Robert Benton Quotes

I love photography and art-directing is something that I really would enjoy to do.

I just really wanted to do art, except when I was taking those photographs of people I would make the clothes that I would photograph them in so I could control the whole thing.

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

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

I love photography and I love the art of photography. So when I'm working with high-level art photographers, I give them artistic freedom because I want that for myself when it's my turn to do my work and I never try and control it or say I'll only do this or I want it like that.

The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet.

When I just write something, it's usually because I love it, I love the material, but I feel like I really need a creative partner to crack it. And I certainly need and have a lot of creative partners as a director.

We really enjoy that, having a relationship with writers, developing material and getting a director, actors, that we have kind of that family kind of as a group we're going to do it together mentality in a project. Then the tough part is - so what actually goes has very little to do with us sometimes.

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 love working with directors who have good taste. It's incredible when a director can say something and things open up for you. I went to The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and some of my best experiences on sets have been working with other alums.

I have worked with several art directors and production designers who are just magnificent. Dave Getz, Paul Felix, Ian Gooding... just amazing artists, and I would say, if I had anything to do with it, I just pick good artists!

Some people would ask: 'You are not the one who does the painting, or shot the work, how can it be your work?' But I was the one who chose which site we should use, and which assistant helps me to do the painting, or the shot.

I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.

When the director has a vision for a piece that I've never heard before, and they can back that up with visuals, and they talk a good game, I get really interested in the world that they're trying to create.

I would love to work with Tim Burton. I think we would be very good together.

There is often a great disparity between a director's personal style and the movies he makes.

I want a nice picture book with 12 pictures - I do my best with that format.

Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.

I've definitely become more aware and conscious of what directors I'm working with because it's so important. The director is really more than half the battle of the film. You really rely on that. That's become really, really important to me, for sure.

I get to collaborate and tell stories with moving photographs.

I see my actors as my collaborators.

Writing a comic book series, you're so reliant on whoever the artist is. It truly is collaboration.

I always want everything I do to be somewhat cinematic. I don't want to be the rapper that'll just post up and shoot a video anywhere with no real meaning to it.

We're pretty insane about art direction.