Quotes & Sayings About Film Sets

I have never been sorry to see my sets being struck, provided they are well photographed. They're not works of art but part of making a film. — Ken Adam

On a studio film, you don't have to worry about running out of film or messing up your costumes; you have five other sets of it. Studio films make you the most comfortable so you can just act. — Sung Kang

I grew up on film sets and I had a ball. It wouldn't have had nearly as much fun if my dad had been working behind a desk somewhere. I remember being on the set of 'The Godfather: Part III,' and all the kids were running around and doing crazy things, and Francis Ford Coppola just embraced that. — Dominik Garcia-Lorido

I remember being on film sets when I was younger, and only men got to do the cool action movies. So I thought, 'Maybe I'll get to produce one day and get to do cool stuff, too,' which is what happened when we did 'Charlie's Angels'. — Drew Barrymore

I'm very good at getting up in the morning - so much of my life has been spent on film sets where we start at the crack of dawn. — Joanna Lumley

All sizes of film sets have the same level of excitement and friction and tension and then vast sections of boredom that define the process, so I love it all. — David Hayter

I'll do anything to keep everyone laughing. Things get too intense on film sets. I remember on The Elephant Man, I used to imitate a cat without moving my lips. David Lynch would say, "Cut! Sorry, we've got a noise somewhere on set." Everyone would be looking around for this cat. — Anthony Hopkins

And it's about a three-month process every screening. And that way we have seven or eight chances at the film before we have to actually build the models, build the sets, do the animation and all of that. So it's a - I think that's a real key to the way we make films. — Pete Docter

Sometimes I work on film sets. I've done this for 40 years. I always wanted to photograph on the set of an Ingmar Bergman film. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity. — Mary Ellen Mark

You really just have to love the process. I can't tell you the amount of film sets I've been on where people are talking about Oscars in the middle of the production. It happens all the time. — Olivia Wilde

Well, I tried being in front of the camera as a student and that was terrifying. But the press stuff about me growing up on his [film] sets has been exaggerated. I was an extra as a kid and I was also a PA [production assistant] on one of his movies, so I was lucky to get production experience. But I was nowhere near him. — Nicole Holofcener

Nobody sets out to make a bad film. — Famke Janssen

In opera, everyone's watching from a fixed viewpoint, and that really challenges you. Lighting, the sets, stage groupings, the music-but doesn't relate too much to film. — Bruce Beresford

It's only just beginning to occur to me that it's important to have something going on somewhere, at work or at home, otherwise you're just clinging on. [ ... ] You need as much ballast as possible to stop you floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one guy on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? I've got to get more stuff, more clutter, more detail in here, because at the moment I'm in danger of falling off the edge. — Nick Hornby

My audience loves seeing me pump large amounts of money into action and sets. And it works. I'm not saying that films made within a budget are wrong. But when audiences come to see my film with their families, I guess they are spending at least 10 per cent of their monthly income. I don't want to cheat them. — Rohit Shetty

There's an incredible comfort level that I have on film sets because it's where I've grown up. — Daniel Radcliffe

My brother knows more about film sets than I do, because he works at New York Film Academy. — Elizabeth Olsen

I didn't realise my upbringing was unusual until my teens. As the child of two actors, I presumed that visiting film sets and being surrounded by colourful characters was normal. — Emilia Fox

What I realised is, watching some old home videos, I've always had a weird accent. It's because I spent a lot of time on film sets. But Australia will always be home ... I sound like the Qantas ad, don't I? — Alice Englert

In India, film sets are like a family atmosphere. — Anupam Kher

I've done a lot of very low-budget indie films, so it was just really exciting and fun to be doing a film where there's a lot more time and these huge, vast sets. I was like a kid in a playground. It was amazing! — Felicity Jones

Crewing and being on film sets is kind of like being in the carnival, with carnie folks. — Ben Mendelsohn

Sometimes, with the scale of a film, it's like when I walked on the sets of "The Matrix," especially in "Reloaded," there was the city square, or in "Revolutions" with some of the machine world, you're like, "Wow, this is a big playground," which is fun to watch. But the acting experience and the collaborating and creating the world, working on the piece, they're the same joys. — Keanu Reeves

