Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes. — John Ford
Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle. — Robert Bresson
The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one; that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being. — Sergei Eisenstein
The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. — John Huston
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room. — Orson Welles
The duty of a film director is to focus more on the soul of the spectator. — Ken Loach
I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move! — Howard Hawks
A film is a director's vision... there is, however, much input an actor or actress can have. — Natasha Richardson
And Later I Thought, I Can't Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography. — Gus Van Sant
Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting. — Abel Ferrara
Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself — Michael Haneke
Film provides an opportunity to marry the power of ideas with the power of images. — Steven Bochco
Cinematography is a writing with images in mouvement and with sounds. — Robert Bresson
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard. — Billy Wilder
I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium. — Christopher Eccleston
Top 10 Film Directing Quotes
It's not easy to strap yourself down to a desk and bash on a keyboard when you know you can direct lots of films, because directing films is fun and interactive and gregarious. Writing isn't. — Guy Ritchie
No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. — Ingmar Bergman
Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. — Ingmar Bergman
Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers. — Steven Spielberg
I like, as a director and a spectator, simple, direct, frank films. Nothing disgusts me more than snobbism, mannerism, technical gratuity... and, most of all, intellectualism. — John Ford
I like films that continue to spin your head in all sorts of different directions after you've seen them. — Christopher Nolan
I think its a very strange question that I have to defend myself. I don’t feel that. You are all my guests, it’s not the other way around, that’s how I feel. — Lars von Trier
The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. — Francois Truffaut
I attend film school, my background is acting and directing. But the acting does best, I like to work on the stage. — Tommy Wiseau
Film Directing Image Quotes
Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip top if you must, but take the step.
Film Director Quotes
The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't. — Jean-Luc Godard
There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness. — Frank Capra
A director standing by his film rejected by the audience is like him telling a girl 'I love myself and I don't care if you don't love me'. — Ram Gopal Varma
Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.
To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script. — Alfred Hitchcock
Unlike all the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I'd say that film is the sculpting of time. — Andrei Tarkovsky
The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money. — Tom Hooper
Self-control is strength. Calmness is mastery. You have to get to a point where your mood doesn't shift based on the insignificant actions of someone else. Don't allow others to control the direction of your life. Don't allow your emotions to overpower your intelligence.
Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens. — Satyajit Ray
All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They're obliged to overstate their own importance. — Francois Truffaut
My father was a film-maker. He always said he wanted to go like Humphrey Jennings, the legendary director who stepped backwards over a cliff while framing a better shot. — A. A. Gill
For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident. — Sidney Lumet
Directing Movies Quotes
That was certainly true the first time, when I did Body Heat, the first movie that I directed. I was looking for a vessel to tell a certain kind of story, and I was a huge fan of Film Noir, and what I liked about it was that it was so extreme in style. — Lawrence Kasdan
Directing ain't about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn't want to go to film school. I didn't know what the point was. The fact is, you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots and you're only going to get two. — David Fincher
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. — Graham Chapman
When I was a kid, I would make kung fu movies with the kids in the neighborhood, and I would be the guy behind the camera directing everybody, but they were all very silly little shorts and comedy bits. — Dan Fogler
Of course, I'd like to produce and direct a blockbuster, but you gotta build up to that. So now I'm learning from a bunch of little movies. And it's more fun with smaller pictures. It's more creative. — Lea Thompson
The truth is that you’re living the movie of your life. So you don’t have to direct it beforehand, you’ve gotta direct it in the moment. —
When you direct is the only time you get to have the world exactly how you want it. My movies are very close to what I set out to do. And I'm super-opinionated about what I do and don't like. — Sofia Coppola
One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the 'fantasy woman' is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don't think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. — Jane Campion
