Scene Building Quotes

I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story.

Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.

Writing sketches, you're also learning about a journey and characters, and you translate that to bigger things.

I go straight into shooting with a script that's 80 per cent complete and I wait for my characters to grow on me before I finalise the climax.

I've always found the script to be more of a skeleton, the template.

When we had Brian Cox in 'Super Troopers,' we learned that when you put a great actor in the center of our lunacy, it grounds everything.

There is a quite a lot of effort involved but I find action sequences some of the quickest to write and the most fun.

It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

Acting isn't necessarily pretending. It's storytelling. It's giving someone your perspective on something.

I try to write cinematically. Let me define what I mean by that. First of all, I try to write in a visual way so that the reader can watch a movie in their head. And it keeps moving. I try to structure the stories like a screenplay may be structured.

When I work, I think mainly in terms of dramatic choices.

It's all about the mood I'm in and the scene I'm writing. 'Cause work controls my life, writing controls my life, performing controls my life. So I don't listen to any music that's not an influence on what I'm working on that day. Music is a big influence in my work and sometimes drives the energy of where I want to go.

I made 'St. Nick' on a 30-page outline. 'Aint' Them Bodies Saints' was a full-bodied script, but it still had a lot of room for improvisation. There were scenes that weren't there on the page - just a sentence saying something happens. I was like, 'We'll figure this out when we shoot it.'

When I first started, I didn't really know how to structure a play.

I'm terrible at story and structure, but I'm not so bad at writing dialogue.

Yeah, in my scripts, I don't tend to describe landscape too clearly because I like to keep it really basic and sort of let people paint their own picture. I don't find it helpful to spend a page describing a setting, except for maybe a few key things.

I've only ever taken a playwriting class, but I like creative writing and writing screenplays.

To make films is as boring as watching paint dry - you usually have to do little tiny bits here and there. You go off waiting for lighting, you come back - the energy dies. You hope you can find someone who can keep it going.

Every single second of extra time to work with other actors has definitely always, for me, paid off for the film. For the project. Every single extra heartbeat you could get, mutually considering the scene, was of benefit.

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.

I treat any scene the same - dialogue, action - you're still creating something in character. It's all acting, fighting.

I always think that the deal, once I do the script, sort of the experience I go through writing, which is everything you can imagine, but I always think it's the one thing I can do when I'm directing is say is that it's all about the actors, that I can say, 'We're all here to serve the actors.'

I consider my job as a screenwriter to pack a script with possibilities and ideas - to create a feast for the filmmaker to pick from.