In this post, you will find great Filmmaker Quotes from famous people, such as Ram Gopal Varma, Werner Herzog, Asghar Farhadi, Sunny Deol, Bennett Miller. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.
You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn’t mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that’s what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.
I came out of a sort of experimental background, and I didn’t ever really expect – or even desire – a career as a feature filmmaker.
There’s not a formula that I’m following; it’s just how I feel at the time. For instance, I did a very experimental film called ‘Hardcore Henry,’ and that was simply because I thought the filmmaker was very interesting and a risk taker. A film like that had never been made before, so I chose to do that at the time.
I wanna work with filmmakers that love, are enthusiastic about their process – about the process – about their process and the environment of inclusion and collaboration. I want the people to be able to trust me, and I wanna be able to trust them.
I’ve had filmmakers, I even had Bono come and talk to me about having a sequel to ‘E.T.’ help with an environmental message – I listened. I can certainly understand. I mean, the great thing about Bono is that everything he does is in service to a greater cause.
I’m trying to keep a good record and do interesting movies with interesting filmmakers.
As a filmgoer and a filmmaker, I want to participate and tell stories of woman and man that will move us forward.
If you look at the most meaningful science fiction, it didn’t come from watching other films. We seem to be in a place now where filmmakers make films based on other films because that’s where the stimuli and influence comes from.
The filmmakers always have a great level of control.
As a filmmaker, you want people to understand and get what you do, and it’s a lot to ask for.
Something that I’ve cared about deeply my whole career is getting to work with filmmakers and inventors of stories that are hysterical because they are just so painfully true.
As a woman filmmaker in Bosnia, I have more privileges than disadvantages. I feel I can do more than my male colleagues with a motherly approach rather than a male approach.
Frankly, I get sick of being considered a ‘young woman filmmaker’ rather than an individual artist, as a man would be.
I don’t think of myself as a director or writer. I think of myself as a filmmaker.
I love directing scenes that I’m not in because suddenly I really feel like a filmmaker which is a different thing.
In pre-school, I was drawing dinosaurs – I was huge into dinosaurs. I wanted to be a paleontologist, not a cartoonist or a filmmaker or anything like that – just a paleontologist. So I would draw dinosaurs.
I had pictured myself as a filmmaker but I had never pictured myself as a director if that makes any sense at all.
I always like to work with really good filmmakers and really good actors.
I think, as directors, they may recognize, more than the rest of the body of filmmakers, exactly what you do as a director, because I think sometimes the conception is if the camera isn’t swinging around, and it’s not pyrotechnic or worthily melodramatic, then the direction is uninvolved.
But I did on projects that I produced, that I directed, that I acted in because it was important. I want to be a filmmaker. I don’t want to be an actor who directs, I want to be a director. I want to be a filmmaker. So that’s a big difference.
The cool thing about those small-budget movies is that there’s a tremendous amount of freedom the filmmakers have since there’s less money at stake.
I think one of the privileges of being a filmmaker is the opportunity to remain a kind of perpetual student.
I only want to work with interesting filmmakers.
It’s always nice to have another filmmaker to reassure you that you are making a good quality film.
I look at other filmmakers and see skills in them that I wish I had but I know that I don’t. I feel like I have to work really hard to keep myself afloat, doing what I do. But I find it pleasurable.
My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.
It takes years of building that experience as a filmmaker, as well as physically. You have to have a high level understanding of martial arts.
I have three sons, and the oldest wants to play pirates all the time. It has all these associations of living some kind of very free life. It’s interesting for me as a filmmaker to show a whole different side of that.
‘Saw’ was good and bad. It was good in that it gave me a career start, but it was also negative in that it really marginalized me as a filmmaker.
As a filmmaker, you have to stand in front of what you did and make choices that you could do with a clear conscience.
I actually chose to do ‘X-Men’ because I’m working with Simon Kinberg, who’s also a first-time filmmaker who I met on ‘The Martian‘ and is an incredible writer and producer.
I’m a documentary filmmaker, I know what it means to craft a story, especially when you’ve shot a lot of material.
I hope people don’t compare 2D and 3D because 3D’s new, it’s unfair to compare to 2D which is really sophisticated, even when we’re jaded about it. 3D just began, give it a chance, let the equipment and projection system catch up and be better, let the price go down, let more filmmakers get a hold of it more easily.
Films don’t decide my whole life. They are just a part of who I am. What I do in my personal life should be of no concern to the filmmakers or the fans.
Film is an emotional medium; it’s not a logical medium. It’s not an intellectual medium, so every decision you make as a filmmaker and an actor has to be emotional in some way, even in the rejection of logic.
I do believe that there are auteurs, in the sense that there are filmmakers with very strong voices and their voices are communicated on to the screen without a lot of compromise.
The system is not really particularly amenable to filmmakers who write and direct their own work. It’s much more about the studio already having a property that has a marketable concept and then hiring the director on board.
