Great Filmmaker Quotes & Sayings

If you're a great documentary filmmaker, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a great narrative filmmaker. There are fantastic documentary filmmakers that can't direct actors. You don't have to do that in a documentary, if it's a real documentary. — Alexander Skarsgard

No one's being precious about their music. They want the film to be great. And that was the huge lesson for me along the way to be a filmmaker. And yes, I'm leading the music department kind of thing and that responsibility with the music is with me, but really that job is one of many. — Steven Price

I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer? — Howard Shore

Each one [movie] is very important to us and from a fiscal responsibility, filmmakers understand that it's highly personal for us and they've been great about it. — Thomas Tull

I've always felt really lucky to get to work with really great filmmakers. For me, the whole objective is just to hopefully be of service to what they want. — Bryce Dallas Howard

God has been my number one inspiration. I also look up to Will Smith and Jamie Fox who are also personal friends of mine. They give me great career advice. I would also include Chris Stokes, as a filmmaker and music producer. I've been working with him since I was eight. — Marques Houston

Horror films are art, it's all make believe. It's great if a filmmaker can try to push boundaries and see how much an audience can take and see what happens. It's fun to be able to do that. — Tom Six

For any filmmaker who has just released a film and who is experiencing some measure of success, the temptation can be great to respond to every screening request that comes in. — Julia Bacha

There has never been a great film unless it was created in the spirit of the experimental filmmaker. — Len Lye

If you know the filmmaker is good and the leading actor is a movie star like Diane Lane, you know you're part of something great. — Kevin Connolly

It [moviemaking] is about entertaining audiences with great characters and great stories, you want to make people laugh, you want to make people cry, you want to have great music that is memorable. You want a movie that, as soon as it's over, you want to watch it again, just like that. That's what it is, whether it's live-action, animation, hand drawn, computer, special effects, puppet animation, it doesn't matter. That's the goal of a filmmaker. — John Lasseter

I do some freelance web design stuff. I taught a directing class for this not-for-profit organization here in Chicago a couple months ago. I wrote a thing for Filmmaker Magazine a couple months ago. Occasionally, I'll get to go speak to students at a university and make a little money that way, which is great. I really like doing that. — Joe Swanberg

My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention. — Joni Mitchell

Now is a very interesting time because of the digital cameras, and the fact that you can edit anywhere. It's a great time to be a filmmaker, is a great time to be starting off. — Michael Pitt

David O. Russell is probably my favorite filmmaker. He's not only a great director, but he's also a great writer. — Adam McKay

You do sometimes have to work on things where you love the cast and you love the filmmaker, and the role might not be great but it's fun. I'm totally down to do those things, and will continue to do those things, as well, but it at least has to be peppered with roles that are really interesting and that are hard. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Christopher Nolan's 'Batman Begins' set the bar very high for the superhero movie, as it showed that you could get a great cast for these movies and take a real filmmaker's perspective. — Jon Favreau

In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture. — Ridley Scott

An Oscar means a lot of things because it's like the ultimate award for a filmmaker so it feels great. But I think you have to consider awards with some distance and not get obsessed with it. When you're creating you shouldn't think about it. — Alejandro Amenabar

When you're casting a movie and when you're shooting a film, the eyes are the most important feature of any performer, really. Any great actor literally knows exactly how to use their eyes, and even as a filmmaker I love shooting huge close-ups because it's those eyes that mean so much to me. — Peter Jackson

I learn so much from watching films like that with commentary and then when you get to hear another filmmaker talk about their films it's a really great experience. — Jay Roach

Even though I left school at age fifteen, I loved learning and continued to learn through my careers as a photojournalist, filmmaker, and explorer. I was taught that education is the great equalizer and knowledge is power. I prefer to think that knowledge is understanding; the more one knows, the less one fears. — Marc Ashton

Susanne Bier's work I've always really enjoyed. She's just such a great filmmaker; she's very cool and very sexy - that always helps, too. — Pierce Brosnan

Whatever experimental film aromas cloaked my movies were because I'm a gleefully clumsy, primitive filmmaker. I really like traditional pleasingly narrative films, but I also just couldn't resist throwing in the disruptive. It seems to me that art-house film is at its glorious zenith right now, maybe it can even get better? There's just so many good films, you know Cemetery Of Splendour, Arabian Nights, Miguel Gomes, just so much great work coming out. — Guy Maddin

As a filmmaker, I love the medium. I have a great affection for it and I've been lucky enough to do all different kinds of films. The greatest part of the success I've had comes from horror. I love the idea of mixing humor and horror and to me, it's all a giggle. — George A. Romero

I'd meet a new filmmaker that I'd always loved, and I'd think, "Great! I'm in the right place." It's a weird way to look at it, but I don't care as long as I'm able to make stuff that I want to make. — Amy Seimetz

Music is, for me, a great tool of a filmmaker, the same way cinematography, the acting, editing, post-production, the costumes are. You know, to help you tell a story. — Spike Lee

You have to be able to feel like you can play way outside of the box. If you're with a great filmmaker and someone you can trust, that's encouraged, and Seth was that kind of filmmaker and co-star. — Charlize Theron

I think that's true of all cinema, that's why cinema is the great humanistic art form. Whatever the film is, it doesn't matter what the film is about, or even whether it's a narrative or figurative film at all, it's an invitation to step into somebody else's shoes. Even if it's the filmmaker's shoes filming a landscape, you go into somebody else's shoes and you look out of their lens, you look out of their eyes and their imagination. That's what going to the pictures is all about. — Tilda Swinton

I'm proud of the way I rearrange and put things together, like a chef who makes a great meal, or a filmmaker who puts together a story - it's casting, editing, cinematography. — Bonnie Raitt

I love the studio system. Love that studio system and all their money. They're great; I think they're fabulous . You know, what it is right now is I feel like I'm still learning as a filmmaker, I'm still starting out. — Katie Aselton

There's as much great authorship in the filmmaker community as in the literary community, and I'd love to welcome more filmmakers into the fold. — Nina Jacobson

For me, it's always filmmaker and then character and then story. They're all equally important but if you don't have a great filmmaker, you will not have a great film unless you just get lucky. — Channing Tatum

I don't need to prove that I'm some great international filmmaker. It's not really on my list of goals. — Dermot Mulroney

I would always rather do a mediocre script with a great filmmaker than a great script with a mediocre filmmaker. — Kirsten Dunst

I hope I can become a good enough filmmaker where I can take a script that I'm not 'heart and soul' into, but I could still make something really great out of it. — Joe Carnahan

I've worked over four dozen nine-to-five jobs before taking the chance to chase my dream of wanting to become an actor and filmmaker. Growing up in Brooklyn and Harlem, working at jobs like the bus company were great. I had benefits, a great salary, and security. But it wasn't my dream. — Malcolm Goodwin

Dancer, bride, runaway wife, radical filmmaker and pioneer -
Shirley Clarke is one of the great undertold stories of American independent cinema. — Manohla Dargis

A filmmaker has to have great vision in order to tell a compelling story that is both distinctive and stylistic. I remember playing all movies in my head hundreds of times before they were ever made. You have to see it in your imagination. It has to be real to you. — Nicholas Ozeki

As an independent filmmaker, to develop the money and the financing and the structure and the whole process, and then promoting them and traveling with them, which is a part of the process that I've always enjoyed and I've learned a great deal from. — Todd Haynes

I chose to tell a personal story. When you tell a movie like this that's as emotionally charged as this is, it's a risk. As one of my great cinematic heroes, Francis Coppola, would say, "If you aren't taking the highest, greatest risk, then why are you a filmmaker?" — Christian Bale