Most women I know are not actresses, but they work for the U.N. or are documentary filmmakers, anthropologists.
As an investigative filmmaker, I helped expose atrocities committed by ISIS against women and girls. They are evil, and we have to stop them.
How I’m portrayed in films has more to do with the filmmaking and what they need in the story than anything else. I’m the same person I’ve always been, I just get used in different ways according to the filmmakers’ needs – which is fine with me; it makes for great films.
The worst thing for a filmmaker is for a film to be labeled as pretentious or heavy-handed.
Twitter and social media have so changed the game for filmmakers, but especially for artists. It shrinks the world and gives chance to feel like they know you. But it’s a blessing and a curse. It can help build you up, but there’s also such anonymity.
You need pencil miles to be a great artist, animator, or filmmaker, and the sooner you start making mistakes, the quicker you learn.
I hope people don’t compare 2D and 3D because 3D’s new, it’s unfair to compare to 2D which is really sophisticated, even when we’re jaded about it. 3D just began, give it a chance, let the equipment and projection system catch up and be better, let the price go down, let more filmmakers get a hold of it more easily.
My experience of test screenings is that you don’t know what kind of mood people are going to be in, and sometimes the studios accept what Joe Blo says – and this guy could just be a frustrated filmmaker, or not paying attention.
My dad made a film called ‘Willow’ when he was a young filmmaker, which screened at the Cannes film festival, and people were booing afterwards.
I really want to be the black Tina Fey, where I just am able to produce my own content and produce other content for other minority filmmakers and put their voices on screen and basically be able to have free range to produce.
As a filmmaker, the most dramatic and the most dread-inspiring thing is when the audience can see more than the characters themselves can see.
Everybody’s a filmmaker today.
My take on it, like a filmmaker or actor, is if you have much more colors within your creation, eventually people will appreciate what you’re doing, and the other stuff is secondary, like critiques or even awards or anything else, as long as people enjoy it.
As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller – documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.
It’s like two years straight out of your life doing a film. It’s very enjoyable, especially working with the guys, but I kind of like the idea of traveling and growing, and developing as a writer and as a filmmaker.
I conveniently was not accepted to film school, which I applied to in 1987, and so I decided I would become a filmmaker instead of a student.
I very much enjoy working with talented filmmakers who have a good sense for music, who have a strong feel for music and for what music can do in a film.
‘Shaadi… ‘ made people see me as an actor. A lot of filmmakers called and said I was really good in the film… People from the industry – who never spoke to me, didn’t think I was a great actor because they hadn’t seen my work – said I can act.
Two of my sons are themselves filmmakers, and we can’t afford them nor they us. They work in the real world and earn money and are pretty good at it.
Most filmmakers can’t afford to try something out that doesn’t work.
I don’t consider myself a very good talker or writer but a pretty good filmmaker.
With newspapers cutting foreign bureaus and budgets shrinking for long-form, investigative journalism, documentary filmmakers are often filling a void nowadays in the media landscape with their ability to spend time with their stories and subjects.
I feel safe in saying this, and that is that Peter Weir is without a doubt one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. I’d open a door in a movie for him if he asked me to.
I don’t think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.
By the time I finished ‘Poison,’ the New Queer Cinema was branded, and I was associated with this. In many ways, it formed me as a filmmaker, like as a feature filmmaker I never set out to be.
The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is, the harder it is to get it financed. That’s why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.
I can’t wait for the rest of my career to meet these young writers and filmmakers so that I can produce and push a lot of their stories out there.
My biggest fear in writing ‘Gossip Girl’ was that the characters would sound like stereotypical rich, air-headed heiresses. These were my friends. They were smart and multifaceted. They had interests and passions. They wanted to become lawyers and doctors and writers and filmmakers.
Sacred texts give no specific depiction of God, so for centuries, artists and filmmakers have had to choose their own visual depiction.
I love my work, apart from when it’s driving me crazy. But I get to be interested in stuff and think like a filmmaker as I’m buzzing about the world and then see an opportunity to make a film, and then make it happen.
Other filmmakers make their movies and put them out and that’s that. For me, for some odd reason, it goes deeper than that.
When you’re told that as a filmmaker of colour, the stories you want to tell aren’t commercial enough, then you start thinking, ‘I’m going to tell them anyway.’
If a filmmaker and I don’t get along, it’s four weeks of your life, so, whatever. With TV, it’s six years.
When I started as a filmmaker, I never, ever imagined in a million years that I would be doing television because, at that time, TV was a very different medium.
I always say that AMC hires filmmakers, and they let them be filmmakers.
I’ve seen so many young filmmakers – even professional filmmakers who get a Hollywood deal – they don’t quite know where to begin, where to end, and they’ll waste a lot of time making this perfect shot, an establishing shot, and then there’s no time left to shoot the dialogue.
As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you’re interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.
It is an entirely selfish decision to turn producer because I want my kind of cinema to last and flourish, and helping young filmmakers make those kind of films is the best way to do it.
We want to empower artists and filmmakers to forge new paths.
I always liked the idea in ‘Potter’ that you don’t choose the wand, the wand chooses you, and that relics decide when you’re ready to handle them. I’m a cinephile first and a filmmaker second, and it’s all swimming in the subconscious.
I put more emphasis on filmmakers than maybe Hollywood does.
I think for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films.
If you’re a wildlife filmmaker and you’re going out into the field to film animals, especially behavior, it helps to have a fundamental background on who these animals are, how they work and, you know, a bit about their behaviors.
I’m influenced by a lot of filmmakers; I like English filmmakers because I feel a kin to them.
When I came into movies or acted in ‘Njandukalude Natil Oridavela’ and ‘Mayaanadhi,’ little did I expect such a huge response from the crowd. All I expected was to work with good filmmakers.
I feel like there’s a lot of sympathy and camaraderie among documentary filmmakers.
Filmmakers have to commit to making 3-D films properly like Jim Cameron did and not do cheap conversions at the tail end of the process.
You’ve got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie’s good enough, it’s going to survive; and if it’s not, well, it won’t.
Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can’t quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.
Every filmmaker’s just going to keep trying to make it the best you can make it: make it as potent and interesting and entertaining and exciting and tough and sexy as you can.
I had a background in theater as an actor, and then a photographer, and then as an experimental filmmaker and editor.
After ‘A Separation,’ I found it much easier to work in Iran because I worked with very enthusiastic people who were very involved in the work, and that facilitated a number of things. It made it possible to iron out some of the difficulties found by other filmmakers in Iran.
The reason most comedies don’t win awards is that the filmmakers put the comedy first. This means you have to create a story around the jokes.
People say I pick good films. Rather, good filmmakers choose me. The directors come to me, and I thank them for their trust in me.
I love more than anything looking at a movie scene by scene and seeing the intention behind it. It allows you to really appreciate the hand of the filmmaker.
I loved American filmmakers when I was growing up. I didn’t get to film school or anything. I was a very bad student. I just devoured film, but there was a point in my teens when I started to run a little film society.