‘Fast and Furious‘ is the only franchise that I’ve directed that I did not create from scratch. So it definitely was an eye-opening experience for me coming to that world. I had to be respectful of the roles that had been established by the filmmakers before me, and I was cool with that.
Part of being a filmmaker is also being a craftsman.
There is so much corruption in India that some filmmakers were using political or administrative sources to get access.
‘Mayabazar’ was the film I immensely loved as a kid. Only when I became a filmmaker about 20 years later did I realise its technical marvel and what a great epic it was. I and my visual effects supervisor, while making ‘Yamadonga,’ took two days to understand the magnification shot of Ghatothkatcha’s persona.
The truth of the matter is, I’m a filmmaker.
Ah, there’s a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who’s, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he’s a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art.
It’s more like can I build a group of characters and can I tell some universal truths that feel real and aren’t formulaic in the spirit of filmmakers gone by who’ve told American stories that were personal and universal as well.
I have no great interest in being remembered as a great creative filmmaker.
You can’t second-guess yourself as a filmmaker.
I want people to think of me as a ‘Mindset‘ guy, a journalist, a commentator, a social media personality, a filmmaker, an author, but I got to – I have to pivot so far away from anything pro-Trump, I just got to keep going that way.
As a filmmaker, you just make the movie you want to make, and you sort of put your faith in the distributor to make sure the right people see it.
You know, I think Chris Nolan is an incredibly intelligent filmmaker, and I think Leonardo DiCaprio is an incredibly talented actor.
I think when I got drawn to film, I didn’t know it was a business. I mean, like most filmmakers, I probably saw more films than a lot of people when I was a kid. But I watched them on TV as well. I was no purist about it. I spent lots of time in movie theaters, but I also watched a lot of films on TV.
Part of the process of reading is constantly hitting the pause button, and now and then the rewind button, to ponder a word that’s been chosen by the author as exquisitely as the filmmaker chooses an image or a sound editor chooses a sonic clue – the tolling of a bell in the distance to evoke memory, for instance.
As a filmmaker you get typecast just as much as an actor does, so I’m trapped in a genre that I love, but I’m trapped in it!
When I did ‘E.T.,’ it sort of solidified the only family I know are these film crews. These gypsies. These filmmakers. That was the solidification and the clicking revelations of ‘This is what I want to do with my life and this is where I’m going to survive.’
I think every filmmaker has his way of working, and I respect that.
In ‘Blood Work,’ they made choices I wouldn’t have made, but I’m not a filmmaker. I took the money, and they told the story.
I think that technological tools that filmmakers use to tell stories, in a perfect world, need to become invisible. When it’s brand new and it’s never been seen before and you’re birthing this stuff, it’s very much on people’s minds.
It’s our responsibility as filmmakers to tell a story that’s a human drama.
If I had a big brother who was a year older than me or something, I probably wouldn’t have ended up being a filmmaker.
The filmmaker’s got to make it his story and the actors have got to make it their story.
I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.
I originally went to school to be a filmmaker. And so it’s a big part of how I think and how I write. And it inspires me a lot.
Ultimately, I don’t think you can be a character who’s completely alien or divorced from your own personality. It’s probably true of every writer – it’s probably true of every filmmaker, every songwriter – that, ultimately, every character you create is a facet of yourself.
I think the only thing filmmakers can do is try to make good movies and make them as long as they allow us to keep making them. But at the end of the day, it is a business, and if audiences don’t care, there’s nothing we can do. It’ll just go away, I guess.
When you get an opportunity to work in good films like ‘Raazi,’ it boosts your confidence to know that good filmmakers are willing to work with you.
It’s nice being friends over a period of time with people whose music you like so much, or other filmmakers, seeing people change, go through trials.
Throughout Ireland, there’s a brilliant community of filmmakers and actors, and I guess there was always a lure to do some work in the place where I come from.
Personally, as a filmmaker, I think you should prepare your audience as to what they can expect.
Kenny Lonergan, as a filmmaker, doesn’t tell stories so much as he observes them, which is to say, his films don’t come pre-digested. You have to bring your own enzymes. It’s a more gripping and challenging experience.
The most important thing as a filmmaker, the hardest journey you’ll have, is to find your point of view.
In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.
The idea of an animated film is you always kind of get a little bit daunted by it as a filmmaker because it feels like a lot of your communication is going to be with computer artists, and you’re going to have to kind of channel the movie through extra pairs of hands.
I always tell young filmmakers, don’t go make a feature. Make a short. When you’re ready to make a feature, people will tell you. Your friends will tell you. Your fans will tell you. Festivals will tell you. Listen to your audience.
I find a lot of young filmmakers make too much of an effort to be trendy and they can be pretentious.
I loved American filmmakers when I was growing up. I didn’t get to film school or anything. I was a very bad student. I just devoured film, but there was a point in my teens when I started to run a little film society.
