every angle directors can think of to make it look like different villages. I've directed a couple shows on that set and believe me, it's impossible not to duplicate some camera angles.

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

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.

Going to directing wasn't a reaction away from acting as much as it was a move towards something I always wanted to do. Ever since I was a kid, I was interested in the camera and how it worked and why one director would place it in this part of the room and then another would place it in that part of the room.

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.

I really enjoy blocking and staging. I think most of visual storytelling is camera placement and how to stage action around the camera.

'A Perfect Place' is character-driven. The director for that wanted a couple of identifiable themes with a bunch of variations. That is what I did. The director for 'The Solitude of Prime Numbers' did not want that at all.

In films, you have to follow the director's vision. Filmmaking is a director's medium. So everything happens as per the script and his vision.

I felt film is art and there are people that constructed that art - and that made me want to be a filmmaker.

Every director works differently but one thing's important: they must have a vision. If they don't have a vision I don't care how they work.

I had a whole new respect for directors.

I think when you pay attention to the shots, you're aware of the fact that there's a director. Really, it's the director's job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel.

If someone were to hire me for a film they'd be getting a certain kind of package, that's for sure, a certain set of tools. But I would listen to the director.

A director can come from anywhere, but having a story background, if you have nothing else, is probably a good thing to have because it's really the one tool you need.

When somebody can't reveal what they're after - whether by word or by how the camera is set up, lighting, etcetera - it's like an electronic beep beep; it interferes very much with what we actors can do. And, after all, the director wants the actors to be bringing forth the best that they can, according to whatever vision he has.

I was paying attention to where Steven Soderbergh had the camera and his shots. I was blown away.

As a director, I like trying to unlock the subtext of the scene and try to put the camera in a place that helps that.

I'd say that directing is in my heart. And that's where my focus is, like a laser beam. That's what I've been studying for a long time, and I think that everything that I've done before has contributed to the development of my craft as a director.

It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.

The level of control, that's part of what's so appealing about filmmaking - you have so much control over what the reader, the viewer, is noticing from moment to moment. They can't do that boring boring boring thing as easily.