Filmmaking Quotes

Later film shoots’ casting calls would advertise that they’re “fun shoots” and a “good way to get exposure”—but working in entertainment is not entertaining, even though it is not what’s traditionally thought of as “work.” You know what’s fun, indie filmmakers? Being paid for your time.

~ J. Richard Singleton

The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.

~ Guillermo Del Toro

Regardless of the subject of my films … I am looking for a way of evoking in audiences feelings similar to my own: the physically painful impotence and sorrow that assail me when I see a man weeping at the bus stop, when I observe people struggling vainly to get close to others, when I see someone eating up the left-overs in a cheap restaurant, when I see the first blotches on a woman's hand and know that she too is bitterly aware of them, when I see the kind of appalling and irreparable injustice that so visibly scars the human face. I want this pain to come across to my audience, to see this physical agony, which I think I am beginning to fathom, to seep into my work.

~ Krzysztof Kieślowski

Too many film schools, as well as any number of screenwriting gurus and an obscene number of how-to-write tomes, have made a business of catering to fledgling screenwriters and filmmakers by exploiting their belief that the only thing standing between them and an Oscar is the right kind of knowledge. If only one knew enough, one could easily become rich and famous. Unfortunately, almost all are susceptible to that eternal malady – “that last great infirmity of the soul” – which is FAME. And whilst I don’t deny the value of technical knowledge, such knowledge matters very little if the story one is trying to tell doesn’t matter, either because it’s incoherent or simply because it fails to make us care.

~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

All tales, then, are at some level a journey into the woods to find the missing part of us, to retrieve it and make ourselves whole. Storytelling is as simple - and complex - as that. That's the pattern. That's how we tell stories.

~ John Yorke

When you see a filmmaker getting too fancy... you can bet he's worried either about his story or his ability to tell it.

~ Walter Dean Myers

Success or Failure, there should always be a Drive to Keep on Creating.

~ Henry Johnson Jr

A Film has the potential to kindle such a spark of inspiration in an individual that it can alter the course of human progress.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Entertain, but also, give the viewer something to think about.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Healthy entertainment does not evoke raw emotions in the mind of a viewer only to make them wreak havoc, rather it guides those emotions in a healthy direction.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Healthy entertainment is a beautiful blend of stimuli that can connect with the viewer at a sentimental level, then sow the seeds of a certain idea or feed the mind with inspiration and courage. In short, healthy entertainment does not evoke raw emotions in the mind of a viewer only to make them wreak havoc, rather it guides those emotions in a healthy direction. This leads to not only an entertained viewer, but also an inspired soul. And that should be the purpose of film-making, and indeed the entire entertainment industry, rather than feeding the general population with garbage.

~ Abhijit Naskar

The biggest difference between writing a movie and writing a novel? No one ever tries to sleep with me to get into one of my novels.

~ Mylo Carbia

I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public itself will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a girl.

~ D.w. Griffith

The crew was mostly men. That's how it was and that's pretty much how it still is. It's a man's world & show business is a man's meal with women generously sprinkled through it like over-qualified spice.

~ Carrie Fisher

I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.

~ Peter Greenaway

The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way.Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.

~ Robert Bresson

If you can film an idea in your mind, follow that film idea shot for shot, scene for scene, that idea is worth making.

~ Craig Mapp

... the midpoint of each film is the moment when each protagonist embraces for the first time the quality they will need to become complete and finish their story. It's when they discover a truth about themselves.

~ John Yorke

Vanessa insisted that film was exactly like poetry. Nothing necessarily had to happen, you just had to feel something.

~ Cecily Von Ziegesar

A lot of film people are like that– especially the ones below the line, the blue-collar guys, the grunts. They like putting their hands on the equipment and getting it to do things for them. It's not about art or ideas. It's about working at something and making it come out right.

~ Paul Auster

Or take this girl, for example. At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see [The Double Life of] Véronique. She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really - that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul. She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist. There's something very beautiful in that. It was worth making Véronique for that girl. It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, taking thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul. It's worth it.

~ Krzysztof Kieślowski

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

~ Robert Bresson

You have to want to make a film for other reasons - to say something, to tell a story, to show somebody's fate - but you can't want to make a film simply for the sake of it.

~ Krzysztof Kieślowski

In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.

~ Sidney Lumet

Yet in recent years I have witnessed a new phenomenon among filmgoers, especially those considered intelligent and perceptive. I have a name for this phenomenon: the Instant White-out. People are closeted in cozy darkness; they turn off their mobile phones and willingly give themselves, for ninety minutes or two hours, to a new film that got a fourstar rating in the newspaper. They follow the pictures and the plot, understand what is spoken either in the original tongue or via dubbing or subtitles, enjoy lush locations and clever scenes, and even if they find the story superficial or preposterous, it is not enough to pry them from their seats and make them leave the theatre in the middle of the show.But something strange happens. After a short while, a week or two, sometimes even less, the film is whitened out, erased, as if it never happened. They can’t remember its name, or who the actors were, or the plot. The movie fades into the darkness of the movie house, and what remains is at most a ticket stub left accidentally in one’s pocket.

~ A.b. Yehoshua

The varying physical characteristics of the actors may also necessitate changes. Sean Connery is six feet four. Dustin Hoffman isn't.

~ Sidney Lumet

The function of camera movement is to assist the storytelling. That's all it is. It cannot be there just to demonstrate itself.

~ Mike Figgis

The score is in your subconscious. Sit down long enough at a keyboard and it will come out.

~ Jonathan Heatt

Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about. It’s not just about getting a performance. It’s also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.

~ David Fincher

The filmmaking process is a very personal one to me, I mean it really is a personal kind of communication. It's not as though its a study of fear or any of that stuff.

~ David Cronenberg

If you take a regular animated film, that's being done by animators on computers, so the filmmaking is a fairly technical process.

~ Peter Jackson

A big part of filmmaking is gathering a group of people you can work with.

~ Lenny Abrahamson

I wasn't a kid who moved out from Iowa with aspirations of becoming a famous star - I was intrigued by the idea of filmmaking and by the idea of what it would be like to play a character in a movie.

~ Jason Lee

I really took filmmaking very seriously... It was an honor and then a crutch also, because at a young age, I was like, I guess I'm a serious filmmaker. I never set out to be a serious filmmaker. I just set out to make movies.

~ John Singleton

I got into filmmaking in order to tell very personal stories, and in this day and age, the opportunity seems all the more precious.

~ Ira Sachs

The only job that was ever of interest to me other than filmmaking is architecture.

~ Christopher Nolan

I think that narrative, fiction filmmaking is the culmination of several art forms: theater, art history, architecture. Whereas doc filmmaking is more pure cinema, like cinema verite is film in its purest form.

~ George Hickenlooper

I think everything that you do, you're learning. I mean, every movie that you make is like a film school; that's one of the things that I enjoy about filmmaking.

~ Peter Jackson

It's amazing what you can do without in terms of filmmaking when a story is really important.

~ Justin Chadwick

Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.

~ Robert Altman