Words matter. These are the best Filmmaker Quotes from famous people such as Lindsey Stirling, Ava DuVernay, David Dobkin, Steve Erickson, Jonas Mekas, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I originally went to school to be a filmmaker. And so it’s a big part of how I think and how I write. And it inspires me a lot.
Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn’t done when they lock picture. We must see our films through.
On the comedy side of what I love as a filmmaker are Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and Eddie Murphy; those are my favorites.
Part of the process of reading is constantly hitting the pause button, and now and then the rewind button, to ponder a word that’s been chosen by the author as exquisitely as the filmmaker chooses an image or a sound editor chooses a sonic clue – the tolling of a bell in the distance to evoke memory, for instance.
In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don’t care about my cinema. In Europe, they don’t know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!
From the very beginning, I’ve always just wanted to do something I’ve never done before. I’m still just trying to be on that path. It’s all about working with filmmakers that you believe in.
I don’t think of myself as a director or writer. I think of myself as a filmmaker.
On an animated television series, you pretty much read the script as written. Whereas on an animated feature, you’ll sometimes record the same scene multiple times over the course of a year as the filmmakers continue to tweak that part of the movie.
I feel like every day I discover new actors and new filmmakers and different genres, and it’s just so cool.
I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years, and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that.
I was an audience member before I’m a filmmaker. All I’ve tried to do as a filmmaker was to make movies I want to see.
Our brains have this habit of quilting dreams from the fabrics of our lives. As a filmmaker, I get to do it for a living.
Susanne Bier’s work I’ve always really enjoyed. She’s just such a great filmmaker; she’s very cool and very sexy – that always helps, too.
Filmmaking, at the end of the day, is really – in addition to the story and all of the equipment and the actors, it’s really about time management. And so the smartest filmmakers are the ones who sort of pre-visualize the film in their head and are literally shooting the shots they need to cut the story together.
Aristotle wrote the ‘Poetics’ 2,400 years ago. It’s really an instruction manual for aspiring filmmakers. It’s as valid today as it was then.
I came out of a sort of experimental background, and I didn’t ever really expect – or even desire – a career as a feature filmmaker.
There is no reason why challenging themes and engaging stories have to be mutually exclusive – in fact, each can fuel the other. As a filmmaker, I want to entertain people first and foremost. If out of that comes a greater awareness and understanding of a time or a circumstance, then the hope is that change can happen.
As a filmmaker, I wish we didn’t have to do trailers at all, quite honestly. I wish we didn’t have to do posters. I wish didn’t have to give anything away. I wish people could just come in the movie blind. But as an audience member, I respect that you have to tell an audience that this is worth your time.
I focus on the elements of a movie that are meant to invisibly affect me as a viewer. The edges. As an author, I’m aware of how the subconscious things can pluck at a reader’s emotions, and I love it when filmmakers do the same.
Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and ‘long-form development’ that filmmakers didn’t have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like ‘The Sopranos.’
It is funny now, but in the beginning of my career, some of the films failed at the box office, and filmmakers stopped casting me, saying I am bringing bad luck to their film.
Some documentaries are made by people who are driven more by one particular story, or have different backgrounds or ambitions, but I’m always looking for projects that let me be the best filmmaker I can be, and to be stretched and grow further.
But you talk to most filmmakers and it is six, seven, eight years trying to get things off the ground. It is incredible really.
There are committed Indonesian filmmakers who are committed supporters of ‘The Act Of Killing.’
The consumer is deciding what they want to see and when and how, and filmmakers are more aware and accepting of the fact that success is not predicated on your movie showing in a traditional theater for a certain amount of time.
Throughout Ireland, there’s a brilliant community of filmmakers and actors, and I guess there was always a lure to do some work in the place where I come from.
Oh, filmmakers, please don’t take my soft book and turn it into a horror, or take my horror and make it soft.
As a filmmaker, you have to understand the essence of the book and tell the story you want to see on the screen, and hopefully please yourself – because you can’t possibly please everyone.
Making African American films are hard in Hollywood. We need to rely on a support network and bring more cohesion to different filmmakers, actors, producers etc. It’s a very difficult business. There aren’t a lot of Africans Americans or people of color in high positions in Hollywood that we can green-light films.
When I was a young filmmaker starting out, I was really snobby about all the affirmative action for women filmmakers because I felt it should be about your talent, and I made a film that won awards, and people wanted me.
It was never really my plan to become a filmmaker.
When I’m writing film music, I feel like I’m more a filmmaker than a composer. It’s more about what the film needs. I’m basically part of the team that’s creating a film, and the music is a very important part, but it’s just one part of many.
To me, only the filmmaker and the role matters.
I want to go make an original movie. It’s all very personal, but I want to define myself a little bit more as a filmmaker and hone my craft.
I try to approach the film medium as a novelist and the novel medium as a filmmaker on some level. It’s that question: Do we think in pictures, or do we think in language? And the novelist believes one thing, and the filmmaker believes another thing – and I’m fascinated by that balance.
For the theatrical experience to survive, spectacle films need to expand their definition of what they can be. They need to be unique and true voices of the filmmakers behind them. They can’t just be copying what came before them.
I love the movies. Everyone always says the same thing about the shared cultural experience, seeing things on the big screen, the church of the cinema… But on top of all that, as a filmmaker, I love having people be trapped in a movie theater, forcing them to watch what I made.
Hollywood is a wonderful machine for making big movies. In France, we make smaller and more personal films, but if things keep changing, this will disappear. The industry in Italy is practically gone. Cinecitta now is used mostly by filmmakers from others places, like Martin Scorsese.
I want ‘Like Brothers’ to answer young kids who ask, ‘How could I possibly become a filmmaker?’ This book will step that out for you.
As a filmmaker, you’re looking to reveal something. When other people relate to it, it makes an otherwise lonely world a little less lonely.
I think filmmakers are always interested in getting the best actor that they can find, the person who’s the most right for it.
I started in high school, and in college, I studied radio, TV, and film. The plan was to be a filmmaker, and it was always comedy.
Hal Ashby is one of my favorite filmmakers.
I never set out to build some behemoth comedy career. My taste in movies is far more eclectic than that so my aspirations as a filmmaker are far more eclectic than that.
I think one of the privileges of being a filmmaker is the opportunity to remain a kind of perpetual student.
In ‘Blood Work,’ they made choices I wouldn’t have made, but I’m not a filmmaker. I took the money, and they told the story.
‘The Movie’ is something that I made with some friends of mine in L.A. My friend, Luke Eberl, is the filmmaker. He shot this movie and asked a bunch of his friends to be involved with it. I just saw him the other day and there is no money to finish the film. But, you know, I literally have a cameo in it.
It’s not my style to either wear minimum clothes, to strip, or to even be comfortable with a sex-symbol label. I just want to do good work instead of sporting such meaningless tags. Sex sells, but to a small extent, not always. And this is what filmmakers have to accept.
I think that our task as filmmakers is to create the most insightful reality given the most pressing questions.
The audience will show up if you have authenticity. Like ‘Moonlight,’ there was stuff in there that is so specific to that community where the filmmakers grew up. Even if I don’t understand everything they’re talking about, I will love it if I feel that it’s real.
Iranian filmmakers are not passive. They fight whenever they can, as creative expression means a lot to them. The restrictions and censorship in Iran are a bit like the British weather: one day it’s sunny, the next day it’s raining. You just have to hope you walk out into the sunshine.
