I went to film school at UT Austin. I learned a lot, and that school's good for puking up all your bad movies early and quick. But ultimately, no one can teach you to be an artist.
I think it's a mistake for young filmmakers to just buy digital equipment and shoot a feature. Make short films first, make your mistakes and learn from them.
Whenever I can make it work out, and schedule permitting, I like to help young filmmakers.
You have a soft spot in your heart for each movie, and you're doing certain things. You're learning as you're going, as a director, and each movie is its own entity.
I went to film school to make films just because you're in control of the story.
My filmmaking education consisted of finding out what filmmakers I liked were watching, then seeing those films. I learned the technical stuff from books and magazines, and with the new technology you can watch entire movies accompanied by audio commentary from the director. You can learn more from John Sturges' audio track on the 'Bad Day at Black Rock' laserdisc than you can in 20 years of film school. Film school is a complete con, because the information is there if you want it.
My goal is to get a real film industry started in Washington. An actual one, not where features come to town and shoot second unit for a few days. I would love to get something started here. Hire local crews. People could work year-round and raise their families here.
I mean I met James Wan at film school. That's where we met. I didn't go to film school to find someone else to work with. I was thinking I would go and learn to direct and go and be a director like everyone else at school.
I love working with directors who have good taste. It's incredible when a director can say something and things open up for you. I went to The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and some of my best experiences on sets have been working with other alums.
I had a teacher who loved movies. He had a little theatre called The Flick, and he would let a bunch of us volunteer to work there, and he also let us make little movies in class.
Taking chances is my job; some will connect and some won't, and certain films find their audiences in different ways. I think 'Spotlight' probably is a better movie because of 'The Cobbler.' You learn with every movie you make: you learn from your mistakes, and you learn from your achievements, and I really do have that approach to filmmaking.
I started learning filmmaking by joining a weekend film school in Bengaluru. I made some amateur short films that got appreciation from people around me.
Twelve years on sets watching directors, I've taken a bit from everybody and rejected a lot.
I started in theatre when I was a teenager, and I sort of fell into screen acting by accident because I had friends who were at university studying how to be filmmakers, and they didn't have to pay me to be in their student films.
My mother gave me this book called Feature Films at Used Car Prices by a guy named Rick Schmidt. I gotta credit the guy, cuz he gave me the most practical advice. It empowers you.
I really learned a lot when I worked on my grandpa's film 'Twixt' and got to be with him start to finish and sit next to him every day. That was my film school.
We have a strong tradition in Toronto of really great film writers, and growing up in that climate is a big reason I pursued cinema studies.
So many people - DPs, writers, and the assistants that go on to be directors and writers - come from the School of Spike Lee. He's almost set up an Institution of Spike Lee.
You can't turn up at college in stilettos and say you're gonna be a filmmaker. In the college, they were teaching me avant-garde filmmaking, where I had to make films that were, like, an hour long about nothing. I just refused to do it.
