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Filmmaking Quotes

Browse 695 quotes about Filmmaking.

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Filmmaking Quotes

“Most of the movies are working like, 'Information, cut, information, cut, information, cut' and for them the information is just the story. For me, a lot of things [are] information - I try to involve, to the movie, the time, the space, and a lot of other things - which is a part of our life but not connecting directly to the story-telling. And I'm working on the same way - 'information, cut, information, cut,' but for me the information is not only the story.”

InspirationalPhilosophyEntertainmentCinemaPlotStoryFilmmakingMoviesCinematographyCameraThe ArtsFilm Theory
Author:Béla Tarr
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“I want to create the type of cinema that shows by not showing. This is very different from most movies nowadays, which are not literally pornographic but are in essence pornographic, because they show so much that they take away any possibility of imagining things for ourselves. My aim is to give the chance to create as much as possible in our minds, through creativity and imagination. I want to tap the hidden information that’s within yourself and that you probably didn’t even know existed inside you.”

ImaginationCreativityCinemaFilmmaking
Author:Abbas Kiarostami
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“Too many film schools, as well as any number of screenwriting gurus and an obscene number of how-to-write tomes, have made a business of catering to fledgling screenwriters and filmmakers by exploiting their belief that the only thing standing between them and an Oscar is the right kind of knowledge. If only one knew enough, one could easily become rich and famous. Unfortunately, almost all are susceptible to that eternal malady – “that last great infirmity of the soul” – which is FAME. And whilst I don’t deny the value of technical knowledge, such knowledge matters very little if the story one is trying to tell doesn’t matter, either because it’s incoherent or simply because it fails to make us care.”

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Author:Billy Marshall Stoneking
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“A post-movie dance: [You walk out of the theatre. You stretch. You toss your popcorn in the trash bin and wonder if it’s recycling. You pretend to be a slow walker on your way to the exit so you don’t appear too close to the stranger in front of you. You walk to the bathroom. You wait in line. You piss. You hold your fart. You come out. You walk to the parking garage. You walk back to the theatre because you forgot to validate your ticket. You come back to your car. You leave the garage. You get a phone call from mom and talk to her. Then you turn on the radio in traffic. Then you come home and respond to e-mails and go back to sleep. And soon, a movie has died.]”

ArtMemoriesSadnessTheatreCinemaFilmmakingMoviesThe Goodbye SongMovie TheatersThe Theatre
Book:The Goodbye Song
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“I'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I'm in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse's mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations. Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you.”

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Author:Dziga Vertov
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“Hindi films are known and enjoyed worldwide for their songs and dances. These days it is fashionable to battle tradition by using a Western format of telling stories, where music stays in the background. I can't wrap my head around it. I don't think it helps the story move forward. I also believe that a film gets a lot of repeat value when an actor is wooing an actress with a popular song. We represent a dream world and our audiences love it. It may seem old-fashioned but I firmly believe that lip-syncing (by an actor) is the best way to picturize a song, to maximize its appeal. It simply does not have the same magic when the song is played in the background.”

ArtFilmIndiaFilmmakingIndian CultureBollywood
Book:Khullam Khulla: Rishi Kapoor Uncensored
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“They've forgotten about beds, and I understand, because once you set sail on a movie, you are out of touch with ordinary land. Movie-makers between movies seem like you and me; they go to parties, they shop, they swim. But they're just treading water, waiting for another injection, another ship to come take them away in film. And money has nothing to do with it.”

ArtHollywoodCinemaFilmmaking
Book:Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.
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“What’s The Difference (Sonnet 1037) If a scientist has no humility, what's the difference between a scientist and a computer! If a doctor has no warmth, what's the difference between a doctor and a butcher! If a teacher has no curiosity, what's the difference between a teacher and a circus trainer! If a filmmaker has no originality, what's the difference between a filmmaker and a photocopier! If a cop cannot practice self-correction, what's the difference between a cop and an executioner! If a theologian has no integrative spirit, what's the difference between a theologian and a mumbling parrot! If a modern human cannot balance reason and warmth, what's the difference between a sentient human and a creature from the swamp!”

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Book:Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World
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“Make films that purify the soul with the flow of rational, vigorous and compassionate thinking.”

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Book:The Film Testament
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“Use filmmaking to eliminate racism – use to it terminate misogyny – use it to destroy homophobia and all other primitiveness.”

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Book:The Film Testament
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“Or take this girl, for example. At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see [The Double Life of] Véronique. She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really - that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul. She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist. There's something very beautiful in that. It was worth making Véronique for that girl. It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, taking thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul. It's worth it.”

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Book:Kieslowski on Kieslowski
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“Music, too, offers a photograph of the world; characteristically, however, it does this not by copying a few figured sounds but rather by lifting all of the mixed images of extravagance, gushing overflow, and flaming fullness offered by life in its entirety from their immediate objects and weaving them into a carpet—a carpet with its own all-encompassing intensity, quality, and therefore reality.”

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Author:Ernest Bloch
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“I was always bad at reading scripts. Back then, I’d be offered millions of dollars to do movies and barely crack the first few pages. I’m embarrassed to admit that now, given that these days I’m writing scripts myself and it’s like pulling teeth to get actors to respond. Maybe they feel how I used to feel: that in a life of fun and fame and money, reading a script, no matter the size of the number attached, feels all too much like school. The universe will teach you, though. All those years I was too this, too that, to read a script, but last year I wrote a screenplay for myself and was trying get it made until I realized that I was too old to play the part. Most fifty-three-year-olds have worked their shit out already, so I needed to hire a thirty-year-old. The one I chose took weeks and weeks to respond, and I couldn’t believe how rude his behavior was.”