As a veteran, I am always appreciative when filmmakers bring to the screen stories of those who have served.
I admire a lot of Spanish filmmakers and actors. I grew up watching a lot of Spanish films and novellas, and there’s just so much talent out there.
I guess I have a fascination with the idea of puppeteering. I think, in a lot of ways, directing is puppeteering. I guess I see a lot of analogies between what puppeteers and filmmakers do.
In 1962, we created the Filmmakers’ Co-Op because nobody wanted to distribute our films. If we had the Internet in those days, we wouldn’t have needed the Co-Op.
For any filmmaker who has just released a film and who is experiencing some measure of success, the temptation can be great to respond to every screening request that comes in.
Gavin O’Connor, I’d walk into a fire for that guy. He’s a brilliant filmmaker and a passionate man.
I don’t know what to say about it except Tom Hanks is a great person, a serious person; he’s dissatisfied in a very likeable way, in a very discreet way, and Steven Spielberg is similar in his discretion and drive. But Spielberg is calm. He’s this driven filmmaker and visionary. He really is.
Some documentaries are made by people who are driven more by one particular story, or have different backgrounds or ambitions, but I’m always looking for projects that let me be the best filmmaker I can be, and to be stretched and grow further.
Stories in which the destruction of society occurs are explorations of social fears and issues that filmmakers, novelists, playwrights, painters have been examining for a long time.
I’ve always been a fiction filmmaker and I’ve been heading in the direction of fiction filmmaking, doing documentaries along the way.
I don’t find myself lobbying for projects. Filmmakers almost always come to me.
I’ll always see myself as a British filmmaker, powerfully so.
The kind of filmmaker that I am, even my darker horror films generally are still very fun. And I think that’s important for me and the kind of films I make.
Being a filmmaker in the digital platform has given me complete creative control. I can make what I want, when I want. I don’t have to wait to book an audition.
What I’m trying to do is to make films – ‘I Origins‘ is one of them – with the new generation of filmmakers. I want to support that.
My dad couldn’t connect to my wanting to be a filmmaker. He was very connected in entertainment, and through him I met Steven Spielberg and got rides on his private plane to California. I’d see Spielberg’s people reading scripts. I was like, ‘That’s what I want to be when I grow up.’
I didn’t have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world.
What I would say to filmmakers, if I may be so bold or so arrogant, is to draw inspiration from other filmmakers, but go to the place in your own gut where everything is nothing. That’s a very Zen thing to say, but that place of nothing is where real creativity comes out of.
I’ve worked in the film business for 45 years, and I want to keep on growing as a filmmaker. I want to see my visual life grow and be increasingly effective in this world.
To be an original is probably the hardest quality to find if you’re a young filmmaker.
Just in the past few years – since I’ve been making movies, which isn’t a very long time – you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren’t even.
I came out of ‘Che’ a different filmmaker.
A filmmaker chooses an actress keeping the best interest of the film in mind. If he doesn’t cast you, it doesn’t mean there’s a personal agenda. Change is constant, and if you have agreed to be part of this industry, you will have to go with the change. The films and filmmakers, even the audience has changed.
I think all the great studio filmmakers are dead or no longer working. I don’t put myself, my friends, and other contemporary filmmakers in their category. I just see us doing some work.
I think filmmakers are always interested in getting the best actor that they can find, the person who’s the most right for it.
I think all indie filmmakers should just give up on distribution.
You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.
For so many filmmakers, cinema is a means to an end.
I’ve tried not to get sucked into the Hollywood hierarchy system. Personally, I don’t like it when people are deferential to me because I’m an established filmmaker. It’s a blue-collar sensibility.
My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I’m a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, ‘Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!’ and I took that as a great compliment. That’s exactly my intention.
I mean if politics was my main motivation I would be doing politics. But I’m a filmmaker.
Politics will take care of itself. I’m interested in people who are involved in the situations that politicians create. Politics is taken care of by politicians – they’re not filmmakers.
I never set out to build some behemoth comedy career. My taste in movies is far more eclectic than that so my aspirations as a filmmaker are far more eclectic than that.
I love working with young people and young filmmakers, and I love working on first films. I think it’s cool. It’s fun. I just take it as it comes.
Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and ‘long-form development‘ that filmmakers didn’t have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like ‘The Sopranos.’
The filmmakers who I’m pining to work for aren’t ringing my phone off the hook.
I feel like every day I discover new actors and new filmmakers and different genres, and it’s just so cool.
I’m a commercial filmmaker.
With ‘Mask,’ ‘Smooth Talk’ and ‘Blue Velvet,’ I loved the specific experiences so much. Each one was a specific filmmaker with a specific vision.
I’ve always worked with a team of actors and filmmakers ever since I was a kid in Michigan making Super-8 movies.
I want to work with great filmmakers and great actors and get better as an actor.
