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Filmmaking Quotes

Browse 695 quotes about Filmmaking.

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Filmmaking Quotes

“I get rejections from the New Yorker. When I had to give a little talk to the people graduating from the MBA program at Columbia who were going into writing and filmmaking and everything, I said, "When I tried to think of what to say, the only subject I thought was appropriate for people doing what you're going to do is rejection." That's what it's all about.”

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Author:Kevin Sessums
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“I think every filmmaker in Europe would be lying if they didn't say one day they just wanted to make a movie here in Hollywood or at least try it. It's very different from European filmmaking, because here it's like a real industry. It's very much about money and making money, which I think is fine, because it's very expensive to make movies.”

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Author:Baran Odar
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“You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else. My style of filmmaking happens to be give the audience what they know they don't want, but they want. Ultimately I have to write and direct in a way that let's just say, you don't want to regret making a choice.”

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Author:Jordan Peele
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“I think you can maintain two tracks. I think you have to. That's what this kind of filmmaking is about. If you're not aware of the limitations of what you're up against... it's like a general: you have to know your artillery and you have to know your infantry. You have to know what you have. You have to marshal your forces and use them well. It comes down to the personal and the intimate, but at the same time you have to have the big picture.”

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Author:Oliver Stone
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“Doing TV shows helps me a lot in my screenplay writing and filmmaking, especially since my TV shows are in different formats: comedy sketches, talk shows, debate programs, art variety shows, quiz shows. These enable me to meet interesting people with interesting stories and to learn about interesting subjects, all of which I can reflect into film.”

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Author:Takeshi Kitano
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“Comparing filmmaking to a plastic model, shooting is the process where you mold and color each piece, and editing is where you build a finished whole from the pieces you molded and colored. Obviously, the latter is the most enjoyable part in the making of plastic models, so editing is the process in filmmaking I enjoy the most. But at the same time, editing can be a painstaking task, too.”

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Author:Takeshi Kitano
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“I always do casting for every role, even if it's just one sentence. I like to work with theater actors because they're used to a process. I think filmmaking sometimes can become so stiff. Sometimes I have the feeling that people come together praying in the morning that, "Let's just shoot something, no matter what! Let's just finish this day, no matter what we will tape!"”

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Author:Maren Ade
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“We with Komplizen Film believe very much in the writer-director and in the freedom of a filmmaker. I think it's always good to be involved where you spend the money. Filmmaking, you see in the picture what the money's spent for. I never had to leave a phase of filmmaking before being really happy, and that was really a big luxury. That could happen, I think, because I am my own producer.”

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Author:Maren Ade
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“None of our films look alike, we are very dialectical in our approach to each one, and 'Hoop Dreams' was no exception. That's what I love about documentary filmmaking, we never know where the story is going, we don't know what is going to happen next, and we're inside a culture of people that you have to figure out in many ways. It's a relationship between what you thought might have been the story, and what happens in the 'field.' Out of that comes the story, which was exactly what happened with 'Hoop Dreams.'”

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Author:Gordon Quinn
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“'Hoop Dreams' brought us back to our roots in veríté filmmaking. What we saw in the powerful emotional scenes within it - at nearly three hours long and with no star power - was an outreach to a different and more important audiences. There were the similarly involved folks who saw it that were part of the struggle, but there was also a new audience that weren't empathetic or sympathetic to the people we were portraying. They would never watch a film about inner city families, but they watched 'Hoop Dreams.'”

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Author:Gordon Quinn
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“The amazing fact that one person can make his own film - I think animation is somewhat unique in that respect. I don't need to deal with lawyers. I don't need to deal with corporations. I don't need to deal with executives or agents or any of that. I can just sit at home and make a feature film. That's a wonderful experience. Each film I make gets more popular, more press and makes more money. So it's amazing that I've survived and actually prospered doing that sort of homegrown, cottage-industry filmmaking.”

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Author:Bill Plympton
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“I do think it's possible for me to go back to the studio, and for a lot of women filmmakers to be going back into studio filmmaking with a different sense of their own agency, and a different sense of the respect that they can command. When you asked the question about whether women want to be making big studio movies, the answer is almost always yes. It's just, how do they want to be treated? What is that experience going to be? And if you know the experience is gonna be shitty going into it, I personally am at a place where I'm not willing to punish myself any longer.”

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Author:Karyn Kusama
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“Filmmaking is like any kind of art form. You have to try to figure it out, and you're going to do that by trying. It's like teaching a child to walk. It may start by walking, but eventually it will fall. And I have kids, but I know that that will enable them to stand up again and understand why they fell, and how they can avoid that. They will walk better and faster, and stronger. Filmmaking is the same.”

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Author:Nicolas Winding Refn
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“We just assume all the great actors are in New York first and then L.A. second, and it's so not true. There's such amazing talent everywhere. It's exciting that now that there are these sort of new Hollywoods or new filmmaking communities that really benefit from these great faces and character actors and leading actors that just are fresh and exciting and bring an authenticity to the piece.”

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Author:Sandra Bullock
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“The Ramones were a great bunch of guys. They were very quiet, very shy. They were a little in awe of the filmmaking process, probably because we started at 7 a.m. I do remember the very first day of shooting, I met them and did the scene in the bedroom where Joey sings to me, and they were all scattered around my bedroom in my little fantasy scene. That was the first scene we shot of the movie. That scene is kind of a strange way to start a movie. "Okay, get undressed, and these weird guys in leather jackets and ripped jeans are going to sing to you."”

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Author:P. J. Soles
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“I just enjoy the filmmaking side of things. I feel like when you're an actor, sometimes you're in other people's hands and they're in charge of your creative life. Whereas with my production company, I'm the one that gets to make those choices for how I'm gonna spend my time and what content I'm going to be creating. I definitely learn a lot, especially about acting, by producing and directing and seeing how it all comes together, and seeing the other side of things, appreciating what goes into pre- and post-production, and all those things you don't see when you're an actor.”

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Author:Carrie Preston
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“What makes me put pen to paper? You know, that's the million-dollar question. I've been writing since I've been reading. It's not a question I think that's even meant to be answered, but it's something you always seek to discover the answer to. And the process of filmmaking is one of discovery, and self-discovery at that. Pleasure... it's not exactly what I would call fun, but it's absorbing.”

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Author:Todd Solondz
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“At a certain point, I got interested in set design for the theater. I was interested in architecture, but I was taking photographs at the same time, and architecture, though it had the design element, it didn't have the narrative, emotional element that I was looking to do. I ended up painting for a while. I was dancing around it, and I realized that all these different interests came together in filmmaking.”

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Author:Neil Burger
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