Quotes About Filmmaking

I think the press mistakenly thought that all of these 'mumblecore' filmmakers were banded together in a similar ideology, but the truth is that we were all just using the same digital camera and helping each other make our movies because we were broke, and we were the only idiots willing to do it.

All I want is the same opportunities as the filmmakers I grew up admiring. But you know, I've had lots of amazing opportunities to do the movies I wanted to do. If I could write my future, I'd want to keep making character-based films that can make use of my voice as a filmmaker.

Honestly, if I could shoot everything in 1:33, I would.

My two great loves when I'm shooting are working with great actors and composing images.

I want more girls to be able to see themselves behind the camera creating images we all enjoy, and I want to call attention to the fact that women directors are here all over the world.

For me, the scale of the budget is part of the creative process. 'Swingers' is the movie it is because we made it for exactly the right budget. Had it been made for a higher number, it would not have been as imaginative as we had to make it, given the budget constraints we had.

I was imagining films in my head and trying to gather friends together to make movies since I was a kid. I tried to do comedy skits and a horror film.

I am a filmmaker. My job is to make films. When something excites you - a story or characterisation - you immediately forget about everything else. You only think how to make a movie out of it. The economics come only later. You shouldn't let money dictate the kind of films you should make.

I read certain articles about how all of the new filmmakers are immediately being given massive tentpoles, and there's a lot of original movies that we have now lost as a result of this. I don't want to call it a fad because I think it's a good thing. I think the movies are better as a result.

Making films requires the creative skills you'd expect, but it also demands immense non-creative skills, like the ability to raise all that money and the savviness to work the studio's politics.

The idea of getting to make a movie like the ones that impacted me as a child is my life's dream.

Actually the writer is the most important part of the filmmaking process. That's why I never hesitate in giving credit to a writer which I don't think even Hollywood does.

The point is that filmmaking is a collaborative effort; it isn't about imposing your vision on other people. It's about the talking, you know?

I am eternally impressed and amazed by what directors do.

In the U.S., it's like, you start with a great script, and then on set - not everybody, but definitely in the Apatow group - you go off, and you're improvising on camera. So while you're on camera, you're saying things that no one else has ever heard before during the actual take.

I have a lot of incomplete short films and incomplete scripts out there.

So I feel a responsibility to help first-time film-makers in Brazil, but also to increase the dialogue between film cultures which are really wonderful and so much closer to us than what we do see on our screens.

I'd have to say the whole experience in making The Neverending Story. I had an incredible time.

But you talk to most filmmakers and it is six, seven, eight years trying to get things off the ground. It is incredible really.

I feel 100% sure that I have the career that I have today because of independent filmmaking.

I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.

A lot of independent films try to pull off a 14-day shooting schedule, which I think is ridiculous. No matter how big or small you are, it really kills whatever sort of time you get to allow the actors to find their characters, and to spend time to think about what they're doing.

When you make a movie independently, you raise the money beforehand, and then you make the movie kind of by yourself.

I am my own worst critic, and I look at 'Death Sentence' now, and I go, 'Oh wow, I have really come a long way.' In terms of a filmmaker, I feel like my filmmaking language has really matured.