Ted Nelson Quotes

One of the things that's, I think, hard in television is that there's a certain sameness to a lot of television because you're working in a very constricted box, and the box is defined by the amount of money you have to spend and the amount of time you have to get ready.

They didn't have the money to keep Christopher Lee long enough to play his scenes with me.

Well, we had more money and more time the first season than we did at TV 23.

It's happened time and time again, but the committee has always decided against it-the work was too conservative or didn't fit within the budget; there are millions of different reasons.

Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.

More than often, what you see, or what we've been able to recreate, has usually been a tampered-with version of what I have in my head, because the original idea has always been bigger. Every time I am in the mode of creating a show, there's always some level of gravity that comes in play, either of a monetary sort, or there's a space issue.

Invariably, what I'm trying to do is more ambitious than the budget, but we manage to do it somehow.

There are a lot of parallels between doing a sequel and doing low budget movies, which is they give creative parameters. As a creative person myself, I work better with parameters as opposed to anything goes.

I think there's only one or two films where I've had all the financial support I needed. All the rest, I wish I'd had the money to shoot another ten days.

You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record.

Technology is a major tool in exploring and challenging your creativity, but it can also overtake your creativity... My mind goes very fast, and I can see all kinds of images that would be spectacular on the screen. But they would cost so much money, and would they really make the story that much better?

It's always the organizations that are resource constrained that come up with the good ideas to win.

Even on a $100 million film, people will complain that they haven't got enough money and enough time, so that's always going to be an element in filmmaking.

We had a tiny budget for 'The Greatest,' which was the opposite of 'Wall Street.' We just kind of went in and did it. You've got four or five takes and then you've got to move on. We didn't even have trailers to stay in or anything.

Just trying to get a film made which is always difficult no matter what kind of a budget you have. Not having a budget makes it even more difficult. Having nineteen days and no budget makes it extremely difficult.

Limitations, be they practical or arbitrary, force artists to dig more deeply instead of settling for easy answers.

Indies are always an extra challenge. The time is shorter because you have less money to spend and fewer days to shoot.

We were just a one-room bookstore; we didn't have any money for lawyers.

I'm interested to see what happens to Spike Lee with limited resources, you know? I love Spike Lee's movies. But you know what? I kinda liked his movies when he used to scramble and fight more for them.

Definition of an independent film is torture with less money and time.

I think more money can be very detrimental to movies and TV because things get solved economically rather than creatively, and that's never a good solution.

No movie has ever got enough time. It doesn't matter how much money you've got, and it doesn't matter how much money you've not got. You never finish on time. You're always up against it and you're always working up until the end.

I'm a big believer in creating parameters for creativity. I think parameters make people more creative. So that starts with my budgets. I only do low budget movies, and I think that makes the movies better.

Sometimes, we have to turn our camera to a mirror to shoot something, and people think, 'Oh, that's very stylish.' Yes it is, but at the same time, we did it because we are shooting in a very small space, and that was our only option.

I think in terms of content and subjects and whatever kind of production it dictates. Can I conceive of an idea that would really connect with my personal rhythms and cost a lot of money? I don't gravitate in that direction, but it is possible.