I've been on lots of film sets. I've produced films and written films and been around, so it wasn't my first rodeo in terms of that stuff. Nothing particularly surprised me, I have to say. I came in and I enjoyed the first day and I enjoyed the last day. — Dan Mazer

On film sets I can see everyone, and I really still find that so difficult. — Carey Mulligan

The great thing about having spent all this time on film sets is that I've been able to watch directors and how they work. I now know that this is what I want to do as well: to tell stories visually. But it's definitely my vision that I want to put across, nobody else's. — Catherine McCormack

A lot of actors on film sets ... very often they're not paying attention to the physical world around them. I think through studying art, I've always had that awareness and that's something that I've wanted to bring in to go beyond acting ... As a form of expression, they are intrinsically linked. — Andy Serkis

The best times I had on film sets were the times the director let me express myself, but those were rare. — Mara Wilson

I love REAL set construction and think that sets are very important part of the storytelling and scope of a film ... — Guillermo Del Toro

Directing is more what I would like to get into eventually. Frankly, I feel like it would be a waste if I didn't because I've spent so much time on film sets, and I know how they work, and I love them, and I love leading them. I would like to do that as a director definitely. — Daniel Radcliffe

I didn't start out thinking that I could ever make films. I started out being a film lover, loving films, and wanting to have a job that put me close to them and close to filmmakers and close to film sets. — Ava DuVernay

While the goal of all movies is to entertain, the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and sets the mental juices flowing. — Sidney Lumet

They were just kind of simultaneous - the film ending and the sets being destroyed. I was struck the first time I saw the Great Hall become a big pile of burning rubble and getting scattered around. It's really quite shocking for the fans. — Rupert Grint

When I'm working, I look forward to weekends. Film sets give your time a structure; otherwise, one day can run into another. I often find myself in unusual locations, so Friday nights I might head out with some of the cast and crew to explore the town. — Thomas Sangster

Voice work is usually not that big of a time commitment. You can go in for a couple of days or a couple of months, here and there, and just go in and play. I like being able to do that. You don't have that luxury on film sets or television sets. — James Marsden

Film sets are great fun. Film people are great people to hang around with. I don't want to run off and be distracted by other things. — Eric Bana

In film, movies' schedules are based on three things: actors' availabilities, when are sets being built, when you can rent the place you're going to film in. — Kevin Spacey

Books and bookcases cropping up in stuff that I've written means that they have to be reproduced on stage or on film. This isn't as straightforward as it might seem. A designer will either present you with shelves lined with gilt-tooled library sets, the sort of clubland books one can rent by the yard as decor, or he or she will send out for some junk books from the nearest second-hand bookshop and think that those will do. Another short cut is to order in a cargo of remaindered books so that you end up with a shelf so garish and lacking of character it bears about as much of a relationship to literature as a caravan site does to architecture. A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped to the foot. — Alan Bennett

Essentially, the scripts are not that different. Let's say, in literary terms, it's the difference between writing horizontally and writing vertically. In live television, you wrote much more vertically. You had to probe people because you didn't have money or sets or any of the physical dimensions that film will allow you. So you generally probed people a little bit more. Film writing is much more horizontal. You can insert anything you want: meadows, battlefields, the Taj Mahal, a cast of thousands. But essentially, writing a story is writing a story. — Rod Serling

I think I spent my entire childhood on film sets, surrounded by film-makers and actors and people with magnetic energies who make movies. — Dakota Johnson

I don't think I treat my film work as an extension of my photography. There are two different sets of rules there. — Anton Corbijn

I just wanted to do this all Australian film and we didn't want to give creative control to overseas 'cause whoever comes on my sets, whether you're sweeping the floor or an actor, it doesn't matter who comes up with the ideas, it's a collaboration. — Yahoo Serious

I don't know what it is, exactly, but there's a negative drag on film sets after the second week or so, a mutinous vibe because the infinite capacities of the directors and everybody else become quite finite and everybody's under the gun and it becomes work. — Diane Lane

I bring excitement on the sets. I'm an exciting actor, overrated, exaggerated. But I'm not an unexciting actor. I excite people. I never lose hope. If I feel that a film is going wrong somewhere, I do even better. — Shahrukh Khan

