Quotes About Filmmaking

#1. You make a film for a million dollars and then it costs $10 million to sell it. That's the problem at the moment with independent filmmaking: You can make it cheap and then there's no money to market it.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#2. I'm Godless. I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking.

Darren Aronofsky

#3. I'm going in a really weird I-don't-know-where direction, but I prefer anything [different] from how standardized filmmaking has become.

Gus Van Sant

#4. Invest in learning and discovering new filmmaking techniques is the next keystone to success. Film is changing rapidly right now. The last big change was the introduction of sound. This time around it is movies on th internet and mobile telephones.

Elliot Grove

#5. My advice to emerging documentary filmmakers would be: try to find other people, a group, a cooperative that you can work with. Filmmaking is hard and lonely and decidedly unglamorous. Find like-minded souls and share the joy and the misery.

Pamela Yates

#6. My first teacher was Steven Spielberg. I worked on Amazing Stories. That was my first job, as a writer and as a story editor. Watching him and his command of the tools of filmmaking, and his admiration for writing and the story itself, was the greatest lesson I ever had.

Mick Garris

#7. For me, the filmmaking has to be about the dramaturgy.

Neil Jordan

#8. I think people like Lena Dunham really opened up the door to what was possible, and they've inspired young women to go into filmmaking and writing and directing and acting in a way that maybe they didn't before, because now there is a path and there are jobs.

Judd Apatow

#9. I think by around the time I was about 8 or 9, the idea of filmmaking probably took hold. I made little Super 8 extravaganzas when I was a kid, the first being my own version of 'Romeo and Juliet,' and where I played all the parts except for Juliet.

Todd Haynes

#10. I don't know if I would call it therapy, but filmmaking is really the only thing I know how to do.For me, making movies is a way to bring on change for myself, and I really enjoy that part.

Takashi Miike

#11. There's a level of sophistication of filmmaking that's mind-boggling. Anything you need for your movie, there's an establishment that can make it happen really fast.

Ang Lee

#12. I've had really great experiences working with first-time directors. They come at filmmaking with fresh ideas. I've been very lucky that way.

Jeff Bridges

#13. My roommate at Yale University introduced me to the auteur theory of filmmaking. I soon became a big fan of the works of John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch, and Stan Brakhage. I then decided to make my own films!

Lloyd Kaufman

#14. This was truly guerilla filmmaking. We shot out in the middle of nowhere in a place called Delta Flats, where basically every day was some new minor catastrophe.

Jeri Ryan

#15. 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

#16. Documentaries have always inspired me in narrative filmmaking.

Griffin Dunne

#17. The excitement about independent filmmaking is that they're a little more open to taking chances. The studios are a little more careful, as far as who they choose for their film and what they're known for and staying in the genre because they know what works.

Malin Akerman

#18. What's great about documentary, it seems to me, is that it can be experimental filmmaking. You have a license to do a lot of diverse things under the umbrella of 'documentary.'

Errol Morris

#19. I mean, '8½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.

Baz Luhrmann

#20. There are sayings and mantras that sometimes occur in filmmaking discussions, and one of them is that sometimes filmmaking is an olive branch or a reason or an excuse to be able to reach out and create an encounter with someone.

Debra Granik

#21. Filmmaking is about moments. In real life, things might take six months, a year, but [in filmmaking] you have to create the moment where it happened.

Morten Tyldum

#22. I was a big fan of John Cassavetes, his wife, Gena Rowlands, and that era of filmmaking which was about realism and which represented the antithesis of the dreamy escapism you found in musicals.

Carmen Ejogo

#23. I learned very quickly that the hard thing in life is to make good films. Technically, filmmaking is the camera and the actor telling the story and that's what I'm more interested in doing.

Matthew Vaughn

#24. There is no filmmaking legislation because distributors are not interested in sharing their money with the film industry - for instance, by giving a percentage of ticket sales back to filmmakers.

