Quotes About Filmmaking

#1. The horror genre is important because it promotes experimentation in filmmaking.

Richard King

#2. If you want to be a rock star, you're not going to just walk on stage. You gotta go practice in the garage until your fingers bleed. I always say that - the same with writing and the same with filmmaking - if it's really your passion, you've just got to stick with it and do it.

Robert Rodriguez

#3. The difference between extras and audience members is that audience members don't get chairs. Audience members are the daylaborers of the industry. When it's sunny, we stand in the sun. When it's cold, we stand in the cold.

J. Richard Singleton

#4. Filmmaking has always involved pairs: a director coupled with a producer, a director alongside an editor ... The notion of couples is not foreign to cinema.

Luc Dardenne

#5. I came to filmmaking because it's my passion. I decided I can't have it distorted or marred by someone else deciding what it should be.

Shane Carruth

#6. Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.

Abel Ferrara

#7. Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking.

Lars Von Trier

#8. I had no education in filmmaking. I started with a 8mm camera. I made 34 films, and little by little I gained more experience in filming.

Bahman Ghobadi

#9. Everyone loves the seventies because that's when movies were character-based, and you saw great characters and you saw very interesting filmmaking. There are interesting movies being made now, but it's harder and harder to make them.

Justin Bartha

#10. I was really disappointed that Warner Bros. didn't think highly enough of my film or my filmmaking to ask me to make the new Superman.

Richard Donner

#11. At times doc filmmaking feels more rewarding creatively. Because you are creating something out of pure cinema - instead of narrative cinema, where you've got a script and a cast and you build from your foundation, whereas in documentary, you're building out of chaos.

George Hickenlooper

#12. Documentary filmmaking has all the challenges and hardships of narrative filmmaking without any of the infrastructure or support. That's both a blessing and a curse.

Brian Lindstrom

#13. I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public itself will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a girl.

D.W. Griffith

#14. The studios are making fewer films. They are making more expensive films. Profits are tougher to come by. Not only because of the expense of production. But also because of the expense of promotion and hype. To boil that all down, it's more about hype than it is about filmmaking.

William Friedkin

#15. Satisfying myself is the point in filmmaking, in my mind.

Greg MacGillivray

#16. There are lots of parts of filmmaking that I don't like. At the end of the day, especially on features, the film turns into a commodity. You have to play this entirely new game I'm very uncomfortable with.

Taika Waititi

#17. Trying to find the story within the story was hard. Filmmaking is such a reductive process in a strange way and you keep whittling away to what is essential.

Mark Ruffalo

#18. Filmmaking is finding a piece of granite and you start to chip away and then you have the shape of a head, the shape of the arm, you can see the shape of the face and the face starts to gather character. You have to find it.

Jason Reitman

#19. When I was acting, I was always asking abut the mechanics of filmmaking. I decided I would learn what everyone on set was doing, so I would feel less threatened.

Peter Capaldi

#20. I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.

Gena Rowlands

#21. Obviously you have a responsibility - one would like to think there is such a thing as ethics in filmmaking.

George Hickenlooper

#22. The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.

David O. Russell

#23. Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room.

Nicholas Jarecki

#24. I like racing. I love the speed and I'm a very kinetic person in terms of filmmaking. I love the movement of film more than anything else.

George Lucas

#25. When I was in college, my brother, B.R. Chopra, who is everything to me, was a director in Bombay. He taught me filmmaking. What I am today is because of him.

Yash Chopra

#26. You know, when people talk about filmmaking and the techniques of filmmaking, we use them all the time in network television news in order to make our stories simpler, tighter and more understandable to the general public.

Lowell Bergman

#27. I'm a huge Robert Altman fan and don't take issue with his filmmaking, as eccentric as it is. But I just think 'Nashville' was a world he didn't know.

J. D. Souther

#28. I love music. I love filmmaking. I love law enforcement. I love doing a lot of the green work that I do, the charity work that I do, and I don't think that any one person has to be just one thing.

Steven Seagal

#29. For John Woo, it is quite difficult to make a movie in Hollywood in his own style. Because Hollywood is based on a producer system, it is difficult for a director to express himself using his own style of filmmaking.

Alan Mak

#30. I love the grandiosity of Hollywood movies, and even in independents, I love the canvas you can tell your story on. I love fiction filmmaking, you really feel like you're creating something.

George Hickenlooper

#31. Austin is almost a million people, but it still feels like a relatively small town. Everybody knows each other. Or at least everyone in the filmmaking community.

Gabriel Luna

#32. By using formula in filmmaking we are admitting that film is not art.

Signe Baumane

#33. As important as color is to a painting, or wings to a bird. Music injects vibrancy to film and makes it soar!

Gerard De Marigny

#34. When I was in New York, a lot of my friends were studying filmmaking and would bring their scripts to me, as I was a good script doctor. I would read their scripts and make corrections to them for $20 per script and was fascinated by films.

