Movie Shooting Quotes & Sayings

Once you are shooting a movie, even if it's your own script, you have to let it go at a certain point. That's true for every film. It breaks up into phases where the thing that you have in front of you is the thing you have to address, and you can't worry about what you imagined a scene was going to like and that it came out differently, because that's what you have to make work. — Todd Haynes

I read the 'Twilight' books before the movie and the whole craze happened. And then I loved it. I was in love with Edward before every other girl that says she's in love with him was. Because I read them a long time ago shooting a movie in Salt Lake City, and one of Stephenie Meyer's friends said, 'Make sure you read my friend's book.' — Nina Dobrev

Being in the moment with these guys was just a profound experience every day, and when we shoot a movie it's actually a very short process, especially an independent movie like this. It was only thirty five days of shooting. — Oren Moverman

If there's a cutaway, you need to get it then because it's only going to last [a few moments]. You have to edit the movie as you're shooting it in your head and communicate with your crew about how it's going to work. While making a movie, you have the luxury of storyboards and a script and a bigger crew and actors. I mean, it's so much easier. — George Ratliff

Most of Emily's backstory is written out between New Moon and Eclipse. I'm reading them as we're shooting the films. I haven't read Breaking Dawn yet. It's just too crazy. There's too much going on that you need a map. I just try to focus on one movie at a time. When we were doing New Moon press, people were already asking about Eclipse. I didn't read it until I was ready to go, so that it was fresh and I wasn't jumbled with all this other stuff. — Tinsel Korey

With movies, depending on who your director is or what kind of movie you're shooting, you kind of have more of an ability to play around with the material, go off the page, improv. It's like we did with '21 And Over.' Same thing we did in 'Walk Of Shame.' Same thing we did in 'House Bunny.' You have the freedom to do that. — Sarah Wright

I'm currently shooting 'Ava's Possessions,' which is a really fun movie about a woman who gets possessed by a demon. I call it 'Memento' meets 'The Exorcist.' — Alysia Reiner

'Under the Skin' is handsome, in a dour way, but inert - a cunning experiment that died in the shooting or on the editing table. You'll want to get the DVD, though, and not just for its study of Scarlett. Odds are that the Making-Of documentary will be far stranger and more fascinating than the movie that was made. — Richard Corliss

I love Death Race, it's one of my favorite films. I thought, "You know what? All that two years worth of work is now gong to be wasted because I'm highly unlikely to direct another car movie straight away," and I felt at that point there was no one who was kind of better at shooting cars, so I thought rather than let it go to waste I would explore the idea of doing commercials, and that's what I did. — Paul W. S. Anderson

It's interesting, the things you learn when you're 21. I learned never to get tattoos in the middle of shooting a movie. Because if you're not Angelina Jolie or Megan Fox, they will fire you. — Katee Sackhoff

Working on 'Dexter' is like shooting one big movie every year. — David Zayas

I love the whole physical thing in films. It keeps me on my toes, it keeps me awake, it keeps me alive. If I'm going to be shooting a movie from 7pm to 7am six nights a week, I best be as physical as possible because then I'll never get tired. Otherwise you sit down, it sounds really weird, but that's the part that wears you out. — Sharni Vinson

When you're shooting a movie that's not necessarily a huge budget, you have to think about what you can leave out and still make it interesting. — Mark Sheppard

Scenes change while shooting. Nowadays, while you're shooting the movie, you're cutting at the same time. — Matthijs Van Heijningen Jr.