Andrzej Wajda

#25. I never think that being a woman is so hard. Maybe don't think about your gender and be confident as you go forward rather than try to single yourself out as some underserved part of filmmaking.

Jerusha Hess

#26. I intend more of a kinship with silent films than more modern film. I like the old cinema. My films are more of a hybrid - a different style of filmmaking to what I call talking head movies. Some people don't get it. Especially the more academic types.

George Lucas

#27. Filmmaking is, a sort of uncontrolled process. I think it's very important to be open to the unexpected and at the same time, of course, maintain your vision, be open to the all the things you didn't think of yourself that can make the film better.

Dagur Kari

#28. A lot of people think, 'I'll give acting or poetry or filmmaking a try. And if it doesn't work out I'll go get a law degree, do something else that's more practical.' For me I went the reverse way. I lived the back-up plan.

Brit Marling

#29. Filmmaking is not a balancing act, although some directors think it is. I don't believe in it. I like ups and downs. They're the best way to translate my feelings to the screen.

Takashi Miike

#30. You get a different kick out of all aspects of filmmaking.

Guy Ritchie

#31. I like shooting things in single takes. You have to rely on the idea itself to carry the full weight; you're always watching the idea, not the filmmaking.

Damian Kulash

#32. 'Beatrice Cenci' was an amazing film. If it were released today it'd win Best Picture. It's so well done, it's so contemporary, and the filmmaking is so smart.

Eli Roth

#33. I'm better suited to be a director, I think. I see myself as the general author. I hate the word 'auteur,' because it sounds so solitary when filmmaking is anything but solitary.

Cary Fukunaga

#34. A lot of filmmaking is an endurance contest between you and the people you're filming. Every time that you relax, I promise you, something interesting will happen.

Marshall Curry

#35. Many people who have watched 'Pieta' have said my filmmaking has become more objective.

Kim Ki-duk

#36. There are a lot of aspects of filmmaking that I love, but one of my favorites is in post, finding the right song for the right moment.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

#37. However, that old mode of Polish filmmaking virtually disappeared.

Andrzej Wajda

#38. Filmmaking is incredible introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways.

Drew Goddard

#39. There is no guaranteed formula. And that's one of the interesting things about filmmaking. You could put $115 million in, and it doesn't guarantee success.

Michelle Yeoh

#40. The White Palace was pretty impressive. Very impressive, in fact. The day to day running of the set was everybody showed up for work. They are seasoned filmmakers over there. They have an infrastructure for filmmaking, which is very healthy. It's small, but they were tenacious, polite, timely.

Pierce Brosnan

#41. I come from a filmmaking tradition and a storytelling background. So somehow I've emerged like a mutant who can straddle both worlds.

Alex Gibney

#42. Filmmaking is challenging for men and women. In both cases, it is incredibly difficult. And gender is neither a guarantee of greater sensitivity, capacity for empathy or aperture.

Claudia Llosa

#43. I spent about a year and a half doing technical post work on 'The Fountain'. Although I do like the process, I think my favorite part of filmmaking is the actors.

Darren Aronofsky

#44. That sort of detailed filmmaking is one, hard to do and not have it be pretentious, and two, have it tell the story, which is what you're taught, that cinema is the language of images and you really should be able to make a film with no dialogue and tell a story.

Nicole Kidman

#45. Thhe essence of documentary filmmaking is how you manipulate the material to create an emotional impact, as opposed to just delivering information.

Richard Ray Perez

#46. I've been lucky to work with some of the most creative people and it's true that I enjoy filmmaking and I'm an enthusiast.

Nicolas Cage

#47. To make filmmaking interesting to me, I want to keep learning things.

Taika Waititi

#48. Online theft has changed the business model of filmmaking because the DVD market is very soft. So, more ambitious, compelling, character-driven narrative of a certain budget level isn't really a viable business model in the eyes of the studios right now.

Jon Favreau

#49. Woody is so musical in his filmmaking. I've never worked with anyone I've trusted so completely. He won't let you hit a false note.

