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 cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist, moving an audience... making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark. — Gordon Willis
I think one of the privileges of being a filmmaker is the opportunity to remain a kind of perpetual student. — Edward Zwick
There's such good people out there where there filmmaking world is alive. — Josh Lucas
Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes. — Robert Altman
In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director. — Alfred Hitchcock
Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles. — Alejandro Jodorowsky
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
As filmmakers, we can show where a person's mind goes, as opposed to theater, which is more to sit back and watch it. — Darren Aronofsky
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
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
No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark. — Frank Capra
I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad. — Joe Wright
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
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard. — Billy Wilder
There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness. — Frank Capra
Filmmaker Image Quotes
Great moments are born from great opportunities.
Female Filmmaker Quotes
It doesn't matter if you're the smartest person in the room: If you're not someone who people want to be around, you won't get far. Likewise for helping those in line behind you. I take seriously my role as a mentor to young female filmmakers - I make sure my time is tithed. — Melissa Rosenberg
For me, I want to see diversity in storytelling sources because we live in a very diverse society, and the stories are for the whole society. That's really important. For me, as a female filmmaker, when I was out on the festival circuit on 2006, I felt like such a freaking anomaly - an oddity. — Lynn Shelton
As a female filmmaker it's important to have a voice for and about women. We have a lot of valuable stories to tell and young girls need to hear them. — Tara Subkoff
I looked at [Geena Davis] research and see things like 21 percent of filmmakers are women, only 31 percent of speaking roles in popular films are female - you start seeing it everywhere. It's so much bigger. So you've uncovered this groundbreaking data and research. — Emma Watson
I am blessed to live and work in [France,] a country where women filmmakers are by and large not unfairly treated. So I wouldn't have much to contribute regarding issues faced as a female director. — Anne Fontaine
Without the benefit of Google, ask anybody to name more than five female filmmakers that have made more than three films. It's shockingly hard. — Leslye Headland
I think this is an exciting time to be a female filmmaker. Trust your instincts, work harder than anyone else and learn your craft. Know it all. This means learn how to shoot, edit, produce and direct. Get as much experience as you can and watch a lot of films. — Alex Hammond
I would give female filmmakers the same advice I’d give any filmmaker; believe in your vision, believe in your team, believe in yourself. — Leanne Pooley
I think it is kind of depressing how few female filmmakers there are. I think it is in general depressing how few women there are in ... important positions in society — Susanne Bier
I thing for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films. You see the statistics, and the dropoff on the second and third [films] , are dire. — Ava DuVernay
Black Filmmaker Quotes
America is White and Black and Latino and Asian. America is mixed. America is immigrants. — Jose Antonio Vargas
Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work. — William Klein
Time will tell ... whether folks want to point and stare at the black woman filmmaker who made a certain kind of film, and pat her on the back, or if they want to actually roll up the sleeves and do a little bit of work so that there can be more of me coming through. — Ava DuVernay
I am admiring of my fellow peers, black filmmakers and black actors and actresses. — Cuba Gooding, Jr.
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
News makes things black and white. Documentary filmmaking should do the opposite. — Robert Greene
When my film went to the Venice Film Festival and won the best script writing, the jury [prize], it didn't go to my head. I know how many black filmmakers that I am operating with whose name will never be mentioned. But I'm part of them in that silent existence. — Haile Gerima
I think we're used to the black filmmaker coming in and making the all-black subject matter. Especially at Sundance, they're looking for that. It's funny because amongst my filmmaker friends talk about this. — Steven Caple Jr.