When you work with filmmakers, and it’s their first film, there’s an exuberance and optimism, which is quite… There’s no room for being jaded. Thinking that you know it all.
I am a filmmaker fanatic. I have never been star-struck by an actor once in my entire life.
Well it’s always been an element of the horror film to show us the gross out. I mean that’s one option for all filmmakers making a horror film and it’s not something I’ve found myself above either.
I think as a filmmaker one should make all kinds of films. It is not that one should make only one kind of film. I love to see romantic films; I loved watching ‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge,’ ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.’ If I make such films, I will make it with my yardstick, according to my parameters.
I wanted already to be a filmmaker after I saw ‘La Dolce Vita.’
Real to Reel is a rare opportunity for new filmmakers to screen their work for industry insiders.
It’s not always clear whether the filmmaker intends our alienation or is even aware of it.
You know, I feel like my job is to write a book. Then filmmakers come and they make a movie. And they’re two really different art forms.
It is important to keep the filmmakers interested in you so they can offer you everything and anything. We actors are not given work on the basis of audience poll; the filmmaker will cast you after they see and like your work. It is essential to do different kind of films and not get typecast.
Following a pre-cellphone world of children on an adventure is incredibly appealing for me. These are the kinds of movies I fell in love with and made me want to be a filmmaker in the first place.
As a filmmaker, I wish we didn’t have to do trailers at all, quite honestly. I wish we didn’t have to do posters. I wish didn’t have to give anything away. I wish people could just come in the movie blind. But as an audience member, I respect that you have to tell an audience that this is worth your time.
As a filmmaker, the only way that I understand how to make a film is holistically.
I could not – and I still cannot – see a sustainable career as a filmmaker in which I focus fully on our gay stories.
I have major credibility as a hip, out-there documentary filmmaker, and I’m not going to say, ‘I’m only a drama filmmaker’ anymore.
It’s like everybody is shooting something, and everybody’s a filmmaker; everybody can shoot a cat video and post it. So the big thing now is – for people that have talent and have something to say, and are creative, and are capable of making something good – is how do they get attention to it?
I’m always excited when I can discover new filmmakers.
I come from a family where my father is a filmmaker and professor of film.
I understand the rules of Superman – not necessarily better than anyone else – but better than a normal filmmaker would. After doing ‘Watchmen‘ and digging that deep into the why of superheroes, when Superman is presented to you, I felt like I was in a unique position to say ‘I get this guy. I know what this is.’
I feel like, on a more macro scale, there’s started to be a relationship between filmmakers and people who watch their films – you know, on Twitter and on the Internet.
It’s easy to make a film, but it’s hard to make a career of being a filmmaker.
Any filmmakers out there want a Welshman with sharp cheekbones and wonky teeth to play the love interest in their movie, give me a call.
I’m not a writer, although, as a filmmaker, you are an author in a certain way.
I’m a journalist, and I’m a filmmaker. I have an organization that’s all about telling stories.
It’s tricky to ask a filmmaker to explain his own work; usually we’re the least qualified to make sense of what we’ve done, unfortunately, because of the tunnel vision required to create anything over four years.
I think it’s our obligation as filmmakers, as people investigating the world, to create the reality that is most insightful to the issues at hand. Here are human beings, like us, boasting about atrocities that should be unimaginable.
There are many documentary filmmakers who have a tough time because they don’t really get what they need to do what they want. There are so many people with good visions that should be encouraged and helped. And they will deliver, I’m sure.
As a filmmaker, I’m a collaborator first.
I’ve always been very ambitious, and I always knew that I wanted something else. Cuba was a good start, but I knew I wasn’t going to develop a real career, and I wanted to get closer to filmmakers that I wanted to work with.
It’s a new business for me to be a filmmaker.
I’ve seen so many young filmmakers – even professional filmmakers who get a Hollywood deal – they don’t quite know where to begin, where to end, and they’ll waste a lot of time making this perfect shot, an establishing shot, and then there’s no time left to shoot the dialogue.
Tribeca Film Festival Doha will promote Middle Eastern themes and filmmakers, but not exclusively. Approximately 40 films will be presented at the new Museum of Islamic Art and in cinemas across Doha. Innovative work by established filmmakers will be shown alongside the debuts of newly discovered directing talents.
And I feel that filmmakers ought to be careful with the use of 3D. Because if you look back over the decades, you see that 3D has come and gone for I don’t know how many years now.
Definitely, it would be foolish to try and make my Czech films here in America, as foolish as it is when some Czech filmmakers try to make movies of America in Czechoslovakia.
When you’re out there trying to still figure things out, it can just slow things down. So you have to kind of think on your feet, and it makes it kind of fun and exciting and challenging at the same time. But more time is always better for any movie. I think any director would probably tell you that. Any filmmaker, really.
I get really excited when I see filmmakers make something that is subtle and feels real. It is really tough to do right.
