Chris Milk Quotes

A shot is only as every as good as how well it tells the story.

The camera is not your eye, and it's not the eye of the audience. I don't think it's my eye, either. It belongs to the film.

I have a great little camera, and I had a theory that if the story is interesting, it doesn't matter what medium you shoot it on. You just have to make a good film.

I think the camera was always my obsession, the camera movements. Because for me it's the most important thing in the move, the camera, because without the camera, film is just a stage or television - nothing.

I've storyboarded for things other people have shot. So thinking in shots and orchestrating shots is not foreign to me at all.

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 am very much open to doing cinematography for any talented filmmaker, if the script is good.

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

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

I've directed a fair amount of television series - so I'm always trying to learn new things. One episode was all hand-held and I'm trying to get better at when you should do things and when you should just shut up and watch what the people are saying.

I've always had the utmost respect and awe of what the lens can do and what a director can do with just a camera move.

I think that's the key to being a director: to be able to get the shot and move on quickly.

I believe that the best cameraman is one who recognizes the source, the story, as the basis of his work.

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

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

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.

The way I work with my cinematographer is not based on general principles, but the ideas are triggered by the locations where we shoot.

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.

People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.

I have considered the directing, actually. Not so much the writing. That is not really interesting, but the directing is really interesting to me.

We had a script that was really solid and we knew how we were going to shoot and how the energy of it was going to go. So it gave us a lot of freedom to use the camera as a character.

Yes, if I had it my way I would do all the shots myself - I used to do that when I was just a cameraman, an operator - but there's no way; you can't do that anymore.

I really got into filmmaking through photography.

With moviemaking, the audience always has to keep asking, 'What happens next?' If you have the wrong piece of music over a scene, people aren't going to get the scene. If you have the wrong camera angle, people aren't going to pay attention. That's as much a part of the process as getting people to talk to you.

When you shoot a movie, the camera is always taking, taking, taking and not giving anything back.