I work constantly but I work at a lot of different things. You know, I run a theater company in New York, I direct plays, act in plays, in movies, so I try to keep it eclectic. — Philip Seymour Hoffman
Directing is like guitar playing. That's a unique mind-set and talent, unto itself. I like the idea of putting everything together to make a great movie. — Slash
Movie Director Quotes
Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple — Gene Wilder
When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite. — Sergio Leone
I'm a frustrated actor. My ... goal is to beat Alfred Hitchcock in the number of cameos. I'm going to try to break his record. — Stan Lee
Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator. — Vsevolod Pudovkin
I don't watch the movies I make, so I haven't seen 'Footloose' since it came out. You see this young, hungry actor, it's pretty fun. I was the only one they screen tested. It was an attempt by the director and producer to talk the head of the studio into hiring me because they didn't want me. — Kevin Bacon
Who would have thought that [director] Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right. — Stephanie Zacharek
There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors — Francois Truffaut
In the future, everybody is going to be a director. Somebody's got to live a real life so we have something to make a movie about. — Cameron Crowe
A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should. — Frank Darabont
Life is like a B-picture script! It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I'd turn it down. — Kirk Douglas
I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera. — Gordon Parks
Tagore once said - art has to be beautiful, but, before that, it has to be truthful. — Ritwik Ghatak
The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed. — Gordon Parks
We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who's watching my movie. — Donald Glover
Hollywood is still the mecca for good or bad, but it isn't the beginning or end for filmmaking. — Robert Duvall
Living
consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and
responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the
moment. — Sidney Poitier
Love is all a matter of timing. It's no good meeting the right person too soon or too late. — Wong Kar-wai
Cinema’s characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind. — Satyajit Ray
A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them. — Renny Harlin
Film-making Quotes
You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. — Ansel Adams
The thing about film-making is I give it everything, that's why I work so hard. I always tell young actors to take charge. It's not that hard. Sign your own cheques, be responsible. — Tom Cruise
I like serious films, the moneymaking blockbusters that don't make any kind of sense and John Carpenter films. — Pam Grier
I like the idea of making big budget films with a heart. I like graphic novels more than comic books. — Matthew Vaughn
We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there's some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You're making it too complicated. — Brad Bird
I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. — Marlon Brando
Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die. — Francois Truffaut
I grew up watching monster movies and horror movies, which I felt were like fairy tales and I think this always spoke to me. Something about that is symbolism - the beauty and the magic which helps me work with film and start making modern fairy tales. — Tim Burton
The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization. — Fredric Jameson
Theatre Directors Quotes
I hate the word 'production'...it's a ceremony, it's a ritual...you should go out of the theatre stronger and more human than when you went in. — Ariane Mnouchkine
Good theatre draws the energies out of the place where it is and gives it back as joie de vivre. — Joan Littlewood
I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room. — James Denton
Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act. — James Agate
I have walked many times around the world and each time it's different from the last one. It feels a little bit like I am a theatrical director, creating a theatre in space. It's really a theater in the sky. But of course the World Trade Center is certainly the most well-known of my productions. — Philippe Petit
There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies. — Sean Penn
I directed before I was even in television; I directed in the theatre for seven years, so that was my trade anyway. But in the UK, I've given up any hope of being considered a director. — Mel Smith
On the one hand, young theatre directors were coming to television theatre, because they wanted to get closer to the cinema, despite having studied and worked for the theatre. — Andrzej Wajda
Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity. — Robert McKee
I love test screenings. Some directors don't, I know. But I love it. I think it's because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they're responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful. — Stephen Daldry
Good Director Quotes
It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life. — Helmut Newton
It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else. — John Waters
A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly. — Kevin Bacon
