Quotes About Filmmaking

I know Peter Jackson a tiny-tiny bit from interviewing him about the 'Lord of the Rings' movies over the years. When I was visiting the set of 'The Return of the King,' he let me be an extra so I could see filmmaking from a different perspective. I was a Rohan soldier.

You get some directors, and I can never understand it - there's a thing they call the 'video village' where all the monitors are, and you've probably seen it on set visits - I hate that! I never, ever like sitting in video village. I get either my own monitor or a hand held monitor, and I stand right by the camera.

It's kind of the filmmaker's job to use visual, cinematic language in a way possible to tell a story that reaches and touches as many people as possible.

What you write sets the visual style for the film. But you have to compromise your style in your first few films before people let you do what you want to do.

At any filmmaking class, you learn the power of the visual medium and are always trying to minimise the words.

I have a music-video background, and I feel like the responsibility of a music-video director is to do something that hasn't been done before in a really cool visual way. So much innovation has come in filmmaking through music videos.

There are a lot of directors out there who are very specific, visual craftsmen, and while I have the utmost respect for that, they don't really communicate with the actors.

I was very intimidated by the visual effects world. But I began to realize that you don't have to know everything. You have to be able to talk about story.

It's the most unrealistic thing you can do to shoot a close-up, and it's the most unrealistic place you can be as a performer. And yet actors grouse about having to do visual effect shots, but they love doing close-ups.

Film is a temporal medium as much as it is a visual medium: you're playing with time, and you don't have that ability where someone can pause at home. That's such a fundamental part of what makes filmmaking exciting to me. I don't really have as much interest in any other medium. I just like the control.

I've always been respectful to all the people who do visual effects and special effects, because making movies is also making magic.

To me, most filmmaking is a kind of visualization of how people are. The dark, the light, the absurdity of life, all the crazy things, you know? So all of the characters that I've made have been really close to my heart. I guess what I'm interested in is just visualizing a really three-dimensional picture of a person.

My interest in filmmaking was always very much the visuals and images.

As much as my primary vocation is that of an actor, if anything, I feel like I am more excited about filmmaking in general, so it's not always a specific role that I'm attracted to, but rather an entire piece that I want to be a part of.

I'm drawn toward filmmakers who have a very distinctive voice. I really appreciate people who push themselves and, therefore, push the medium forward.

Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.

Normally, if I would read in a script that there's mostly flashbacks and mostly voiceover, I would run as far away as possible.

The reason I got into filmmaking was super naive: to change the world, you know? To really make the voices that we don't get to hear heard and the images and the stories that we don't get to see seen. I would like to normalize that.

I really want to be the black Tina Fey, where I just am able to produce my own content and produce other content for other minority filmmakers and put their voices on screen and basically be able to have free range to produce.

The quality of mainstream cinema has changed. A lot of independent voices feel they can leave everything behind and make independent films.

I want the Latino 'Do the Right Thing' to happen. I want filmmakers whose voices are not represented to get a shot.

You can start making films as a child. It's become easier to find your groove as a filmmaker, and I'm extremely interested in those voices.

Making a film is so scary, and there's such a kind of void that you're working from initially. I mean, you can have all the ideas and be as prepared as possible, but you're also still bringing people together and saying, 'Trust me,' even when you don't necessarily trust every element.

To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.