Michael Winterbottom Quotes

As a writer and a director, I simply don't have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make because of the fixed and tight production schedule.

When you shoot a movie so quickly you can't really afford to shoot a bunch of extra footage because you don't have that luxury.

When you're doing a live-action movie, you have your day set up and you're going to do this shot and this shot, and eventually the sun is going to go down. It's a sequential race to whatever is going to end the day.

The only real difference between shooting 'Firefly' and 'Serenity' was that on 'Serenity,' we had a lot more freedom with time. When you're shooting a television show, you usually have anywhere between six and nine pages of script to shoot a day, and only twelve hours to do it. But with 'Serenity,' we could shoot one scene all day long.

I come out of TV, where you never reshoot, because you don't have time. If you do reshoot, it's because someone really screwed up.

A lot of independent films try to pull off a 14-day shooting schedule, which I think is ridiculous. No matter how big or small you are, it really kills whatever sort of time you get to allow the actors to find their characters, and to spend time to think about what they're doing.

It's hard to prep a movie in five days and shoot it in five days and cut it in barely any time. You don't get quite enough time to make the thing, let alone tell the story.

On film, you can't do it over again. And you do have to stop shooting at a certain point.

I think the reason I like making movies sometimes more than doing TV is that you have one task, you only have a certain amount of time to do it, and then it is done. And I really like focusing in that way.

You have to watch the clock constantly because youre only allowed out of your home for a limited period, and for a busy person, watching the clock and knowing other people are watching the clock is extremely difficult.

I've worked in the movie business for many, many years, where you have lots of days and lots of money. It's really mainly about time. We always try to conceive all of our action from a place of, "What can we shoot that looks fantastic?," rather than trying to do the kinds of thing that you would be able to accomplish in a movie.

Even when a pilot goes, you shoot it in March or April, and then you have to rush it through post-production by May. If they greenlight it, then you go and there's no time to think about it. And then, you've gotta start shooting in July, so you're off to the races.

I think when you take forever off the table, it does something really interesting to what you think is important.

I know what I want to get down and I haven't got much time to do it in.

Ah! the clock is always slow; it is later than you think.

We live, understandably enough, with the sense of urgency; our clock, like Baudelaire's, has had the hands removed and bears the legend, "It is later than you think." But with us it is always a little too late for mind, yet never too late for honest stupidity; always a little too late for understanding, never too late for righteous, bewildered wrath; always too late for thought, never too late for naïve moralizing. We seem to like to condemn our finest but not our worst qualities by pitting them against the exigency of time.

Ever since I was little, I've felt very comfortable on a set. The time is stressful - being creative under time constraints. But there is an excitement and energy that you only have a certain amount of time to get what you want.

I remember when I used to have actual time to write and now you don't have time and you just do it. I think it explains a lot about television.

Films don't take as long as people think. 'Harry Potter,' people always used to say, 'Well, my God, do you ever get any time to yourself?' I think I did, in 'Harry Potter,' over a 12 year period I did five days. So it's not exactly exhausting.

Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.

It seemed like there were so many options in filmmaking before. If they don't want to make it, well okay, there's a hundred other places we can try. I'm not a producer and I don't even know the places my producer goes to, thankfully. But I think there are far fewer options now to releasing a movie theatrically or to getting the financing.

So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.

I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more.

I don't need time, I need a deadline.

The days are stacked against what we think we are.