Yorgos Lanthimos Quotes

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.

A lot of directors in my experience are very receptive. They see what you do first, and then they want to find a place to put the camera, and they tweak you here and there.

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

If you shoot with a billion cameras, then there's no perspective. You want to use one shot at a time, so it's better to discover what that is before you shoot, rather than trying to make something in the cutting room, and then it just becomes generic.

The camera must point at the exact spot the audience wishes to look at any given moment. To find that spot is absurdly easy: you only have to remember where you were looking at the time the scene was made.

Lesson number one: Pay attention to the intrusion of the camera.

Well, I've learned something from Michael Robison just about maximizing your shots. For example, if I'm shooting a scene and someone's driving at the wheel, you could steal an insert in the same shot.

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.

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.

I was always very interested in the storytelling decisions that went into directing. It just held this real allure for me. You know, if we're doing a scene at a dinner table, they weren't all shot the same. 'Why was the camera here for one moment and there for another?'

Finding where to put the camera is probably the most important thing you have to learn when you're a young director, and it's something that's a mixture of instinct and technique.

Film gives us the luxury of deciding where the viewpoint of the audience is, and by knowing that, we can very effectively design around what is actually seen on camera.

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

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

You don't want to be the guy whose back's to the camera in the emotional part of the movie. So, you have to be aware of the camera movement and what the camera's doing.

I learned a lot about how to shoot and how to put together sequences.

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.

Nowadays you don't get to see composition in a movie because nobody ever keeps the camera still long enough to see it. Actors don't have the thrill and the power of working with space.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

Every single director stops at the moment he thinks he has the shot. Sometimes, directors shoot an establishing shot where everything is in the shot. He's going to use this at the beginning and the end.

On 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' we started exploring shots that are longer, where the camera is moving around the actors, and there are no cuts, and you feel like you're there.

Normally as a director, you do look at other films and things that are relevant. But with this film, it became impossible because I became so aware of the camera placement.

The cinematographer's basically translating the director's vision into imagery.

Shooting on film is great because it imparts discipline: What do you need to see so you're not finding it in the camera. When I'm shooting, I have the scene in mind, where I'm going to have certain lines. I learned to overlap and to shoot more than I think I need. That was the learning curve.