Film Craft Quotes

I love scary movies and respect the filmmakers of scary movies, and it's just as hard to make a great scary movie as it is to make a great comedy or drama or anything else.

Making movies is about creating illusions, and they can be subtle illusions, but it's all a cumulative effect as you make these little tweaks. It kinda adds up to something, hopefully.

Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!

Making a film is an incredibly technical undertaking.

I'm very interested in the editing process - in all aspects of film-making, really.

I started making my own short films as a way of being able to give myself something to do and to study my craft.

Film is a living, breathing thing. It's very delicate, and you have to listen and watch for what it tells you.

What I loved about the 1950s is that there is an aesthetic to even the average film. The way the camera is placed, the way characters move, the way you dressed the sets, the respect for craft and actors, I do miss that in today's films.

Directing has only increased my admiration and respect for what it is that actors do.

The idea that a film is created in the editing room - it's only a certain kind of movie that's made in the editing room and it's not one that I really want to see.

When doing films, ones acting skills are polished, and the actor delivers a better performance.

I'm an actor's director.

To really have craft, you must be able to repeat something as one has to do in films.

I think Brad [Furman] crafted an amazing film [The Infiltrator]. It's so complex, it's incredibly thrilling, incredibly touching and it's what people have been trying to do for years in Hollywood, is to try to capture what it's like to be undercover, what is that duality of life? And I think that Brad really caught that.

And Later I Thought, I Can't Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography.

There are many ingredients that go into making a film. It baffles me, what works and what doesn't.

When I was around 12 or so, I saw 'The Shining.' I just remember that being a turning point for me, where I started to think about the fact that there was a hand behind the film. That it wasn't just this magical story being told - there were actual people crafting these films, and they were works of art.

Ghibli is about craftsmanship. They draw characters and put life in it.

The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn’t trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.

I do love action films and I hope I'm going to do many more and learn lots of new crafts 'cause that's the joy of movies.

The storytelling in a movie is in the cut; it's in the edit. It's not an actor's job, really. Your job is such a tiny little thing, and I love the feeling of juggling or tightrope walking.

I don't say, 'Francis Ford Coppola, what a wonderful Italian-American director.' I judge him based on his film, his craft, his art. That's the way I feel I should be dealt with in this industry.

The hardest thing in making a movie is to keep in the front of your consciousness your original response to the material. Because that's going to be the thing that will make the movie. And the loss of that will break the movie.

The job's always the same. It involves helping to tell the story and creating an alloy between character and story that serves the film.

I think I try to look at all my films and break them down because, at the end of the day, it's about creating characters that you like.