ReadingActorsProjectsScriptsFilmmakingScreenwritingDirecting
Book:Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
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“It was strange. It was painful. It was wonderful. It was something unique to the twentieth century. To sit in a theater in 1994 and fall in love with a woman from 1929 … that would be like sitting in a theater in 1929 and falling in love with someone from 1864 … or like watching 1994 from the year 2059. These leaps across time are fantastic. Yet it’s inevitable that soon people will think nothing of watching a movie from a century before, any more than we would consider it odd to read a hundred-year-old book.”

RomanceHistoryNostalgiaFilmmakingDays Gone By
Book:Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood
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“Success involves failing first. Ask any successful person. Ask any experienced person, really. It's all part of the creative process, so sit back and allow the artist within you to sprout, blossom and flourish. You must accept that your first, second, and third attempt at something might suck. It's a necessary step in improving your skill. Failure is your teacher, not your judge.”

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Book:A Work in Progress
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“Regardless of the subject of my films … I am looking for a way of evoking in audiences feelings similar to my own: the physically painful impotence and sorrow that assail me when I see a man weeping at the bus stop, when I observe people struggling vainly to get close to others, when I see someone eating up the left-overs in a cheap restaurant, when I see the first blotches on a woman's hand and know that she too is bitterly aware of them, when I see the kind of appalling and irreparable injustice that so visibly scars the human face. I want this pain to come across to my audience, to see this physical agony, which I think I am beginning to fathom, to seep into my work.”

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Author:Krzysztof Kieślowski
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“Hollywood’s motives in marketing sex may have been cynical—Hollywood’s motives always are. But in providing audiences with sophisticated fare, it was also responding to real cultural changes that had happened within American society. Hollywood was a few years behind the trend, of course, but that’s nothing new. Don’t forget, this is the same industry that for seventy years has made wonderful, passionate, stirring anti-war movies six or seven years after every war, never during one.”

FilmmakingFilmsHollywood CultureHays CodeMovie History
Book:Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood
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“Like many junior executives, Dawn Steel served as punching bag/chum for her bosses. Once the marketing chief, Frank Mancuso, asked her to tell Steven Spielberg the release date of one of his movies; Spielberg immediately retorted, “Who are you to tell me when the release date is?”

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Book:Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?: Women's Experience of Power in Hollywood
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“My work in City Heat (1984) was still getting mentions in the trades, and I’d just wrapped Cobra (1986) – another project where I was principally responsible for the film’s moody and stylish palate, lots of shadows and contrast; So when I started Spaceballs (1987) Mel Brooks said to me, “Look, sonny, I don’t want any of this artistic bullshit, and I want none of that dark crap. I paid for those walls back there so I want to see those walls on the screen! Blast the light on ’em!” That’s why Spaceballs looks like a TV pilot, there’s a lot of light. In fact, I probably ­over-lit the film, but that’s the way the studios liked it at that time and it’s also the way Mel wanted it so that’s what I gave them. But if I was to do it again, I would push for something more nuanced and use some effects in there to give it a bit more character.”

FilmmakingBad BossHollywood Quotes1980s HollywoodCinematography QuotesMel BrooksSpaceballs
Book:Nick McLean Behind the Camera: The Life and Works of a Hollywood Cinematographer
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“Audience can live without a movie but a movie cannot live without an audience.”

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Book:Wealth of Words
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“Whatever genre you deem suitable for your taste – romance, comedy, action, mystery, sci-fi or anything else, make sure it has the plain everyday human kindness.”

InspirationalWisdomFilmActorsActingWords Of WisdomBrainy QuotesCinemaMovieFilmmakingModelingMoviesSocial PsychologyFilm IndustryEntertainment IndustryActorCinematographyModelFilmsActressMovie MakingMovie QuoteActor QuotesFilm MakingFilmingMovie QuotesFilm DirectorFilm QuotesFilm ScriptFilm MakersActing Life ActressDirector Be FilmEntertainer
Book:The Film Testament
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“Healthy entertainment does not evoke raw emotions in the mind of a viewer only to make them wreak havoc, rather it guides those emotions in a healthy direction.”

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Author:Abhijit Naskar
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“Healthy entertainment is a beautiful blend of stimuli that can connect with the viewer at a sentimental level, then sow the seeds of a certain idea or feed the mind with inspiration and courage. In short, healthy entertainment does not evoke raw emotions in the mind of a viewer only to make them wreak havoc, rather it guides those emotions in a healthy direction. This leads to not only an entertained viewer, but also an inspired soul. And that should be the purpose of film-making, and indeed the entire entertainment industry, rather than feeding the general population with garbage.”

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Author:Abhijit Naskar
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“Harvey Weinstein took pride in not paying bills,” recounted Miramax’s former chief financial officer John Schmidt. “But when you stiff a filmmaker you are stiffing the very lifeblood of what your business is. The whole independent film business is based on championing the small guy.”

FilmmakingCheatVendorsFilmmakersDeadbeatHarvey WeinsteinIndependent FilmsMiramax
Book:Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence
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