There's nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, "Wow, I want to do this." I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste. — Ridley Scott
Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you? — Orson Welles
Audiences are harder to please if you're just giving them effects, but they're easy to please if it's a good story. — Steven Spielberg
I got a nomination for director, which means the world to me; it's just the most exciting thing for me and my family. You do the good hard work, and the rest of it is something you shouldn't get too caught up in, but when it happens - boy! I respect it. — David O. Russell
As the cinematographer is usually more visual than the director is and full cooperation is really the answer and to make a great film, you need a good director and you need a good cinematographer. — Vilmos Zsigmond
I think doing something creative is the most important thing to me, and I think it's probably just good for the soul for anyone, whatever it is. You don't have to be a film director - you can do gardening or something - but I think everyone needs to create something. — Ricky Gervais
So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor. — Christian Bale
Moviemaking Quotes
In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and 'get' everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don't understand each atom of the potato! — Jean-Luc Godard
The art of moviemaking seems to get thrown away. The cinematography is gone, and the look of everything becomes of little importance. You lose the memorable images; everything looks like it's been shot at night with a security camera. — Rob Zombie
I think American cinema, particularly, has become so disposable. It's not even cinema, It's just moviemaking. — Eriq La Salle
Just because a movie is satisfactory means that the person who makes it is satisfactory. One can make a wonderful movie but still not be a wonderful person. In terms of interviews, it's probably not a good idea, because moviemakers tend not to tell the truth, even when asked a question. — Mamoru Oshii
It's easier for me to get comedies made because of my track record. Everybody needs to find their niche. I love dramas, but I understand that I am still just a young man in moviemaking. I know there will be some time to get back to that. — Ice Cube
Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process. — Leonard Maltin
People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me? — Dale Carnegie
We saw what happens with Bolsheviks. It was another catastrophe. I don't have the solution. The moviemaker can ask questions but not give solutions. — Costa-Gavras
It's very, very rare in this business [moviemaking] where a script lands on your lap ready to go. — Leonardo DiCaprio
In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired. — Frederick Wiseman
Filmmaker Quotes
The terrorists who committed the 2003 Istanbul attacks were locals, that is, Turks. And when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the Netherlands last year, the murderer and his supporters were also part of the Muslim community. — Otto Schily
My teacher once told me – ”No one is perfect……..that is why pencils have erasers.” — Mahesh Bhatt
The biggest surprise about making a movie has got to be the wait in between takes. — Logan Paul
Always remember, your focus determines your reality. — George Lucas
You need contrast and conflict in order to tell a story. Stories need to have dark and light, turmoil, all those things. But that does not mean the filmmaker has to suffer in order to show the suffering. Stories should have the suffering, not the people. — David Lynch
America is White and Black and Latino and Asian. America is mixed. America is immigrants. — Jose Antonio Vargas
Everything about filmmaking is incredibly weird, and there's nothing natural about watching yourself on the big screen or hearing your voice. It's that same thing that you feel when you watch yourself on a video camera and you hate the sound of your voice - it's that times 800. — Eddie Redmayne
Let me explain something you already know. I'm from Texas and we understand the nature of a border. From what I've seen, vigilant Texans are being ordered to stand down and allow criminals to pass. Mr. President, prepare to see Texans ignoring those orders. — Tommy Lee Jones
I love women. They're the best thing ever created. If they want to be like men and come down to our level, that's fine. — Mel Gibson
Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work. — William Klein
Independent Filmmaking Quotes
But if you, as an independent filmmaker or a "serious" filmmaker, think you put more love into your characters than the Russo Brothers do Captain America, or Joss Whedon does the Hulk, or I do a talking raccoon, you are simply mistaken. — James Gunn
I couldn't sleep one night and I was sitting in my office and I realized that I was an independent filmmaker. — Darren Aronofsky
A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. — Stanley Kubrick
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. — Ann Macbeth
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. — Ann Macbeth
I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point. — Gena Rowlands
I've spent a great deal of my life doing independent film, and that is partly because the subject matter interests me and partly because that is the basis of the film industry. That's where the film-makers come from, it's where they start and sometimes its where they should have stayed. — John Hurt