Arjun Rampal

#35. Filmmaking is like playing in your imagination and getting paid to do it. I guess I'll ride this horse until it bucks me.

Nicholas Ozeki

#36. The 90s were the decade in which studio filmmaking became a much more purely corporatized process, when their crassness ceased to operate on such a relatively individual scale.

Matthew Specktor

#37. The idea of working with Steven Spielberg was very attractive. He's such a master. He knows the language of the camera and of filmmaking, which gives him a great freedom.

Max Von Sydow

#38. Of the hundreds of points to enter and exit that are offered to me, I have to choose the one that I feel is the least wrong, the least fake. It is fake, it is a moment that I choose to erupt the story, but I make it as smooth as I can. What enables me to do it is the skill of filmmaking.

Abbas Kiarostami

#39. I suppose once in a while, a filmmaker makes a movie that's more than just a sum of its parts, more than good acting or good filmmaking. It's something else that has nothing to do with what you've done. This is in 1999, made by people in 1999 for people in 1999 about people in 1999.

Sam Mendes

#40. Filmmaking is a miracle of collaboration.

James McAvoy

#41. Even on a $100 million film, people will complain that they haven't got enough money and enough time, so that's always going to be an element in filmmaking.

Ryan Kwanten

#42. Especially when you talk about the power of documentary filmmaking, you can't really have a slant; financially, you can't have a slant on the end goals.

Amy J. Berg

#43. Hollywood industry people are very spoiled. I don't think they can adjust to the insane, no-money, super-hard working tradition of Japanese filmmaking. I don't think any American can go through that. They don't want to work more than twelve hours and they want Saturday and Sunday off.

Ryuhei Kitamura

#44. Success or Failure, there should always be a Drive to Keep on Creating.

Henry Johnson Jr

#45. A big part of filmmaking is gathering a group of people you can work with.

Lenny Abrahamson

#46. I always wanted to live in L.A. The other thing that always inspired me was movies; that's why I'm here. I always wanted to be a part of the movie business and make movies. That's why I went to AFI grad school for filmmaking.

Jeff Vespa

#47. I suppose I've been working for a long time, so I've seen all kinds of filmmaking. I can fit into anything, and it doesn't feel that weird or that fascinating.

Elijah Wood

#48. There is a straight-forward definition for 'Independent Filmmaking'. The term references a group of films that are financed by money that comes from outside the studio system. In a literal sense that is what it means.

Andrew Neel

#49. You know, this is such a rich time that we've just been involved in, and there's really a job now for historians. Film is still very young. This is the first hundred years of filmmaking. So I think it's important that we have some sense of history and continuity. Especially in film.

Dennis Hopper

#50. Filmmaking became a possible way for me to combine my interest in photography and in gathering stories, as well as my interest in journalism and political science and international relations.

Joshua Marston

#51. Directing, editing, and everything about filmmaking has definitely changed me as an actor.

James Franco

#52. Kodak has always represented innovation that is approachable while delivering the craft of filmmaking.

Yves Behar

#53. I am co-writing a screenplay now and I'm working on the rights to another story I want to do. So I plan to produce and direct. So, for me, I don't really feel that I am vulnerable to that sad baggage that comes with the business of filmmaking.

Kerry Washington

#54. I have been incredibly fortunate to be able to work with good directors and for me it's not really a plan each time I'm on a set with one of them; I think about what I can learn from them because I'm very aware that my filmmaking skills are very modest.

Sacha Baron Cohen

#55. When I first moved from photography to filmmaking, I was worried about how big I had to become. I was one person, or maybe me and an assistant, and I had these small cameras, and maybe a flash.

Lauren Greenfield

#56. People want to know if I have a moral standpoint that they should be picking up on, and the truth is, I don't. I don't want people to think that I'm trying to tell them to feel a certain way. I think that's cheap filmmaking.

Jason Reitman

#57. Any filmmaking, any film is a collaborative process. There's always a lot of people working on things together.

Olivia Thirlby

#58. There is no higher form of artistic expression then film

James Lee Burke

#59. I even agree with the new digital ways of filmmaking, where you don't even have physical film in the camera, but to be honest, I wouldn't want to use it.

J. Lee Thompson

#60. To make a real independent film where the filmmaker is in charge creatively, one must sacrifice personal, financial, and physical well-being.

Mark Polish

#61. My interest in filmmaking was always very much the visuals and images.

Asif Kapadia

#62. We're surrounded by violence, and we see so much of it on TV, especially the news programs. We almost become numb. And that forces filmmakers to try to outdo themselves ... They say, 'Look what I can do,' and it becomes like a showoff thing. To me, that's ridiculous. Filmmaking isn't a contest!

Jan De Bont

#63. The problem with feature filmmaking is that it offers you this mirage of being able to achieve perfection, as the theory of it is that you have control of every part of the film, though in reality, it is as inexact as the next thing in your life.

