Daily Inspiration Quote by Nicolas Roeg

Roeg’s line lands like a modest confession, then quietly detonates an entire way of thinking about film. He’s describing a “revelation” that sounds obvious only after you’ve had it: cinema isn’t illustrated drama, it’s authored seeing. The verb “make” matters. Not “capture,” not “decorate,” not “serve the script” - make. Cinematography isn’t the garnish; it’s the engine that manufactures meaning.

The subtext is a jab at the industry’s default hierarchy, where writing and performance are treated as the real art and the camera is the dutiful stenographer. Roeg is rejecting that. For him, the camera doesn’t just record events; it decides what counts as an event. Framing, lens choice, movement, light, and cutting rhythms aren’t technical preferences, they’re ethics and psychology. They tell you who has power in a scene, what’s being withheld, what the character can’t face. That’s why his best films feel less like narratives delivered and more like experiences imposed: memory fragments, dread, desire, disorientation.

Context sharpens the intent. Roeg came up as a cinematographer before becoming a director, so he’s speaking from a craft identity that many directors outsource. In the late 60s and 70s, with New Wave influence and a loosening of classical continuity, “how you shoot” became inseparable from “what you’re saying.” His “simple idea” is also a manifesto: stop treating the camera as a window. Treat it as the authorial mind. That’s the revelation - and the provocation.