I’ve often thought even ragtag gatherings of documentary filmmakers are more fun than gatherings of fiction filmmakers.
I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that. I’d been an actor in high school, and when I got to college, it was all about film.
I’m a documentary filmmaker by training. You got to start with the real people and the real place.
Belfast has many advantages for the filmmakers, one of which is the existence of an airport right in the middle of the city.
Catholicism is so steeped in imagery. It’s one of the many reasons Catholicism has given birth to so many great filmmakers compared to the Protestant tradition – even in America, where we’re primarily Protestant.
Every filmmaker wants to get their audience talking.
If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.
When I read the script and saw the jazz music setting, and when I read the name of the filmmaker was Damien Chazelle, I immediately got this mental image of Antoine Fuqua.
When you are doing music videos through the ’90s, which I did, and the 2000s, you were put in the position, really, as an independent filmmaker. You were being financed by a major record company or a minor record company or whatever.
Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can’t quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.
Ireland is a good place to start out as a filmmaker. If what you do is good, even at a very small scale, it will get recognized.
Some of the subject matters that I like to make stories about are definitely not inherently commercial. So I have to look for a very special kind of financing and go down a very gentle path in order to make my films, as do basically all social-realist filmmakers. It’s a long process.
The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea, and I can pretty much execute it.
James Cameron has always been one of my favorite filmmakers. The first ‘Terminator’ is such a phenomenal film. It’s not just that, though – he’s also a very interesting person, James Cameron. It’s fascinating to talk to him about science and engineering.
I started to do theater when I was a little boy at school, and then, I think because my father was a documentary filmmaker and worked for German television, I was of course fascinated by what he did.
My biggest inspiration is to work with interesting filmmakers and learn from them in any way that I can.
If any fantastic filmmakers want to offer me roles, I’ll consider it!
As a filmmaker, deep blacks are essential, and in my experience, no technology captures those attributes as well as Plasma.
There’s a lot of Latinos right now, a lot of filmmakers and writers that are Latin too.
I’m a filmmaker, and I was most influenced by Hitchcock’s films. How he could plant such deep enriched characters and then make us care both about the antagonist and protagonist was masterful.
If you’re a filmmaker who grew up wanting to make a movie for people to have that female experience of sitting in the theater together, it’s hard to do unless you can compete with the bigger spectacles that are being offered to them.
I came out to Hollywood when I was just 18, and my dad, he was really into Hollywood and theater and art, and I guess growing up, he exposed me to a lot of culture, and I just started making Super-8 films in high school and decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.
As a filmmaker, I really want to utilize the tools to carry the voice – my voice, and the voice of the characters.
Any filmmaker who has translated some personal vision into a film that actually gets shot and distributed is wildly successful. Congratulations! Anything after that is gravy.
Given the kind of filmmaker I am, the kind of experiences I’ve been trying to give audiences, I was drawn to the potential of VR before I even tried watching anything in VR.
When dealing with HBO, you actually are dealing with real filmmakers.
We want to empower artists and filmmakers to forge new paths.
From the very beginning, I’ve always just wanted to do something I’ve never done before. I’m still just trying to be on that path. It’s all about working with filmmakers that you believe in.
We don’t want to be our own niche. We’re filmmakers like everybody. How many years in a row are we going to talk about the fact that we make films and we are women? Enough already.
By 14, I had decided on three modest goals and repeated them often to everyone. I wanted to be a world-class filmmaker, CEO of a multi-billion-dollar entertainment company, and president of the United States. I’ve had to settle for journeyman actor.
I’ve worked with some of the greatest filmmakers in the history of the medium, and they all have something in common: a quality that is creative, comfortable, and thoughtful.
I’ve never felt that my job was difficult because I’m a woman. It’s a difficult job regardless, and it’s even more difficult in Lebanon because there’s no film industry. There’s no structure, funding, or institutions for filmmakers.
I feel like I’ve been observed as an individual more than a gay person, or as a filmmaker with a certain point of view rather than a lesbian filmmaker with a gay point of view.
Working with and collaborating with and for Peter Jackson was an incredible experience because he is such a phenomenal filmmaker.
I’ve been a documentary photographer for much longer than I have been a filmmaker.
My take on it, like a filmmaker or actor, is if you have much more colors within your creation, eventually people will appreciate what you’re doing, and the other stuff is secondary, like critiques or even awards or anything else, as long as people enjoy it.
For me, I’m a filmmaker because, above all, I’m an explorer. It’s my way of exploring and investigating the problems, the questions, and the mysteries about what it means to be human that vex me most, that keep me up at night, and that, when I finally fall asleep, insinuate themselves into my dreams.
We’ve always wanted to be filmmakers.
I want to work with amazing filmmakers and tell important stories, and if I have to audition to do that, I will.