It's not like you get up in the morning on the first day of shooting and say, 'I'm so smart today I'm going to determine every choice I make from now until a year and a half from now.' So it changes. You gain insights. The movie bucks you. — Robert Schwentke

Every other movie is one of those action things. I mean, 'Lost in Space'? A bunch of good actors running around shooting at special effects on a soundstage? I took my kids to see that and felt like I was on an acid trip. — Tom Berenger

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman
Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it. — Julian Fellowes

Shooting a movie isn't good for a sleep disorder. — Mike Birbiglia

A movie goes from several stages, from idea to script. As you continue shooting, you will make some adjustments. You're constantly adjusting. It's like a piece of music. You're constantly trying to make it better. — Robert Rodriguez

My first audition happened to be for 'Kindergarten Cop,' and I took that role. I was only starting to learn English at that point. Spanish is my first language, so they made me a speaking character in the movie. I didn't really know I was shooting a movie. I was just having a lot of fun with 30 kids my own age. — Odette Annable

Training not only anchors my day but also allows me to tap into endless energy and intensity. Whether I was performing at Wrestlemania or shooting a 16 hour day on a movie set, training allows the floodgates to open. It carries me through the rest of the day and night. — Dwayne Johnson

I think that you're very aware that you're shooting a 3D film for a movie that's beloved to the fan community, and that it's going to be on people's radar, and that you have to be excellent. I think it evolved over time how epic it has become. The first time we went to Comic-Con after we finished shooting I went, "oh my goodness, oh my goodness!" — Christine Bieselin Clark

It takes no prisoners. We had to completely change wardrobe for the girls because we had summer wardrobe set and it was so frigidly cold while we were shooting. And the bug population was through the roof, that summer. It was just silly! The fact that we even survived at all is shocking. The fact that we came out of it with a movie that I really like is awe-inspiring. — Katie Aselton

Making movies has not only been an incredibly collaborative process but there's three big parts: pre-production, shooting itself and then post-production, which leads into marketing. And if you're passionate about the movie and you believe in it, and it would make sense that you are having done it, then you want to get out and promote it. It makes it a lot easier when the film is good and people are enjoying it. — Dwayne Johnson

'The Squid and the Whale' I shot in 23 days. I would have loved more time for it at the time, but in some ways that kind of kamikaze way of shooting was right for that movie. — Noah Baumbach

I love making movies, and being in any that I can be in. I'd like to be in those giant movies, as the fifth or sixth lead, and have three or four killer scenes. You don't have the responsibility of the entire movie being on you. I like those roles. I'm shooting for the middle. — Bill Burr

By ... our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim; by allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing ... we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes. — Martin Luther King Jr.

When you're shooting a low-budget movie you're never just the director: you're also in the catering department, and hair and make-up and a part-time grip. I can't even imagine the luxury of not having to keep an eye on every aspect of production while directing. — Amber Sealey

I speak a little Portuguese, but my daughter speaks it better than me. I always feel that Italy is my home, but it is important for my husband that we also live in France. Sometimes we live as a family all together, but as we are two working actors, sometimes we have to be apart. Sometimes I'm shooting a movie; sometimes he is. — Monica Bellucci

Remember I came to Albuquerque to do a hair and makeup test and wardrobe fitting; you guys were already shooting. It's tough when the movie's already started and you kind of show up. You're the new kid on the block. I walked onto the set and Tommy [Lee Jones] was about to do the scene. I just kind of walked up to him. I was shaking, but I just gave him this big hug and he just had nothing to say. He was like, 'Gotta go to work now.' I had a great time working with him. — Charlize Theron

Martin Luther was asked, what would you do if tomorrow the world would come to an end, and he said, 'I would plant an apple tree today.' This is a real good answer. I would start shooting a movie. — Werner Herzog

We started shooting, and then Jodie found out she was pregnant. Forest broke it to me - he'd gone to work and heard it on the radio! It seemed like the movie was doomed. But, like these characters, there was a disregard for all the signs along the way. — Dwight Yoakam

I love David Fincher - even though it was just two scenes, I loved the way we worked and could tell by the way he was shooting it that this was going to be an affective movie to say the least. — Richard Schiff

I've lived through the shooting of movie, the editing and every other process along the way, so it's not for me to really judge it. I'll probably look at it again five years from now to get a fresh feel for it. — Clint Eastwood

'Red Dawn' was really the most fun I ever had making a movie, because I love Westerns, and I love the idea of being a tomboy, and riding horses and shooting guns. — Lea Thompson

