I don’t consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted.
These guys at Fox knew that as a filmmaker, I could always tell different types of stories and each can emotionally connect to a universal audience.
You don’t go make ‘Schizopolis’ if you’re trying to protect some idea of yourself as a filmmaker.
I’m very fortunate to have the privilege of working with directors like Bill Condon and Paul Thomas Anderson, who I think is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time.
Christopher Nolan’s ‘Batman Begins’ set the bar very high for the superhero movie, as it showed that you could get a great cast for these movies and take a real filmmaker’s perspective.
As a filmmaker, I’m interminably curious and nosy, but certain times you meet people and think, ‘I don’t want to push you too hard because I can see this is painful for you.’
What I learned is, don’t forget who you are, because that’s what’s going to make you a filmmaker.
There are certain filmmakers I’d like to work with that I don’t think would take a risk with me, because I could be distracting in their film. It’ll take a couple films to prove to them that it’s worth the risk.
Sundance is incredible and has been very important for my career as a filmmaker, but it’s also not the only route to success. There are a ton of great movies that don’t get in and go on and do wonderfully.
Gavin O’Connor, I’d walk into a fire for that guy. He’s a brilliant filmmaker and a passionate man.
I came out to Hollywood when I was just 18, and my dad, he was really into Hollywood and theater and art, and I guess growing up, he exposed me to a lot of culture, and I just started making Super-8 films in high school and decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.
I write and film history; I don’t make it. One can be a good critic and a moral observer, but one remains professionally detached as a writer and a filmmaker.
I’ve often thought even ragtag gatherings of documentary filmmakers are more fun than gatherings of fiction filmmakers.
Visual effects have always been a part of this art form. And CG is simply a tool on the filmmaker’s tool belt to tell a story, but when the end result is bad – maybe it’s not the tool’s fault.
When I started making films, like almost every filmmaker, I think, you’re just so excited to be able to make a movie that you’ll do anything.
Definitely, it would be foolish to try and make my Czech films here in America, as foolish as it is when some Czech filmmakers try to make movies of America in Czechoslovakia.
I think, quite often, filmmakers kind of think so much about what the franchise will be and sometimes can neglect to put their efforts into the movie that they are actually making.
It’s a very weird thing, making a true story, because you need your freedom, as filmmakers, to do what you need to do.
For a documentary filmmaker, I do very well.
I hope that all new filmmakers see that the Internet and social media are helpful tools in establishing a fan base as well as being able to interact with your fans.
Film is an emotional medium; it’s not a logical medium. It’s not an intellectual medium, so every decision you make as a filmmaker and an actor has to be emotional in some way, even in the rejection of logic.
I really think of myself just as a filmmaker.
What I think happens today is that a lot of filmmakers look at other films that are retro pieces, like L.A. Confidential, and say, oh, that’s period. We didn’t want to do the stereotypical stuff.
One of the things I’ve learned as a filmmaker is to have some aspect of the movie be something that I admire greatly, whether that’s an actor I’m working with, the subject matter, or a book.
Lots of people have criticized my movies, but nobody has ever identified the real problem: I’m a sloppy filmmaker.
One of the bad things about being a filmmaker, about being me, is I can hardly read a book anymore because every time I read something, I have a poaching mentality, like, ‘Oh, can this be a movie?’
Hollywood, it seems, recognizes black film and black filmmakers, but like a distant lover, never close enough or long enough to forge a meaningful relationship.
I’m not a career filmmaker. I just like to do things that I still kind of believe in and because of that you just never know what’s going to happen next. It doesn’t matter if it’s been a good year or a bad year: next year, there’s no telling what it will be like.
If there’s anything that I’ve always said about myself is that to me, it’s much more important for me to get to work with filmmakers that I’ve grown up loving and admiring.
A lot of filmmakers from my generation were lucky enough to have their work more or less perpetuated by people who saw them originally on TV and on HBO and certainly on home video.
In the ’70s, with movies like ‘Little Big Man,’ westerns began to have a little different flavor, and I think casting people and filmmakers began to realize, ‘Hey, maybe we can get a little more authentic in terms of who we cast here.’ That kind of opened up the gates.
I’m always inspired by other filmmakers, whether it’s a shot or the way they handle tone.
I love Carpenter, I love Craven – these are all the classics – the Romeros of the world, but I think the biggest influence on me as a storyteller and as a filmmaker is actually Steven Spielberg. I love that even though Steven isn’t known for being a horror director, he started out his career making scary movies.
As a filmmaker, I always try not to concern myself with the outcome of things. I make the movie, and I do that as honestly and good as I can. I don’t want to pollute my thoughts with what is going to happen with it afterwards, because I have to work inside-out.
The filmmaker’s got to make it his story and the actors have got to make it their story.
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.
Technology has already opened the door a bit wider for filmmakers, with smaller digital cameras making production less cumbersome. Social media is allowing self-distribution, and girl groups like Spark Summit are leading the way in calling for fewer Photoshop image alterations of girls in print media.
What attracts me to Bourne’s world is that is a real world, and I think I’m most comfortable there. But I come to a Bourne movie to have fun as a filmmaker, to strut my stuff, and that’s part of the fun of franchise filmmaking.
As a filmmaker, you just make the movie you want to make, and you sort of put your faith in the distributor to make sure the right people see it.
The more I learn and grow, the more I feel fulfilled, and even if I’m shooting a commercial for a car or a computer, I try to deliver a filmmaker’s point of view where I can learn from the experience. Then I really enjoy it.
I find a lot of young filmmakers make too much of an effort to be trendy and they can be pretentious.
The economy is rough. I think that affects everyone from big filmmakers to tiny filmmakers.
I love that first-time feeling that I can’t build in myself anymore, where I can learn and emulate other filmmakers. Be it Ayan Mukherjee, Punit Mahotra, Karan Malhotra, Tarun Mansukhani or Shakun Batra, all of them have taught me something or the other.
I do believe that there are auteurs, in the sense that there are filmmakers with very strong voices and their voices are communicated on to the screen without a lot of compromise.
One thing I love about Kollywood is that, here, filmmakers are more experimental, and the audience is welcoming of it, too.
I don’t really pay attention to the filmmaker thing.
Part of being a filmmaker is also being a craftsman.
I’ve worked in the film business for 45 years, and I want to keep on growing as a filmmaker. I want to see my visual life grow and be increasingly effective in this world.
I think it’s really hard for filmmakers to adapt books.
I’m a proud filmmaker, but everyone seems to have forgotten that. You’re introduced, and someone will say, ‘Arrey! Karan Johar! He does talk shows! He’s judge!’ And now my filmmaking has been lost, all my other accomplishments forgotten.
There is so much corruption in India that some filmmakers were using political or administrative sources to get access.
I’m a journalist, and I’m a filmmaker. I have an organization that’s all about telling stories.
I love the process of working with a filmmaker and the writers and the actors.
I mean if politics was my main motivation I would be doing politics. But I’m a filmmaker.
I don’t find myself lobbying for projects. Filmmakers almost always come to me.
When you start out as a filmmaker, you do parodies, because you can’t really compete on a studio level.
I’ve never gone around looking for roles. It has been my good luck that all the films that I have done, the filmmakers have approached me.
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.
When you have filmmakers like Justin Simien, writers, producers, actresses like Lena Waithe, who are people of color, they’re creating their own content and saying, ‘You know what? We’re not going to wait on someone else to tell our story. We’re going to do it ourselves. You can be a part of it or not.’
