Quotes About Filmmaking

I never card out a movie. You know how people will outline or card? I don't do that. I tend to start with an idea and go.

I made 'St. Nick' on a 30-page outline. 'Aint' Them Bodies Saints' was a full-bodied script, but it still had a lot of room for improvisation. There were scenes that weren't there on the page - just a sentence saying something happens. I was like, 'We'll figure this out when we shoot it.'

I am happy to have been directed by my father, Priyadarshan, in the Malayalam movie 'Marakkar.' My dad said nothing about my performance during the shoot. But once done, he complimented me as a filmmaker, saying that I gave the output he needed.

As a director, try to be humble and not to overdo it, not overcoverage and over-covering the scene.

The MeToo movement has made everyone more professional. The trashy aspects of filmmaking are now eliminated. There is certainly fear and caution among those men who think they can get away with any behaviour. At the same time, we have to be careful about not overdoing the enthusiasm of the MeToo movement.

I don't direct movies for a living.

I want to make movies about my country from my point of view.

I'm happy that I feel a little less out of place in filmmaking than I once was - but it's almost impossible for a playwright in the U.S. to make a living. You can have a play, like I did with 'Angels ' and it still generates income for me, but it's not enough for me to live on and have health insurance.

I think it's important as a filmmaker, as any person working in the arts, that you've got to try new stuff and challenge yourself and take chances.

I'd have been a filmmaker or a cartoonist or something else which extended from the visual arts into the making of narratives if I hadn't been able to shift into fiction.

I think the art of filmmaking is something you learn through actions, by doing it, not by learning theories. And as you do it, your mind starts to change.

Making films is great. You've got 100 people around and you're all dressing up and making weird art - it's a fun group activity.

It sounds kind of flighty, filmmaker-y, but I believe films are a piece of art. They are meant to be what they're meant to be, and sometimes the artist is informed by the film of what it needs to be.

I've always wanted to introduce hip-hop filmmaking to film. There's hip-hop art, dance, music, but there really isn't hip-hop film. So I was trying to do that.

For me, I see filmmaking as art.

As far as art and filmmaking is concerned, I don't see there's any separation; it's just one continuous thing.

I think that the whole voyeuristic attitude of filmmakers or of me personally - of shooting documentaries and so forth - is an important issue.

I'm Godless. And so I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking, which is -- ultimately what my God becomes, which is what my mantra becomes, is the theme.

But, in each case, as a filmmaker who's been given sizable budgets with which to work, I feel a responsibility to the audience to be shooting with the absolute highest quality technology that I can and make the film in a way that I want.

Yeah, it's odd when you look back at your own work. Some filmmakers don't look back at their work at all. I look at my work a lot, actually. I feel like I learned something while looking at stuff I've done in terms of what I'm going to do in the future, mistakes I've made and things at work or what have you.

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

Oh, I love making independent films, it's such a special, magical thing because you collaborate with a small group of people and everyone's pitching in. You'll see producers setting up the lunch table and the sound guy driving a van. We're all really there because we want to be.

Making movies is really hard. It's a very complex process, with many, many variables.

The producer, in effect, has to work as a translator. You form a very tight relationship with the director and writer from the beginning, and then you are constantly communicating to the various people that begin to come into the process, as you are trying to manage to hold on to a vision that needs to be communicated over a long period of time.