105 Film Students Quotes

Following is our list of film students quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about filmmaking.

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Famous Film Students Quotes

I think one of the privileges of being a filmmaker is the opportunity to remain a kind of perpetual student. — Edward Zwick

I teach at USC. I have a big class of 360 kids, only about a fifth of whom are film majors. I don't just show the Hollywood blockbusters. I show independent films, foreign films, documentaries. — Leonard Maltin

Film lovers are sick people. — Francois Truffaut

The best education in film is to make one — Stanley Kubrick

I'm not coming from film school, I learned cinema in the cinema watching films. — Wong Kar-wai

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.' — Quentin Tarantino

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

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all. — Stanley Kubrick

There are no rules in filmmaking - Frank Capra

There are no rules in filmmaking — Frank Capra

There's such good people out there where there filmmaking world is alive. — Josh Lucas

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

You can think of Hollywood as high school. TV actors are freshmen, comedy actors are maybe juniors, and dramatic actors - they're the cool seniors. — Owen Wilson

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

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

Short Film Students Quotes

  • When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process. — Oliver Stone
  • Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself — Michael Haneke
  • Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes. — Robert Altman
  • Film provides an opportunity to marry the power of ideas with the power of images. — Steven Bochco
  • I had a love for photography, which of course rolled into cinematography. — Scoot McNairy

Film Students Image Quotes

Film students quote If you want to achieve greatly in life, be a student of achievement.
If you want to achieve greatly in life, be a student of achievement.

Film School Quotes

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

My best film is always my next film. I couldn't make Chungking Express now, because of the way I live and drink I've forgotten how I did it. I don't believe in film school or film theory. Just try and get in there and make the bloody film, do good work and be with people you love. — Christopher Doyle

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

Film students quote If we spark a student's passion, we unleash a powerful force upon the world.
If we spark a student's passion, we unleash a powerful force upon the world.

Yeah, D-Wade called me up last night and said that he saw some film of me in high school and thinks that my form then was better and that I should shoot like that. I told him I'd think about it and then my pops called and said something like that so I decided to revert back and then. — Shaquille O'Neal

I am really not of the school of naturalism. I like style, and you can use more style in theater than in film roles. I love to sink my teeth into a part. — Marisa Tomei

It was the beginning of film for television. So we had all of these great opportunities. Northwestern was probably the only major film school of its kind at the time that was graduating anybody important. — Richard Donner

Film students quote Great teachers engineer learning experiences that put students in the driver's seat and then get out
Great teachers engineer learning experiences that put students in the driver's seat and then get out of the way.

Someone said to me, early on in film school... if you can photograph the human face you can photograph anything, because that is the most difficult and most interesting thing to photograph. — Roger Deakins

Of course, you could, no doubt, call my going to film school the biggest mistake I ever made. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

I attend film school, my background is acting and directing. But the acting does best, I like to work on the stage. — Tommy Wiseau

The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that's what will take you from film school to professional - the idea. That's what is original to you. — William Friedkin

Filmmaking Quotes

As they say in Corsica... Goodbye! — Gene Wilder

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

Film students quote I think the world is run by "C" students.
I think the world is run by "C" students.

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

And Later I Thought, I Can't Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography. — Gus Van Sant

Film students quote If we spark a student's passion, we unleash a powerful force upon the world.
If we spark a student's passion, we unleash a powerful force upon the world.

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

Art Students Quotes

Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word. Thus it is a fundamental requirement of all artistic creativity that every student undergo a thorough training in the workshops of all branches of the crafts. — Walter Gropius

Scientific research and other studies have demonstrated that arts education can enhance American students' math and language skills and improve test scores which in turn increase chances of higher education and good jobs in the future. — Thad Cochran

A teacher is never a giver of truth; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself. — Bruce Lee

Film students quote I'm not interested in a realistic look - not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel
I'm not interested in a realistic look - not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.

There is a growing evidence that arts education improves student learning and thereby produces better citizens — David J. Skorton

At culinary school, none of the things we use to define ourselves outside that world - actor, producer, student - none of that matters. It's a magical art form. — Eric Christian Olsen

When you fall in love with a work of art, you’d die to meet the artist. I am a student of the galleries of Pacific sunsets, full moon rises on the ocean, the clouds from an airplane, autumn forests in Raleigh, first fallen snows. And I’m dying to meet the artist. — Yasmin Mogahed

Film students quote We need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher's hand, because it is the pen
We need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher's hand, because it is the pen and paper of our time, and it is the lens through which we experience much of our world.

Students of any art, including Karate-do must never forget the cultivation of the mind and the body. — Gichin Funakoshi

1-2 out of every 100 students reach Black Belt and of those only 1 out of every 1,000 achieves his 2nd Dan — Mas Oyama

The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties. — Elliot W. Eisner

I'm not saying that all college students are subhuman - I'm just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts. — Lester Bangs

Film Production Quotes

When we film the TV show, it's with a hidden camera so we don't get to see how fans react to what we are doing and when fans watch it at home. — James Murray

The videos take months of prep. A lot of them take four to five days of relentless filming. There's a reason other people don't do what I do. — MrBeast

I think it would be really fun to film a drama in a foreign country. If the opportunity presents itself, I want to film a Chinese production. — Lee Min-ho

Film students quote Great moments are born from great opportunities.
Great moments are born from great opportunities.