Every time you make a film, you create a world. You make decisions about sets and costumes, and you create a universe connected to reality, but not reality itself. — Ira Sachs

Growing up, I spent a lot of time on film sets all over the world. — Danny Huston

To do a portrait today, I decide how close I can get to my subject. First, of course, mentally or intellectually, then in the viewfinder. Music cues the subject and me when to shoot. The music played during a photography session is most important - stimulating to the subject and to me. As in a film, the music builds or becomes quiet, romantic; just one note sets the actor up to emote for his audience. I want a reciprocal portrait, not a bureaucratic one — Victor Skrebneski

Some people manage to make that transition from child actor to adult actor seamlessly. But I felt that if I spent my whole life on a film set without taking a few years to do something else, all I would ever know about was film sets. — Anna Popplewell

I like stand-up. But I'd also like a family and house and a yard. I want to work with a lot of people, have colleagues; and on good film sets, there's people there that work with the same people for years and years. I love that collaborative spirit in that medium. Comedy is a lot more solitary. — Demetri Martin

Film sets are constantly amusing because you really are creating something that is so very surreal, and I kind of like that. — Hugo Weaving

There's no truth in acting, it's all a trick, because you go on stage in front of sets, you're on film - it's all a trick. I'm making it sound very - I really am demystifying it, but what I try to do, what I do, and I hope effectively, is to create a reality as if it is happening now, that you're fishing for words out of the air. — Anthony Hopkins

I'm not sure you learn anything on film sets. — Daniel Day-Lewis

On the film sets of 'New Moon' and 'Eclipse,' I feel safe. It's like you're in the center of the hurricane, but outside is where it starts to get chaotic. — Chaske Spencer

Oh, my father's had a huge, immense impact on my career. I grew up on movie sets that he was working on, and it just become a part or was a part, was the only part of my life because I spent my whole childhood traveling and being on film sets. — Jake Busey

My whole thing was, as much as I was inspired by what my parents do, and growing up on film sets, watching that made me really want to do that. I am my own person, and I think that the only thing with the Hemingway name is that it has gotten me in the door. — Dree Hemingway

The movie, like the book before it, is an expertly built machine for the mass production of tears. Directed by Josh Boone ('Stuck in Love') with scrupulous respect for John Green's best-selling young-adult novel, the film sets out to make you weep
not just sniffle or choke up a little, but sob until your nose runs and your face turns blotchy. It succeeds. — A.O. Scott

Airport bars are more like film sets, the bathrooms reminiscent of dormitories. Everyone is waiting to go somewhere, suspended in nowhere ... — Christy Hall

I've always wanted to act and I grew up a little on film sets when my dad was working as an actor. — Saoirse Ronan

I'm actually a huge fan of digital as well. I appreciate how that technology opens the doors for filmmakers who never had access to that level of quality before. However, I do think film itself sets the standard for quality. You can talk about range, light, sensitive, resolution
there's something about film that is undeniably beautiful, undeniably organic and natural and real. — J.J. Abrams

They're such hierarchical things, film sets, they're sort of mini societies. Often they're incredibly political places. — Eddie Redmayne

I love film sets, but I don't necessarily love being the center of attention. — Mary Stuart Masterson

You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? — Nick Hornby

Film sets are a strange place, but an exciting place. I do love my work; I really enjoy going to work. But if you just spend all your time on film sets or even on stage, you can become a Michael Jackson figure, living in your own little universe. — James McAvoy

Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating. — Robin Hobb

It was Ernie Haller, who had photographed Bette Davis in Jezebel and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, who was solely responsible for the visuals in Mildred Pierce, said Crawford. "Ernie was at the rehearsals. And so was Mr. [Anton] de Grot, who did the sets. I recall seeing Ernie's copy of the script and it was filled with notations and diagrams. I asked him if these were for special lights and he said, 'No, they're for special shadows.' Now, that threw me. I was a little apprehensive. I was used to the look of Metro, where everything, including the war pictures, was filmed in blazing white lights. Even if a person was dying there was no darkness. But when I saw the rushes of Mildred Pierce I realized what Ernie was doing. The shadows and half-lights, the way the sets were lit, together with the unusual angles of the camera, added considerably to the psychology of my character and to the mood and psychology of the film. And that, my dear, is film noir." "Mildred — Shaun Considine