And as a filmmaker, I’m trying to unhook myself from this idea that unless you have a brilliant, long, enormously lucrative theatrical run, that your movie somehow failed. And I don’t believe that.
My father was an amateur filmmaker who shot 8mm color documentaries.
What matters to me as a creative artist is the credibility of the production house, the honesty in the script, and the way the filmmaker has conceived the characters in the narrative.
If you know the filmmaker is good and the leading actor is a movie star like Diane Lane, you know you’re part of something great.
It is funny now, but in the beginning of my career, some of the films failed at the box office, and filmmakers stopped casting me, saying I am bringing bad luck to their film.
Most independent filmmakers in Britain and North America work for commercial crews and then have their own projects when they’ve got enough money saved up to do so.
I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it’s really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, ‘Well, I didn’t like the love story,’ but it was probably just too long.
When I think about filmmakers and actresses that I have admired my whole life, I’ve admired their entire body of work.
Two of my sons are themselves filmmakers, and we can’t afford them nor they us. They work in the real world and earn money and are pretty good at it.
If you’re a filmmaker, and every time you finish a film, you just naturally go, ‘Oh, I could have done so much better,’ that’s not much fun, is it, really? You might as well go pick another profession if that really is how you derive satisfaction from it.
There are certain filmmakers I’d like to work with that I don’t think would take a risk with me, because I could be distracting in their film. It’ll take a couple films to prove to them that it’s worth the risk.
Having to make a blockbuster every time puts unhealthy pressure on creatives. The pressure on the filmmakers is so intense, I think it stifles the creativity.
I’m a filmmaker, not a scientist.
I believe Sam Peckinpah is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and I hold him in high regard.
I am the luckiest filmmaker I know.
As a filmmaker, you want nothing more than to have people say, ‘I love your movie.’
As someone who’s been a filmmaker and an editor, I was wary of being on camera.
I never intended to become a commercial filmmaker in the first place. What I do requires time and experimentation. Commercial work is often not the best way to get the most innovative work, because it’s about money and marketing. Although advertising is now embracing non-commercial people.
As a filmmaker, you have to understand the essence of the book and tell the story you want to see on the screen, and hopefully please yourself – because you can’t possibly please everyone.
Films can make you dream. They allow you to imagine a different world. It’s why I decided to become a filmmaker. I wanted that even though it seemed impossible.
As I continue to evolve as a filmmaker, I’m going to continue to do different stuff.
For city dwellers like me who don’t get to vacation in the summer, no filmmaker can so effectively make you feel like you went to France for August, fell in love, got hurt, broke up, grew up, and figured some things out – all in 90 minutes or so. My favorite of Rohmer’s cinematic escapes is ‘La Collectionneuse.’
One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people – directors, filmmakers, and writers – over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.
Showtime has given new, young filmmakers – black, white, across the board – an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.
I have no directing ambition whatsoever. And as long as I meet filmmakers like Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears, and others who allow that collaboration, I can’t see why I would ever want to direct.
We saw ‘Swiss Army Man’ and fell in love with the Daniels, who are adventurous filmmakers and radical storytellers, pushing the boundaries.
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 want ‘Like Brothers‘ to answer young kids who ask, ‘How could I possibly become a filmmaker?’ This book will step that out for you.
For someone, success is to be the highest paid actress. For some, it might be the number of awards, and for some, it is the number of films. Honestly, I feel privileged when a celebrated filmmaker offers me a role so that I can be a part of his vision. That is success for me.
Lots of people have criticized my movies, but nobody has ever identified the real problem: I’m a sloppy filmmaker.
When I was young, my idea was to become a filmmaker.
I consider my job as a screenwriter to pack a script with possibilities and ideas – to create a feast for the filmmaker to pick from.
‘Meek‘s Cutoff’ by Kelly Reichardt – it’s beautifully shot. It’s a complex story. The filmmaker gave a very patient and feminine touch to a story that takes place during a period of history that’s very masculine, without losing any of the unforgiving harshness of the reality where the characters found themselves in.
For a film to be viable, it has to survive this process of scrutiny. I think most filmmakers have obsessive-compulsive tendencies and would be completely unemployable in any other job – so it’s great to be able to channel your psychological anomalies into something productive and creative.
When I wanted to become a filmmaker, there was nobody for me to look up to.
That’s the thing about leaks: sometimes they aren’t misinterpreted or false. They’re real story elements that the filmmakers were hoping to introduce to the audience in a darkened movie theater.
At first, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be a critic or a filmmaker, but I knew it would be something like that.
I already have legitimacy as a filmmaker and now I’m trying to do stuff that’s just fun. Until I find a cool tangible subject again that I want to tackle.
Me, as a moviegoer, before being a filmmaker, I try to think about what movie I would like to see.
As a filmmaker, like any artist, when something affects me emotionally I think about it in those terms. It’s my way of dealing with my thoughts, my fears and my hardships. I think the same can be said with any artist. For a musician, you’re going to write a song about something that affects you emotionally.
