Film Choreography Quotes

It's hard to incorporate dance into movies I think.

Taking up the choreography for an awards night is completely different from choreographing a song for a film.

When I would create a dance, I wouldn't have the luxury that ballet people do when they take a piece of music and impose a dance upon it. What we did in motion pictures was have a song and within that song try to elaborate. My usual method was to do what a writer does: get a plot.

When you shoot a musical, you're shooting to lipsynch tracks, so we had to figure out our choreography and work out what we wanted to do with each number before we did it.

I have worked with Salman a lot of times and have choreographed him earlier also. He doesn't do rehearsals; he never comes for that. He is the only actor who has never opened the door for rehearsals.

As a kid, I always wanted to be like Spielberg and to make wonderful movies. Even when I was making 'Indiana Jones,' I was looking at how he would come up with these amazing shots and how he would choreograph the blocking and all that. So I knew from early on I would go to film school and try to work behind the camera.

When you're doing an action set piece, it's very similar to choreography in a way because it's shot that way. It's meticulous how it's rehearsed. I mean, you have no idea.

You need someone to tell you how to do things like hitting your marks, or driving a car so it looks right or getting out of a car so it doesn't take a million years of screen time.

Everyone who shoots dance sequences does it in a different way. Everyone who shoots fight sequences does it in a different way.

There's a lot of thinking when you choreograph something. You're not just choreographing some bodies, arms, legs flying around to look cool. It's a lot more complicated and sophisticated. You also have to deal with the connection of the whole film, so when I choreograph, I think of the movement itself, the camera angles, the characters.

I've done a lot of Samurai film in Japan, and sometimes done the choreography by myself.