Film Aesthetics Quotes

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired.

Movies are our cheap and easy expression, the sullen art of displaced persons.

The way the films look will never entertain an audience alone. It has to be in the service of a good story with great characters.

Everybody's going to do the 3D slightly differently the same way that people are going to deal with color differently. Some movies downplay the color, some color is very vibrant. Color design is very different. We've got to think of 3D like color or like sound, as just part of the creative palette that we paint with and not some whole new thing that completely redefines the medium.

There's one thing which I hate about color films... people who use up a lot of their despairing producer's money by working in the laboratory to bring out the dominant hues, or to make color films where there isn't any color.

Cinema as a means of expression fascinates me.

I love every aspect of the creation of motion pictures and I guess I am committed to it for life.

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 can't see any reason why a film shouldn't be stylized and visually beautiful. I don't think a beautiful set is pretentious.

I was influenced by people like David Fincher and William Friedkin, and these directors who kinda paint their films with these dark shades.

I think the good thing about Dogme is that it forces you into an extreme sense of reality because there's no artificial light and no set design and all of those icings on the cake that you usually have on a movie.

Close-Up has affected later films that I've made.

'The Shining' is operatic and sensational and... really shocking. It has this amazing meld of classical music and modern interpretations of classical music, and incredible imagery. From the set design to the costumes, there's so much to unpack.

If I want to make people moved or cry in a film, I figure out what the room looks like, what the people are wearing, what time of day it is, what the light is, how to photograph it, where to put the camera. It involves optics and costume design and set design and architecture.

I want the look of a movie to be secondary. I really want people to be engaged in the story and the characters and not think about a style or think about me or think about the director of photography and what a great job he's doing. I never feel like that should be there.

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.

I think I have much more appreciation for directing and movies overall versus a performance or an actor. Their body of work is more interesting.

Of course I want my films to look really good, but every single element is chosen for a reason. It's telling something in the story.

Filmmaking in general is just really where I'm putting all of my energy.

I grew up cinematically in the '70s. I was watching a lot of Godard, Bresson, Dreyer, and all sorts of old films and the Czech New Wave.

Wong Kar Wai is a very intense character, very personable, and I believe in general he does not like and he would not want his actors to show their true looks and their true personality on screen.

I'm accused constantly of having 'no signature.' That's the big artistic demerit. You can't tell a Wyler film from another man's film just by looking at it.

I was criticised for making 'Devdas' so ostentatious. But stark and realistic cinema isn't the only real cinema in this country.

I think of great masters, like [Alfred] Hitchcock, for example, who works absolutely within this sensational realm. You feel like you can always tell what temperature a room is in a Hitchcock film because the people feel alive, they don't feel like they're just being filmed on a stage.

I've been working in television for so long, since 2004, and I just worked nonstop throughout that time and I've learned so much. I've definitely done that 10,000 hours. I know the format really well and I feel comfortable in it. I'm excited about going into something I'm not so comfortable in, which is film.