Scene Management Quotes

Get into the scene late; get out of the scene early.

I didn't feel like going any further in this scene with the boy. He was not a professional actor, and if I had pushed the scene any further it would have destroyed the tone of the movie.

The visual stuff just lives inside of you. As far as really being able to take care of an actor on a set, how to talk to an actor, and how to get what you need out of a scene is probably where I might know a thing or two. Although, in TV, the actors are pretty much left alone. It's really the writer's medium more than anything.

It's much harder to write a script that involves two people in a single location than 20 people in 30 different locations.

On an independent film, you really learn about pace. You have so little time to do things, that you really have to know your scenes.

A director will always tell you, when you go in to do a scene, 'You go as big as you want, and I'll tell you when to come down.' And I found that on 'Shameless,' you can't follow that rule because they will never tell you to come down. So, I've had to find my own balance with when it makes sense to get this upset or angry.

Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image.

If you're a good writer, you don't have everybody shouting in every scene.

Well, the whole trick to doing an independent film, is to keep great pace and momentum. You're shooting maybe three times as many scenes in one day that you would on a big, luxurious budget on a luxurious schedule, and you try not to sacrifice quality for that. Things are just compressed, but essentially the same.

Trust is always a factor. You've just got to look at the big picture, and you've got to look at the small picture - the small picture in the sense that you've got to make every scene work and you've got to deal with what people are presenting you with, too.

The way television works is that directors come in and out, and they're not there all the time, following every character through every scene. They're vagabonds who go from one show to another.

I like to think in camera, but at the last minute the most important thing is that there is something happening between the actors. But good actors can have a lot of scenes going around them but sometimes it sort of helps the performance because it takes their mind off of who they are supposed to be.

When you're acting and directing, you're standing there acting with another actor, and you're trying to do your performance, and at the same time you're watching their performance, and making sure the lights are in the right place, and if the person is wearing the right wardrobe. All these things are going on in your head.

Something that I learned from 'Friday Night Lights,' sometimes if you have four or five scenes in an episode, it's not having less than having 10. It's what you do with those scenes.

Too many actors try to get too much out of scenes that they ought to be leaving alone, just doing them quickly and getting the hell out.

I actually like acting in things that I'm directing because I'm able to control the tone of how a scene may go and I know, very clearly, what I want from myself in that scene and what I need, as far as from a directorial standpoint.

A good actor's director, first of all, is prepared, so there's not an exorbitant amount of wasted footage.

Usually on a film set it's making sure that everyone is there for their scene, and the moment their scene is over they disappear.

If the setups take too long, you wind up losing momentum. Momentum is very good for comedy. Not having to do eight setups in a single scene and have it take five hours is very good for comedy.