I'll proceed chronologically with my patron saints, like ones who inspired me earliest. One of the earliest was Stanley Kubrick. I was genuinely sad when Kubrick died -- all day, just forlorn.
I loved his meticulous approach to movie-making, which I know drove actors bananas, had him branded an eccentric, and limited his output to, what, 13 movies? And people may have qualms about his work, his very dark view of human nature, but the quality of his vision is so pronounced, so striking. His background as a photographer shows up so clearly in his cinematic work -- attention to lighting, angle, framing -- everything. I always say to people that you can do a still frame of almost any shot in a Kubrick movie and it will look good. Because he just paid such attention to that. His use of music and point of view, just amazing.
As a teen, I would foist Kubrick movies on my hapless chums, telling them "Oh, you gotta see this." They'd politely watch the movies, but I could tell I was the only one really grooving on his work. They were watching the movies-as-movies, and I think I was watching them as works of (visual) art.
While my major was in audio-visual production (surely inspired by Kubrick), and I'm a fair hand with a camera (including a video camera), I never had any pretensions of following Kubrick's footsteps. But his way of shooting movies absolutely informed my aesthetic of how I watched movies -- he put so much attention to filmcraft that I soaked that up, and applied it to movie-watching, and he made me pay attention to film directors, ones I liked, ones I didn't, and why. That aesthetic has stayed with me, will always be with me. I appreciate a well-shot movie, above and beyond the contents of the story itself. I like movies that look good, and will take note of directors who have that cinematic eye. I think his cinematic eye influenced my fiction-writing, how I construct scenes. I pay incredible attention to that, even though it's all in my head, and down on the page. People who read my stuff comment on how visual it is, and I am sure it's owing to my love of Kubrick's moviemaking, and that sense that everything in the scene is there for a reason.
