Danis Tanovic Quotes

I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always 'let it keep rolling.'

I never know going in if I've even got a movie to make. Once you start making a film, you hope there's going to be enough material! My job as a director is always to push for more.

I'm not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there's going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what's going to happen. I would be so bored if that was the case. There would be no journey. There would be nothing to discover.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

Making a movie is difficult enough to sort of have a premeditated length that you're going for. I don't know a single filmmaker on the planet who does that.

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.

I'm a big fan of documentaries. I've always loved them, and I've just never had the opportunity or the time to make a feature.

I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.

I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while.

If it were all in the script, why make the film?

Being a filmmaker is kind of like being a glorified spy.

All directors are storytellers, so the motivation was to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's what I love.

I never had any master plan about directing, and I don't really write.

Film allows me to ask some really big questions with the time to explore them deeply. I love the form.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

I've started movies without screenplays both on 'Clash' and on 'Hulk,' and that is tremendously stressful because you have a tendency to overcompensate with effects. You haven't tested it in your head. You didn't run it over and over again and covered all of the plot holes and figure it out. It's a marathon that you sprint.

It's incredible to see the creativity, beauty and hardships people capture when filmmaking is opened up and shared with the world.

Film and television are just different. Film is cool because it's a complete package. You know the beginning, middle, and end. You can plan it out more, which I like. But with television you get a new script every week, so it's constantly a mystery as to what you're going to be doing.

It's not so much that I got that idea at some point, it came up naturally because of the improvisational nature of the story I was telling.

I never make films thinking 'This is my film. This right here is undoubtedly Kim Jee-Woon style.' I am not even sure what 'Kim Jee-Woon style' is. When I make films, I never allow myself to make hard-set decisions ahead of time.

What I learned in 'Sons' is that I would come in with a blueprint of a season and how it would go, and I realized that the looser my grip was, the better it became because the story found itself. Things happened as I wanted them to in terms of the bigger mile markers, but the fun part was I never knew how we would get there.

I love television because it's the most alive, because you don't know how it's going to end. It's a living thing. Sometimes the writers are watching you to see how things will unfold. Sometimes the writers have written it, and you come to it, and they have to change their way of going because of what you've done.

I can make any kind of movies. I can put up with any kind of situation. And I can tackle them.

I write through improvisation. I never card out a movie. You know how people will outline or card? I don't do that. I tend to start with an idea and go.

I started in documentaries, and that was a great help to me with improvisation, because with documentaries, you're handed a big lump of footage, and you have to shape it and make it into a story - which I love doing.