By the time I finished ‘Poison,’ the New Queer Cinema was branded, and I was associated with this. In many ways, it formed me as a filmmaker, like as a feature filmmaker I never set out to be.
Many filmmakers pretend that they never see anything, which has always seemed odd to me.
On one hand, as a filmmaker, I don’t want to make a movie with guns everywhere.
Our responsibility as filmmakers is to make things that are fresh, unique and original.
I’m very happy to be involved with great filmmakers.
I think independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers – they are journalists.
Being the son of a filmmaker, you are aware of a career as a director. You don’t think of it as just movies, but as a life.
As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.
I started to do theater when I was a little boy at school, and then, I think because my father was a documentary filmmaker and worked for German television, I was of course fascinated by what he did. Then when I was around 15, I did my first movie.
Blu-ray and the technologies emerging around it are the premiere format for reproducing what we do as filmmakers. There’s more space on the disc, more bit rate.
I find that I don’t lie about the big things in life. The things that matter. And about me. While I’m talking about myself, I rarely lie: I know who I am, my level of talent, that I’m not the most versatile filmmaker, the person I am. I don’t lie about myself because I don’t lie to myself.
I feel like I’m a filmmaker; I don’t feel I need to yell action and cut.
Like a lot of people my age, I grew up on Amblin movies. They’re a part of who I am as a filmmaker and, arguably, as a person.
I’ve always thought that guns are a cowardly tool in the hands of men and women trying to solve problems with each other. And cowardly in the hands of filmmakers. It’s taken so lightly in films.
For a lot of filmmakers, their first goal is to be successful and make some money. But once people start doing that, the real goal is then to win an Academy Award. Because when they do, they know that their obit is going to start out, ‘Academy Award winner so-and-so.’
You’re seeing me develop, not only as a filmmaker if you’ve seen my earlier films, but you’re seeing me kind of learn how to be a human, how my philosophy has evolved.
Writing has certain advantages; film is another way to tell a story. An experienced filmmaker will take what she needs from the book and leave out other things. With adaptations, you never get the texture of the writing: it’s a different mode.
It is an honor for me to take part in Canon‘s Project Imagin8ion, partnering with a brand that is empowering young filmmakers and is at the forefront of technology.
We are filmmakers, and we are specifically trying to entertain people.
I’m drawn toward filmmakers who have a very distinctive voice. I really appreciate people who push themselves and, therefore, push the medium forward.
There’s really no difference between what I do and what a male filmmaker might do. I mean we all try to make our days, we all try to give the best performances we can, we try to make our budget, we try to make the best movie we possibly can.
In this business, you’re dependent on the writer, the filmmaker, the luck of beating out who knows how many people for the part. I’m over getting torn up about that.
I’m not trying to prove myself a great filmmaker. I don’t know much about filmmaking anyway. I’m trying my hand at it to see if I’m any good.
You don’t go make ‘Schizopolis’ if you’re trying to protect some idea of yourself as a filmmaker.
‘The Movie’ is something that I made with some friends of mine in L.A. My friend, Luke Eberl, is the filmmaker. He shot this movie and asked a bunch of his friends to be involved with it. I just saw him the other day and there is no money to finish the film. But, you know, I literally have a cameo in it.
All too often, white documentary filmmakers are the ones telling the stories of people of color.
As a filmmaker, the most dramatic and the most dread-inspiring thing is when the audience can see more than the characters themselves can see.
I’d love for there to be a situation – a world in which that’s just not even a question anymore. We are all filmmakers – different stripes, genders, sexual orientations, colors – and our work can be taken on its own terms. I’m really looking forward to that day.
I hope I can become a good enough filmmaker where I can take a script that I’m not ‘heart and soul‘ into, but I could still make something really great out of it.
The reason most comedies don’t win awards is that the filmmakers put the comedy first. This means you have to create a story around the jokes.
We know as filmmakers where you draw the line.
As a filmmaker whose first film was made with the DIY tools of digital cinema, I love how the democratization of the filmmaking process and platforms like YouTube enables people to tell stories that in previous generations simply could not be told.
I think, on a larger note, that filmmakers and studios should start to tuck it in a little bit, because films wouldn’t have the pressure they have if the word wasn’t out about how expensive they were.
‘All the President’s Men’ is a movie that has a very personal place for me because it made me want to be a journalist, and then it made me want to be a filmmaker.
It’s like getting into film – I didn’t say early on, ‘I’m going to become a filmmaker,’ ‘I’m going to show my work at MoMA.’ When you start to think those things, you’re in trouble.
Making African American films are hard in Hollywood. We need to rely on a support network and bring more cohesion to different filmmakers, actors, producers etc. It’s a very difficult business. There aren’t a lot of Africans Americans or people of color in high positions in Hollywood that we can green-light films.
