Quotes About Filmmaking

After I finish any film, I move to the next one. It takes about a year to write and another six months are for pre-production and other things. You need a minimum of two-and-a-half months for the shooting of a new film. Then, I also edit my own film.

I think when you're a director, it's hard to do something unless you're absolutely over-the-moon in love with it. The audience, they spend 90 minutes with it, but for you, it's anywhere between a year and a half to three years of your life, every day, working on it.

I love doing features, but it's a very different ballgame. Sometimes I yearn for short films again, working with a small team, getting my hands on the clay.

Directing a film was something I was yearning to do. I always wanted to see if I had the capacity to be a good storyteller.

Many Mexican directors are scared to shoot in Mexico City, which is why there are many stories in Mexican cinema about little rural towns, or set a hundred years ago.

John Lee Hancock is someone that I had admired from afar. I think he is a wonderful director... in the tradition I would say both of Clint Eastwood and Frank Capra.

I would tell filmmakers: 'Don't just be seduced by the same old, same old. There are interesting things you can explore that may get your film out there to audiences better than the traditional distribution mechanisms.'

On 'Sin Nombre,' Adriano Goldman and I improvised a lot of things on-site. We were working with untrained actors, and you can't really block a scene in a traditional way.

I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean's films.

The terrible tragedy for every director is to watch an actor do what you want and not have the camera rolling - and never get it back again. So I always try to roll the camera before anybody's really ready.

Making films can be absolutely fantastic, but it can also be incredibly dull. You spend the whole day sitting by yourself in your trailer and then you get called to deliver one sentence - then you're told to come back and do it again at 5:30 the following morning.

It's a bit like school camp, shooting a film. Everyone's on heat. It's a strange energy. It's full of adrenalin. I funnel my excess energy in funny little ways. I do a lot of dancing in my trailer. I love music.

I've done movies where they didn't have enough money to have trailers.

You often hear this about directors, how it's like having the best set of toys. This fabulous train set, the biggest box of toys that a kid could possibly have. The best directors look like a kid having more fun than you're supposed to have.

I don't story board. I do something else, which is, I block it. We then train to the blocking. In other words, when everybody's training, they're actually training a lot of the moves that we are definitely going to use, and then, I do a lot of photography of that, and that becomes where the cameras go.

I love Pixar films; I think they're the greatest filmmakers in the world. I love Disney films. 'Tangled,' was great. I loved 'How to Train Your Dragon,' the Dreamworks film. But it's not for me. I don't want to make a film for families; I want to make adult films.

I am trained as a film-maker. There is nothing else I can do.

As a filmmaker I find it much more rewarding to work with actors who are classically trained. It's about the work and only the work.

I wasn't trained as a writer-director. And the projects I write are difficult to finish.

I see myself as an explorer more than a storyteller. A great storyteller, in control of her craft, must be the same person when she finishes telling a story as she was at the start. But I want to be transformed by my filmmaking, by the journey I take.

All my films I have shot in chronological order - always. And the reason is that there's a moment that the screenplay is the notion of the film. But when you start doing a film... the work itself starts being transformed, and you have to surrender.

The key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes.

The way I work is, I always compose a shot list before I talk to anybody, including my DP. So I'll spend a couple months basically creating the movie in my head, so I have a very solid film in my head, where I know every shot, and I know what the transitions between scenes are.

I'm drawn to filmmaking that can transport me. Film can immerse you, put you there.