I'm a film director. Gay is an adjective that I certainly am, but I don't know that it's my first one. I think if you're just a gay filmmaker, you get pigeonholed just like if you say I'm a black filmmaker, I'm a Spanish filmmaker, I'm a whatever. — John Waters
I think it's a wonderful time to be a black woman who makes films. It's a good time to be an artist period. Traditional models of making and consuming art are breaking down and being rebuilt. I find that to be incredibly exciting as a filmmaker and film marketer. — Ava DuVernay
Filmmaking Quotes
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
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
Living
consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and
responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the
moment. — Sidney Poitier
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Film is a dramatised reality and it is the director's job to make it appear real... an audience should not be conscious of technique. — David Lean
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
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
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
Film Producer Quotes
I am going to produce a movie of my own. I am not going to stick to the time-tested formulae of Hindi cinema. I want to make a film for the present generation. So there will be a lot of new faces in the film. — Kabir Bedi
The VCR is to the American film producer, as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone. — Jack Valenti
I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit. — Stanley Kubrick
A film just doesn't involve actors, a director and a producer, there is also the cameraman, the sound engineer, the music composer, the lyric writer. So many people come together to make a film. When we all feel satisfied with the film that we have created it's a win for all of us. — Aamir Khan
Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I'd give it my best shot. — Roger Corman
When you're having a conversation with someone who, despite his brilliant medical career, says he's going to produce the film, you think, "How's he gonna do this? Is he insane, or is he really going to pull this off? It might be both." It's really amazing to see someone do what he's done. — Chris Cornell
We don't perceive a contradiction between writing books, making films or producing a television program. These days you can't choose how you want to express yourself anymore. — Alexander Kluge
I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say my mom. Apart from the fact that she's my mother, she's a brilliant comedian and a force as a producer. She paved the way for women to produce and star in their own films, and to balance that with being the matriarch of our family is really inspiring. — Kate Hudson
I'm a person of the arts. I love the arts very, very, very much. And ah, I'm a musician, I'm a director, I'm a writer, I'm a composer, I'm a producer, and I love the medium. I love film very, very much. I think it's the most expressive of all of the art mediums. — Michael Jackson
Well, the film industry is completely sexist and completely class-biased. It's not something I get on the ground level, it's more from financiers and producers and distributors. It's a way of dealing with you that is essentially patronising: I know better than you. — Lynne Ramsay
Film-makers Quotes
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
It seems that film-makers are being divided between those working in digital and those who are not. I think it's not something predetermined - it all depends on what project we have in mind, and on that basis we choose the medium. — Abbas Kiarostami
We, as film-makers, are privileged. We can make people cry or laugh. We can make them think and feel. It is a great privilege and a great responsibility. — Haskell Wexler
The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources. — Kristin Scott Thomas
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
The greatest drawback in making pictures is the fact that film makers have to eat. — Ray Milland
I mean, I'm new but I've always been very interested in film making process and I've been lucky enough to work with film makers in my past that have been very encouraging to let me hang around. I get so emotionally vested - that the producer part of me was natural. — Charlize Theron
Hitchcock is the most-daring avant-garde film-maker in America today. — Andrew Sarris
Even for the most difficult scenes, and there are difficult scenes in the film, and because Michael Haneke is such a great film-maker - I think a great film-maker is not only being inspired, but how to do it, how to make it as real as possible, knowing that it's not real. — Isabelle Huppert
I got five kids, and my oldest is a documentary film maker and camera man, and still photographer. — Beau Bridges
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
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
But now I wish I could back to Stockholm to make international films there. — Lasse Hallstrom
The black groups that boycott certain films would do better to get the money together to make the films they want to see, or stay in church and leave us to our work. — Richard Pryor
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
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
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
Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing. — Christopher Nolan
Film Directing Quotes
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room. — Orson Welles
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
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
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
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
IN ALL MY FILMS, IT SEEMED IMPORTANT TO ME TO REMIND THE AUDIENCE TO THE FACT THAT THEY ARE NOT ALONE, LOST IN AN EMPTY UNIVERSE, BUT THAT THEY ARE CONNECTED BY INNUMERABLE THREADS WITH THEIR PAST AND PRESENT, THAT THROUGH CERTAIN MYSTICAL WAYS, EVERY HUMAN BEING REALIZES THE RAPPORT WITH THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF HUMANITY. — Andrei Tarkovsky
I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder. — Werner Herzog
The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad. — Dennis Hopper
It's so freeing, it's beautiful in a way, to have a great failure, there's nowhere to go but up. — David Lynch
Like all art forms, film is a media as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; the only difference is that war destroys and film inspires. — Nicolas Winding Refn
Somewhere along the line we stopped believing we could do anything. And if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing. — Billy Bob Thornton
I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in braille. I used to rub the dirty parts. — Woody Allen
The big-budget blockbuster is becoming one of the most dependable forms of filmmaking. — Peter Jackson
If you're just creative, you'll always have to rely on technical people. If you're creative and technical, you're unstoppable. — Robert Rodriguez
I prefer to do movies, just for the simple fact that in TV, there’s not much of a guarantee. They can pull the plug on you. — Vivica Fox
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
Technically, I direct, I’m a writer, and I do all these things, but I never went to school for them. It’s just something you pick up; it’s like its own art, basically. — Ryan Higa
You discover how confounding the world is when you try to draw it. You look at a car, and you try to see its car-ness, and you’re like an immigrant to your own world. You don’t have to travel to encounter weirdness. You wake up to it. — Shaun Tan
Saturday Night Live is such a comedy boot camp in a way, because you get to work with so many different people who come in to host the show and you get thrown into so many situations and learn how to think on your feet, so filmmaking actually feels slow, in a good way. — Will Ferrell
But I don't have such a strong desire to need to get away from filmmaking. — Mike Figgis
In Conclusion
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