A lot of first-time filmmakers are almost apologizing for their movie by saying, ‘Well, we only had 18 days to shoot, you know.’
Unlike with any other art form, filmmakers have this unique web of festivals. There are hundreds. It is a democratic system in which you submit films, and if they are good enough, they play. The only barrier to entry is the submission fee.
With docs, there’s often a very direct communication between the filmmaker and the audience. With narrative movies, we leave it a little bit more open.
When you’re a filmmaker you’re part of a very expensive art form.
The whole Orion zeitgeist, of treating filmmakers as partners, to me it’s inseparable from the success of ‘Silence of the Lambs’.
I think all the filmmakers in Hong Kong are influenced by John Woo.
Every filmmaker’s just going to keep trying to make it the best you can make it: make it as potent and interesting and entertaining and exciting and tough and sexy as you can.
I think, as a filmmaker, it’s important to be honest with yourself at all times in terms of what’s working and what’s not.
I don’t necessarily see myself as an experienced filmmaker just because I’ve been in a few movies.
I think as a filmmaker my first contribution would just be to make a good movie that people would love to see and leave the theatre charged, with a sense of excitement.
Every filmmaker has this short book of films that don’t get made – for a whole host of reasons.
I had had no aspirations to be a filmmaker or a writer.
After ‘A Separation,’ I found it much easier to work in Iran because I worked with very enthusiastic people who were very involved in the work, and that facilitated a number of things. It made it possible to iron out some of the difficulties found by other filmmakers in Iran.
I find it remarkable. It’s surreal for me that I’ve gotten to work with so many people who are not only great filmmakers but whose films have had such a direct effect on me.
I’m actually part of a number of minorities. I grew up being a horribly awkward kid. A terrible student. And now I find myself as a filmmaker, and you feel kind of alone in the world because you’re separate from everyone else.
The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.
I’m a theater guy and a filmmaker. So when my community was thrown up in the air by the gas industry, the way I could contribute was to do something in the film world. I never thought it would be a big deal at all.
I can’t wait for the rest of my career to meet these young writers and filmmakers so that I can produce and push a lot of their stories out there.
I like to work with artists from around the world. There are so many new inspiring filmmakers.
I wasn’t predestined to be a filmmaker; this wasn’t an obvious choice to me.
I’m always inspired by other filmmakers, whether it’s a shot or the way they handle tone.
I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.
When I was a teenager, I thought maybe I’ll be a filmmaker, making film documentaries. My dream when I was a girl was I would be hired by ‘National Geographic‘ or work with David Attenborough, but it didn’t happen. I became a model.
Personally I find there is just as much if not more creativity among game makers as there is among feature filmmakers.
I keep pushing buttons and trying to grow as a person and as a filmmaker.
There’s some movies I watch, they’re kind of like my anti-anxiety pill, my anti-depressant pill. I watch them at least once or twice a month probably. And I never stop learning from them as a filmmaker.
I hear filmmakers saying, ‘I wanted to make to make a film about this issue, or this theme,’ but I never start like that.
I put more emphasis on filmmakers than maybe Hollywood does.
When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn’t mean that the other 39 are bad.
When you have filmmakers like Justin Simien, writers, producers, actresses like Lena Waithe, who are people of color, they’re creating their own content and saying, ‘You know what? We’re not going to wait on someone else to tell our story. We’re going to do it ourselves. You can be a part of it or not.’
As a filmmaker, my approach is to come in not with preconceived notions, but with curiosity, and in that way, whether my subjects are James Carville or Anna Wintour or Dick Cheney, I am always surprised.
The whole idea of a festival to me is that filmmakers get to interact. You see someone strolling, you get to meet them and tell them you like their work, you admire their story.
I’m a filmmaker, so I always think: When is the breaking point? Sometimes you’ve got to go beyond the breaking point, and then you catch it. When is long enough? It’s one of those things you have to look at, walk away, and go home and find out what it is.
I try not to put pressure on filmmakers to come up with a big scare at the beginning. I think that helps let the audience settle in and get to know the people they’re about to spend 90 minutes with. Once the scarier stuff happens, it’s scarier because of that.
Ultimately, I am very filmmaker oriented, as a producer.
I think as a filmmaker and as a director, you shortchange yourself if you inhibit the ability of your actor to bring their own personal experiences to the characters.
For a documentary filmmaker, I do very well.
The world needs more women filmmakers, so we have to keep encouraging ourselves and one another, and eventually things must get easier for us.
We are here predominantly to support independent filmmakers and their needs. We are also here to assist people actually in their production, non-commercial people in their production.
I’m trying to develop an approach to putting out a movie in wide release that makes some kind of economic sense for the filmmakers and the people that have a participation in the movie.
The greatest filmmakers are not the ones who put everything in; they’re the ones who can figure things to leave out, and in doing so, invite your participation.