There's a tremendous intellectual fervor among independent filmmakers, and that has to be cultivated. — Dan Glickman
Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the end. Right now, I think independent film is very confused, because there's excess pressure in the marketplace for entertainment to pay off. — Robert Redford
Dancer, bride, runaway wife, radical filmmaker and pioneer -
Shirley Clarke is one of the great undertold stories of American independent cinema. — Manohla Dargis
Drama is life with the dull bits left out. There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. I believe in putting the horror in the minds of the audience, and not necessarily on the screen. The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder. — Alfred Hitchcock
My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful. — Satyajit Ray
I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct. — Charlie Hunnam
During the last decades, films about the black experience have been produced, directed, and even scripted by white men. Some of them are excellent. But most reflect George Bernard Shaw’s warning that 'if you do not tell your stories others will tell them for you and they will vulgarize and degrade you.' — Ishmael Reed
Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc...) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create — Robert Bresson
Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film. — Frank Capra
What most of us must be involved in--whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world. — Howard Zinn
I like to act in films, I like to shoot 'em, I like to direct 'em, I like to be around 'em. I like the feel of it and it's something I respect. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a crappy film or a good film. Anyone who can make a film, I already love. But I feel sorry if they don't put any thought in it because then they missed the boat. — John Cassavetes
First I did animation films, when I was young, in time-lapse. And then in the '80s I went directly to video. The main reason for that was that I could control all the steps. — Pipilotti Rist
Human beings share the same common problems. A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly. — Akira Kurosawa
Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. — Jim Jarmusch
I've never been to Comic-Con, but I'm certainly aware from this side of the Atlantic that it's a very important part of film marketing now, even when the films are not directly linked to a comic. — Alex Garland
Almost all the movies I've directed are adaptations. And I think what I found when I went to film school, where they try to push you to find your voice or your thing, is that I got a lot of things out of adaptations. — James Franco
Brad Bird is fond of saying that music is the easiest thing that can derail a film because if it slightly goes a degree off track it will take the viewer in the wrong emotional direction. To work with people who actually care about that is a good thing. — Michael Giacchino
I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that. — Julie Taymor
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. — Morris Chestnut
The formula for a successful film is simple: good script, good direction, a dedicated cast and a fantastic crew. If you have all of these elements then the rest will fall into place. — Hrithik Roshan
People have forgotten how to tell a story. — Steven Spielberg
I do love directing. I'm only comfortable working in the independent film arena for a very small budget where I have creative control and I can put my stamp on it. — Vera Farmiga
In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret. — Susan Sontag
[The Land] is a film that just happens to be directed and written by a Puerto Rican guy with a black dad. It seemed like a very natural, human interaction between people who all just came from one common cesspool of bad luck. — Erykah Badu
I won't ever direct a film. And I certainly won't write an autobiography. Only self-obsessed people want to write or talk about themselves! — Kajol
I'd like to produce, direct, write, score, and star in a film in exactly the way Chaplin did. I'll do that before I'm thirty. — Eddie Murphy
I've been a professional athlete, I've directed films, I've run a company with 150 employees, and nothing compares to writing a screenplay. Just the second I think I know what I'm doing, the rug gets pulled out and I have no idea what I'm doing. Because there are so many problems to solve. — Stacy Peralta
Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling. — Stanley Kubrick
I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies. — Kathryn Bigelow
I met my wife and, for the next ten years, we did no films at all. She did the first movie and then I did several after. My first movie was written by Tennessee Williams and directed by [Elia] Kazan and was called Baby Doll. — Eli Wallach
I took courses at USC in film editing and art direction and photography when I was still in high school. — Ray Harryhausen
If I could direct it [films] I would be very happy. But the economics of business don't always allow you to do what you want. — Lee Van Cleef
I'm trying to avoid any more asshole roles, at least for a little bit. The main criteria for me when choosing a project is a good director. I just want to work with these guys that I admire because I do want to direct my own films one day, and I want to pick their brains to see what their process is like, and see what I can take from that. — Dave Franco
In Conclusion
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