Right now my career is totally schizophrenic, because when an American production like Hitchcock Presents asks to see my work I would never dream of showing them my independent films. — Atom Egoyan

I thought that was a pretty stupid argument, really, because it's the final product that matters. The look of the film, however it's done, is still the cinematographer's vision in my mind. People said the same when color film came in, didn't they? The world evolves, and image-making evolves. — Roger Deakins

I am a product of Indian cinema; I've grown up watching Indian films ever since I can remember. And song and dance is part of our lives, it's part of our culture we wake up to songs, we sleep to lullabies, you know, we celebrate every religious and traditional function with music. — Karan Johar

Film students quote The best teachers are those who pass on their zeal and enthusiasm as a legacy to their students.
The best teachers are those who pass on their zeal and enthusiasm as a legacy to their students.

You could get in rehearsals, pre-production, anything that would actually contribute to the understanding of how a film gets made. I actually find those things increase people's interest in a movie and like that better than worrying about showing the tricks behind the curtain. — Jay Roach

My first film goes into production in October. It's called White Boy Shuffle and it's based on a novel about a young black kid and it's sort of reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye. — Ryan Phillippe

Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer. — Spike Lee

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise. — J. J. Johnson

People Writing About Film Students

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Read quotes by Francois Truffaut

Francois Truffaut
quotes on love, friendship and life

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Read quotes by Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick
quotes on life, shining

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Read quotes by Edward Zwick

Edward Zwick
quotes on education, religion and leadership

24 346
Read quotes by Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin
quotes on life, music and leadership

36 189
Read quotes by Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-wai

23 268
Read quotes by Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino
quotes on movies, life and filmmaking

246 993

More Film Students Quotes

The guy you see on the screen isn’t really me. I’m Duke Morrison, and I never was and never will be a film personality like JOHN WAYNE . I know him well. I’m one of his closest students. I have to be. I made a living out of him. — John Wayne

My son is trying to be a sports writer, and my daughter is a college student. She wants to be a comedy writer, and she's at film school. I discouraged both of them early on from getting involved in Starbucks. I didn't think it would be fair; plus, they didn't have any interest anyway. — Howard Schultz

I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm hoping that I'm getting better as I get older. — Darren Aronofsky

Film students should stay as far away from film schools and film teachers as possible. The only school for the cinema is the cinema. — Bernardo Bertolucci

I studied English Literature. I wasn’t a very good student, but one thing I did get from it, while I was making films at the same time with the college film society, was that I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well. — Christopher Nolan

When I first came out, I was a film student and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did. But I did it in the most creative way possible. — M.I.A.

I think I veered towards filmmaking because there's more of a sense of control in it. You're not waiting to be picked. That said, in film school I acted in probably 6,000 student films because no other filmmakers knew anyone who wanted to act. It was all a big beautiful snake eating its tail, progressing along the way. — Matthew Gray Gubler

A lot of student directors used to pick other students to be in their graduate films, so. I ended up doing a couple of them just for fun. Eventually, I got an agent through a friend and I did some commercials; then I got Knots Landing. — Brian Austin Green

The Swedish he knew was mostly from Bergman films. He had learned it as a college student, matching the subtitles to the sounds. In Swedish, he could only converse on the darkest of subjects. — Ann Patchett

It's a very good thing for students also to be exposed to people who aren't film students or film scholars but who work in the world of film. — Robert Mayer

I think if you look at Sam Raimi and Jim Cameron, those guys know things about filmmaking that almost nobody knows anymore. They are students of film from when they handmade films themselves, you know cut films with their own hands and razor blades and tape. — Dileep Rao

I did loads of student films and fringe theatre. I worked for free a lot. — Christopher Parker

The real trouble with film school is that the people teaching are so far out of the industry that they don't give the students an idea of what's happening. — Brian De Palma

My first student film was Orientation, which was basically the set-up for Animal House. There are a couple of scenes that we later borrowed in some form. — Ivan Reitman

When I get interested in a new topic I teach a class on it. There's a graduate seminar I teach in which the students and I try to expand the terminology we use to talk about poetry as well as expand our notion of what makes a poem - we read source texts on architecture, dance, photography, film and the graphic novel. — Matthea Harvey

One of the most telling things about film school is you've got a lot of students wandering around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish I could make a movie." — George Lucas

On the one hand, we had great filmic spectacles that brought in big audiences, adults as well as primary and secondary school students. On the other hand, there were attempts to create contemporary Polish film. — Andrzej Wajda

All the jobs I've gotten in the last two years are because directors have seen the work I've done - indie films, plays, short student films, TV - since I moved to the states in 1996. I mean, I have an entire career in Canada that nobody has seen. — Sandra Oh