Kapil Sharma

#64. The only safe thing in filmmaking is to take a chance.

Mike Nichols

#65. I'm a big fan of movies, but I'm a bigger fan of filmmaking itself. I fell in love with it when I was very young, and I have always loved to learn the craft, every aspect of it.

Fede Alvarez

#66. I was a film student. I became an actor, but I thought I'd be pursuing filmmaking originally.

Dermot Mulroney

#67. I started in the psychological thriller side of feature filmmaking with 'Spiral,' which was the first one that I wrote and directed and played the lead in.

Joel David Moore

#68. I think we're entering a new period of filmmaking that's analogous to switching from black-and-white to color, or from silent to sound. The medium is completely flexible, and it's not bound by anything. If you imagine something, you can do it.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#69. I always wanted to be a filmmaker and became one through sheer single-mindedness. I came to filmmaking from a background in graphic design. I went to film school at Newcastle Polytechnic.

Neil Marshall

#70. The filmmaking process is a team effort. A screenwriter cannot possibly do exactly what he wants as if he was writing a novel.

Leigh Brackett

#71. Technology continues to bring us wondrous advances in filmmaking to improve how we view movies.

Ridley Scott

#72. With a camera, a microphone, and sufficient cash, you, too, can craft your own version of the world and emblazon it with a premium of fear over facts. (Be warned though: Paranoid schizophrenia makes for compelling film, but it's no way of life.)

David T. Hardy

#73. An average director directs. A good director leads and follows at the same time.

Kensington Gore

#74. But I would say maybe just from an actress's perspective, probably 'Woman Under the Influence' is the best movie of all time. The style of filmmaking and the performances ... you don't feel like you're watching a film.

Olivia Thirlby

#75. There's a very interesting article or symposium to be written on just the real difference between comedy filmmaking and non-comedy. Because, you know, when you work in comedy, you depend on audience screenings to tell you about your movie.

Shawn Anthony Levy

#76. If you take a regular animated film, that's being done by animators on computers, so the filmmaking is a fairly technical process.

Peter Jackson

#77. I like figuring out where I need to be mentally so that I'm not thinking about the camera and that it's second nature. I want to get to a place where I can exist within the confines of what you can do with filmmaking and not have to think about it.

Anna Kendrick

#78. The real mariachis in Mexico are singers like Agustin Lara and Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete - the Golden Era of Mexican Filmmaking. Mariachis sing very soft and very beautiful. That's old-school mariachi. They are caressing the songs.

Jaime Camil

#79. Adaptations are fun for me because they connect to the idea of filmmaking I had when I was a kid. I would see a movie and think: 'I'm gonna make that movie.'

Noah Baumbach

#80. I like challenges. If you're involved, as one is, in filmmaking, you want to challenge yourself. You don't want to repeat what you're done before.

Jared Harris

#81. I always want another actor to shine in my scene because it makes the film stronger. I would encourage people to scene steal, because filmmaking is a collaborative effort.

Vin Diesel

#82. Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.

Mike Leigh

#83. I think good filmmaking is when you really hold the mirror up truthfully, and you don't angle it and you don't hide things with smoke and mirrors.

Charlize Theron

#84. I really don't feel like I'm in any kind of contest. Except, maybe, with myself. Just want to learn and create and grow. Get better all the time with these filmmaking tools. I don't expect perfection from myself. Just progress.

Angela Bettis

#85. I used to be a huge fan. "The Simpsons" taught me a lot about filmmaking. It imitates film, but it's drawn, so everything is super clear

Dagur Kari

#86. I am much more involved in the filmmaking experience on Mag Seven. I'm much more involved in story elements, casting decisions, the writing of the show, the blocking of the scenes.

Michael Biehn

#87. I think filmmaking is a gamble anyway, right? You never know the results from the start.

Daniel Wu

#88. The only job that was ever of interest to me other than filmmaking is architecture.

Christopher Nolan

#89. When I got to filmmaking, the most democratic of environments where anybody could say anything, those were the best environments, but what you don't want to assume is that you know what the audience is thinking.

Rick Moranis

#90. Most of my films have been documentaries, but I'm also very interested in narrative filmmaking.

Barbara Kopple

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

Kathryn Bigelow

#92. My main concern is quality and I think there is quality to be found in all categories of filmmaking.

Brad Pitt

#93. Documentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive.

Frederick Wiseman

#94. With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories.

Lucy Walker

#95. Even in traditional filmmaking, you're always trying to find novel ways of telling stories, and this is different.

Rick Heinrichs

#96. I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.

Alexander Payne

#97. Some people take pretty pictures of nothing.
I'd rather record grime that means something.

Jonathan Heatt

#98. When I started my filmmaking journey 17 years ago, I honestly didn't know what a documentary film was.

Tony Kaye

#99. Making 'Coraline' was one of the great filmmaking experiences of my life.

Henry Selick

#100. I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there's got to be a captain.

Ridley Scott