James Wan Quotes

To get the film in your head on the screen, first you have to take it out of your head and explain it to everyone who is working with you. This will take work and planning.

Writing is fantasizing about what your film will be like. Shooting is reality. And the post-production is recovering the idea you had.

The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There's a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.

One day I had an idea for a movie. Everything came after that.

I have always meticulously storyboarded my films from beginning to end.

I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.

I truly enjoy directing. I enjoy looking at the words on the paper and visualizing how to make them come to life.

I really don't storyboard unless it's an action sequence of some kind, but I plan carefully.

I am very interested in behind the scenes, and I am very creative.

When you make a film, you never quite know what you're getting into.

All the excitement is during the making of a film. Once I'm done with it, I switch to my next project and am excited about that.

I became passionate about filmmaking. The thrill to make something out of nothing and to go out there to see whether it will work or not attracted me.

That's the great thing about filmmaking: Things happen you don't know are going to happen at the end.

You never know what to expect when you're a writer visiting a movie set.

As a director, you try to find what is creative.

And as I've gotten deeper into the process of making films and television and such, I think I have more trust in the fact that you really never know what you're going to find after the twenty-fifth take.

There's something about taking a film from concept to script, through production, and then to see the final thing happening in the edit phase. It's almost like a miracle in the making.

I love filmmaking, and I love the process. And I would rather do nothing else. It's a privilege to be able to paint such big pictures, so to speak.

I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.

I enjoy looking at words on paper and visualizing how to make them come to life. As a director, the creative process is really amazing.

I give as much as I can, and it's up to someone else to turn it into a movie. Good luck to you!

A film takes a lot of time, and yet not enough to share with the people you're making the movie with, I think.

I think mostly it's the adventure that I will have in making the movie. That's what I look for.

What's important in the filmmaking process has stayed the same. Keep it small, keep it personal, keep it authentic, work with people you like and trust. That process is much longer than the filmmaking process. The development process is a long one, so try and say something of importance.

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.