Dianne Wiest

#50. I love the intimacy and the passion and the danger that go into independent filmmaking. Because it comes out of a creative necessity. It comes from people who really want to make a movie and want to make a difference and want to grab an audience by the gullet and show them something different.

Pierce Brosnan

#51. Several years ago, as I was transitioning from film finance to film production and writing again, someone asked me how long I would try to get back into filmmaking before I gave up? My response was "giving up" was not an option.

Gabriel Campisi

#52. I think people think filmmaking is fun, but I've never thought that. For me it's always been a lot of work and pain and stress.

Ben Lewin

#53. One of the things I've always tried to do in filmmaking is that you don't tell the story, you try to show it.

Rick Heinrichs

#54. One of the reasons I really love low budget filmmaking is you don't have to think about that as much. You can have more fun and be more playful and be freer creatively.

M. Night Shyamalan

#55. I've always looked at filmmaking as a lifestyle. There is no decision of when you go to work. It's a way of life: you're thinking about scripts; you see things and think, 'That could be interesting' ... I don't think about my work as, 'Today I'll work on this, this and that.' It just comes to me.

Baltasar Kormakur

#56. Ah, there's a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who's, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he's a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art.

Brian Cox

#57. The mecca of filmmaking in the world just so happens to be in America. It's quite simply a case of us just going where the work is.

Alex O'Loughlin

#58. I like the feeling of making things. It's very very rewarding. And filmmaking is that type of experience, where you're forced to collaborate with so many people. You're involved in the beginning to end, you're involved with so many elements, and when it's done, you're like, 'I made this movie.'

Chris Evans

#59. I found my father's Super8mm film camera when I was around eight years old and started shooting with it. I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but that's really where my filmmaking began.

Gabriel Campisi

#60. I try to do as much as I can, every facet of filmmaking.

Osric Chau

#61. I would like to find a way to embrace what Led Zeppelin did, in filmmaking.

Nicolas Cage

#62. I was extremely shy. And I simply didn't know how to go about it. It seemed a lot easier to write than to make films. All I needed was a pencil and a piece of paper, whereas filmmaking was something I had no access to.

Paul Auster

#63. I stopped making videos and commercials for a few months before I started films just to reset my clock because so much narrative filmmaking is a sense of tempo and rhythm.

Mark Romanek

#64. I think I still have that same drive and determination, the same curiosity and passion for filmmaking that I did when I first started. Every film brings with it unique challenges and experiences, and I approach every one with the same enthusiasm.

Barbara Kopple

#65. 'Rocket Science' is really where I fell in love with filmmaking, I think 'Camp' was incredible, but it was so bizarre, and I was trying to find my footing in this world where you don't have an audience for immediate validation.

Anna Kendrick

#66. My background is in filmmaking, and my mentor is Dusan Makavejev, who combined fiction and documentary.

Joshua Oppenheimer

#67. In the last ten years of watching films I have found that some of the foreign films I saw affected me most. One American film that stands out for me for its workmanship and artistry is 'Ratatouille.' It was an astonishing effort in filmmaking.

Irvin Kershner

#68. I think that directing is the ultimate martyred task of filmmaking, that it has nobility to it. It takes three years to make a film, for the most part. I think it requires the attentiveness of a mother hen.

Diane Lane

#69. I'm Godless. And so I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking, which is
ultimately what my God becomes, which is what my mantra becomes, is the theme.

Darren Aronofsky

#70. Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business - everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs.

David Lynch

#71. Obviously, I've made several films in Korea, so I'm very well accustomed and acclimated to Korean filmmaking.

Kim Ji-woon

#72. Some people think that horror films are some sort of second class filmmaking, and the only way to bypass that thinking is being proud of the fact that we do it.

Clive Barker

#73. The truth about filmmaking is you have all these ideas and you're trying to convince everybody that they should buy into this idea, but at two o'clock in the morning when you're all on your own you're going, 'Geez, I hope I know what I'm doing. I hope this idea is gonna work.'