Of course there are some actors that are better than others and performances that are better than others, but they're always embedded in the greater film. They are mediated through the work of so many other people: the director directs, the lighter sets the scene, the editors edit, the music gets put to it. — James Franco

I think you tend to try, during the time you've got off, to forget about the film. It was such a total world. I mean, the sets were claustrophobic, and as soon as you were on there, you were right back into it. — Rosamund Pike

Nobody sets out to make a bad film, but so many of those compromises are made and often they're made because of vanity, pride and ego. — Rick McCallum

But actually making pictures to look like my pictures, I've done it for so long, I'm kind of used to it now. So at the beginning of the process, designing and storyboarding everything, I sort of did all that. And then designed the characters, and doing the textures for the characters, and the texture maps to cover all the animated characters and the sets, I did those, because that's where my sort of coloring and textures get imprinted on the film. — Dave McKean

TORONTO
When Cameron Crowe was flying to the Toronto film festival recently, he walked down the aisle of the plane and studied his fellow passengers sitting in front of their personal TV sets. They were just having the greatest time, there was so much joy in their eyes, .. And I looked to see what they were watching. And it was all out-and-out comedies. So many people watching The Longest Yard. And I just got the feeling that, 'You know what? People just like to let it all go, and have a laugh'. — Cameron Crowe

When I'm making a film, I don't want my producer to be on the sets. So when I'm producing a film, I don't want to be on the sets! — Anurag Kashyap

I come from an everyday middle class family in India. The film industry reached us only through our television sets and cinema halls. — Lavrenti Lopes

It can take a long time for some people to find out how to ground themselves, and film sets are an odd atmosphere to do it in - especially if, like me, you finished school early. — Jonathan Rhys Meyers

As a younger actor coming up, I wanted to be in films. There's something special about being on film sets; there's an excitement; the people in every department are passionate about what they do. — Adam Croasdell

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it. — Alice Englert

A director on a film really sets the tone of how people go about things, so everybody is happy to be at work and everybody does their best. — James Franco

I took myself out of the business to study film at NYU and the School of Visual Arts. I grew up on movie sets and was fascinated with the camera and behind-the-scenes work. I felt it would help my career as an actor if I knew all aspects of film. — Devin Ratray

I might do a film someday for the collection. I love designing sets and creating environments, in film school and for my own presentations. I love telling stories. — Pamela Love

It is always interesting being on films sets - I have done it before with other actor friends - and I just find it fascinating. I just love that collaborative film family that develops around a project. — Robyn Davidson

For me, film-making is combining images and sounds of real things in an order that makes them effective. What I disapprove of is photographing things that are not real. Sets and actors are not real. — Robert Bresson

In front of the restaurant, on the side walk, just like in the movie, someone outlined a heart when the cement was wet and there are two sets of dog paws. To the left of the restaurant is a sign for the Chapeau shop that features a hat box exactly like the one that little Lady was in at the beginning of the film. Details like these enhance the overall experience for sharp-eyed guests. — Jim Korkis

Good information architecture enables people to find and do what they came for. Great information architecture takes find out of the equation: the site behaves as the visitor expects. Poor or missing information architecture neuters content, design, and programming and devalues the site for its owners as well as the audience it was created to serve. It's like a film with no director. The actors may be good, the sets may be lovely, but audiences will leave soon after the opening credits. — Jeffrey Zeldman

When I'm working with Red One, we all have to do everything, from making sets and costumes to tearing tickets. Forget about craft services! So when I get on a film set, it's a thrill to be just working as an actor. — Joe Dinicol

On film sets, people get put down in public a lot. — David Warner

I find theatre easier than films, because it gives you an environment of a dark hall, the audience concentrating with you ... whereas, film sets are not conducive to long rehearsals, and it is difficult to pick up the emotions amidst all that is going on around you. — Randeep Hooda

I don't think of it so much as the shows I did or the film sets. I mean, sometimes you'll get a nice location, but it's more, 'Who am I meeting on a day-to-day basis?' Often the rehearsals are a lot more fun than the show itself. — Joshua Sasse