Mexican cinematographers Gabriel Figueroa and Emilio Fernandez were students of both Sergei Eisenstein and Toland. Their exteriors and lighting were gorgeous. And the films Ingmar Bergman did with Sven Nykvist were exceptional. — Vilmos Zsigmond

As I talk to film students now especially, I say, "The easiest job you'll ever get is to try to make your first film." That's the easy one to get, is the first film because nobody knows whether you can make a film or not. — George Lucas

My goal has always been not to look forward to the next thing, but to relish and celebrate the successes I have at the moment. Whether it's landing a part in a student film or having a good day in acting class, I never discredit anything. — Dianna Agron

I think too many film students in America are losing the artistry and not learning lighting the right way. — Vilmos Zsigmond

Well, I think every film student goes into film school thinking they want to write and direct their own movies, and they don't realize how much goes into it, and what a process it is. — Alexis Bledel

I realized what interested me as a student of film was one thing and the movies that I liked were another. — Sam Raimi

The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting. — Brian De Palma

I met Milos in 1967. I was working on a student film. And there is Milos Forman. So that's how I met Milos. — Vincent Schiavelli

Now, after the communist take-over in 1948, the amount of feature films produced dwindled to three a year, while the school was, you know, every year another three, four, five students. — Milos Forman

I don't ask my students to have studied film or any education in general. What I ask them is to come and sit and tell me a story, and the way they choose it and tell it, for me, the best criteria for whether they are right for making films. There's nothing more important than being able to tell your story orally. — Abbas Kiarostami

I often say to my students in workshops that if they are trying to find literary inspiration, they should not go and read novels, because novels are more appropriate for series. Where as they should read short stories - that's the right format for you to be able to actually display the narrative in a film. — Abbas Kiarostami

If you sit in on a film class with students, their big complaint is "That's not like real life." They don't realize that they don't really want to watch real life. They don't want to sit and watch a security camera. There's a strong gravity in all of us as viewers - even in myself now and then - to want to see real life depicted. But you're looking for it in the wrong places. It's in little allegories, in something removed. — Guy Maddin

This is a good thing to say to film students. If there's a story point that you don't feel right about, that there's a question you have - "Does it really make sense?" Or, "Is that plausible? Is it implausible? Is it set up?" Or whatever. Go at it. Don't let it go. If there's a question in your mind, you're probably right. You probably do need to work on it and think about it more. — Annette Bening

That movie [Jawbreaker] was so much fun to shoot. We were all in our mid-20s at the time, playing high school students. Which was the point. It was the point of the film to hire older actors to play high school students. But we had a blast. — Julie Benz

One of the wonderful things that I've always loved as an art student, what I always loved about comics, was that they are interpreted differently by different graphic artists all the time, so now film is doing that thanks to Marvel Studios. — Tilda Swinton

After working with so many great actors and acting students in film school, it was a whole other thing working with Luke [Kirby]. — Paul Dalio

My filmmaking style of remixing came out of necessity. When I was a film theory student at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, there were no film production facilities. The only way I learned to tell stories on film was by re-cutting and splicing together celluloid of old movies, early animated films, home films, sound slug - anything I could get my hands on. — Elisa Kreisinger

I'm a cinephile. I love movies, I love film at every level. I'm a student of it. It informs me as does all art in my music, because there's stories, there's acts, there's moods, there's dynamics, there's moodiness, emotion. All of those things that play into a film. I think that could equally be said about music. It definitely informs me. Beats is stories. — Q-Tip

I get to work with incredibly talented young filmmakers and students, and their attitudes and relationship with film is still so pure. That re-inspires me and reminds me why I got into it and what I love about film, and allows me a little reprieve from the business side of it. And it rekindles my love of film. — James Franco

I teach a lot - I teach at the UCLA and USC graduate film programs - and a lot of those projects are my students' projects that I act in or I do a cameo. — James Franco

I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic; so I have my doubts. — Abbas Kiarostami

Well, I tried being in front of the camera as a student and that was terrifying. But the press stuff about me growing up on his [film] sets has been exaggerated. I was an extra as a kid and I was also a PA [production assistant] on one of his movies, so I was lucky to get production experience. But I was nowhere near him. — Nicole Holofcener

A lot of student films in art shows are samey. It's a look at the life of someone making these boring films. — Max Tundra

When I first moved to New York I had been trying to work on anything and everything I could. From extra work and commercials to short and student films so I could learn in front of a camera. — Pawel Szajda

Education is huge for me. I went to public school until I turned thirteen, and was lucky enough to afford college once I became successful as an actress. I cannot believe that quality education costs as much as it does in this country. Ghetto Film School is a remarkable public high school in New York City where students get to learn to express themselves through filmmaking, and have hands-on access to equipment. — Julia Stiles

When I was in Hungary in December I was looking at student films and I could not tell which ones were shot on film and which ones were shot digitally. I think that is because the filmmakers in Europe go to four years of film school and learn the techniques. — Vilmos Zsigmond

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