Gavid Hood

#74. While the creative aspects of my filmmaking style are challenging in their own ways, I have developed such confidence and passion over the years that it has become much easier.

Jenni Olson

#75. If you think about filmmaking as an entire spectrum, starting with the writer and ending with maybe the marketing department, the actor's contribution is a rather slender band.

William Mapother

#76. Film brings together framing and light and color and performance and music and all of that. To me, everything I've done in my life has been preparing me for filmmaking.

Peter Landesman

#77. 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

#78. I became a documentary filmmaker because I wanted to make socially conscious films. I never studied filmmaking - everything I have learned has been on the field.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

#79. People love to be swept off their feet, to go into an environment where they've never been, to experience things they only dream about. And filmmaking offers that potential.

Peter Guber

#80. I think I have a real interest in filmmaking, and it's nice when I can go and do that sometimes. Then it's also great to not do it and not have the responsibility .

Charlize Theron

#81. I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.

Steven Spielberg

#82. I discovered shooting and filmmaking around the time all of the software became affordable to anyone with a PC.

Seth Gordon

#83. To be in a movie directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and a movie that had a large budget ... I got a taste of what really good filmmaking could be.

Gary Cole

#84. The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn't trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.

Ethan Hawke

#85. I never really cared much for Hollywood or movies. But the curiosity for filmmaking, and expanding myself as an actor and my curiosity for people and portraying them, just has grown. And that's from simply being involved in the industry. But it was never a goal of mine as a kid.

Heath Ledger

#86. The documentaries were something that I could do for a small amount of money, and then I felt like as long as I found the truth in the stories I was telling as a doc, I could teach myself filmmaking through doc filmmaking.

Ava DuVernay

#87. I find filmmaking to be a super lonely, alienating experience.

Kelly Reichardt

#88. The moral of filmmaking in Britain is that you will be screwed by the weather.

Hugh Grant

#89. Filmmaking is such a collaborative medium.

Daryl Hannah

#90. Filmmaking is really connected to life and all of the expressions that different arts found to allow access to life. Filmmaking touches on all of it.

Wim Wenders

#91. What I want to do with my filmmaking is help kids experience the truth and wisdom of nature no matter where they are, whether or not they have the opportunity to go to a national park.

Louie Schwartzberg

#92. I'm always happy when I learn more about communication in the wide free scope of that word. So next is a move, getting the film made and working on more music everyday which is equally large in my being as filmmaking.

Giuseppe Andrews

#93. Filmmaking in general is about feeling and not about theory. You need to know a lot of rules about filmmaking: character development, grammar, and all these thing, but then you use it instinctively. I ask myself this question all the time. I have no solid theory, I just do what I feel is right.

Hany Abu-Assad

#94. The first rule of all filmmaking is that every scene should start at the last possible moment and end at the first possible moment.

Austin Film Festival

#95. 'Jaws' was the definitive filmmaking turning point for me. It came out in the summer of '75 and I saw it an obsessive 55 times. They even ran a very embarrassing article about me in the local paper, about the weird kid who's seen 'Jaws' 55 times.

Victor Salva

#96. Sure, they were simple desk lamps with only a minimal amount of movement, but you could immediately tell that Luxo Jr. was a baby, and that the big one was his mother. In that short little film, computer animation went from a novelty to a serious tool for filmmaking.

John Lasseter

#97. I love filmmaking, but I decided to go to drama school because I thought that when I'm 60 and looking back on my life, if acting hadn't been a part of it, I would hate myself.

Lupita Nyong'o

#98. Nothing has changed that much, even during filmmaking for 'The Descendants.' I wrote. I took the kids to school. I cleaned the house. And I had dinner with George Clooney.

Kaui Hart Hemmings

#99. It's not really that I'm interested in filmmaking. I'm interested in the instrument of it, you know.

K'naan

#100. Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.

Kenneth Lonergan