When I do a film, the days before or the night before, I throw up. Sometimes it's just in my mouth and I swallow it back, but sometimes it's real. Whatever it is, it's hard. I don't do the first five or ten minutes of my character's appearance in a movie until the middle of the shooting schedule because I don't want him to be defined by my nervousness. So, we do the middle of the picture first. — Donald Sutherland

Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man. — Stanley Kubrick

I do a little improv in my shows. Kind of like our movie, I'll do beats and ideas of dialogue, but I think there's less pressure because it's a live show. If you mess up, the audience laughs because we don't really know what we're doing. But as far as shooting, that was very scary, trying to make a point and drive the film. It definitely helped improvising. — Charlyne Yi

I'm very interested in clans and the way people group together, and there's a lot of group shots. There's a lot of people in positions that people feel like they're in attack mode, kind of pointed at each other in the frame. I'm not a big fan of shooting something that looks like it could belong in any movie, I'm not a fan of okay, "wide shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up, close-up, we'll figure it out in post." I hate that. — Justin Simien

To make a movie charming, you have to be playful on all levels and open to ideas, and you have to have an idea for how to do that within the confines of the shooting schedule and editing and all that. — Lasse Hallstrom

You can actually improvise a lot as a voice actor. It's not that entirely different than shooting a live action movie; the characters mouths are quite easy to manipulate once all the information is built into the computer. So you can improvise a lot and it doesn't matter really how far along they are in the process they can really just make the character say something different. — Seth Rogen

When I make a movie, it's almost a relief to get shooting 'cause the hell is over, or part of the hell is over. — David Ayer

A definite highlight was doing 'The Brothers McMullen.' Shooting that movie was such a joy - and then we wound up winning the Sundance Film Festival. That big-break moment is visceral. It happens once in a decade, maybe once in a lifetime. — Connie Britton

I'm never in Hollywood! I'm a theatre actor that lives in New York. I'm very seldom in Los Angeles. I don't dislike LA, I just don't think it's a very healthy place for me to be all the time. When I'm shooting a movie there and am working I'm perfectly happy. But when I'm not working or engaged in something it's a place that I wouldn't live. — Willem Dafoe

Shooting an improv-based film is incredibly liberating, exhilarating, and fun, but editing that kind of movie can be difficult for obvious continuity reasons. — Hannah Fidell

When I was shooting a movie in Montreal, it was freezing. If you take a little bit of Aquaphor and dab it on your face, it keeps your skin looking fresh. I dubbed it Aqua For Everything. — Lucy Liu

Honey, Don't go shooting all the dogs 'cause one of them's got fleas — Paul Newman

Before we ever finished shooting, there were things going on. For instance we always had different fingers exposed in our gloves, and always latex and black. And that Versace collection that hit the runway in the spring, we went, "Oh my gosh!" and then they came out and said it was "Tron" inspired. I love it! To me, there are no insults in that whatsoever. I love that other people are inspired by the movie. — Christine Bieselin Clark

I learned my business in the theater and in television, particularly working with the actors. You can learn much more in the theater than directing a movie, because then you have no time when you are shooting a movie to really work with the actors. You have to learn this craft somewhere else. — Michael Haneke

When I make a film, I never stop uncovering mysteries, making discoveries. When I'm writing, filming, editing, even doing promotional work, I discover new things about the film, about myself, and about others. That is what I'm subconsciously looking for when shooting a film: to glimpse the enigmas of life, even if I don't resolve them, but at least to uncover them. Cinema is curiosity in the most intense meaning of the word. — Pedro Almodovar

You can't make a movie about the artist without shooting outdoors. — Mike Leigh

That was my experience with everybody in the book. That was what was so cool. It's just an excuse to hang out with people. It's not for a movie; it's not for a magazine. No one's here telling us what to do. We're at my house shooting. I just get to go, "What do you want to do today?" We're only there because we want to be there because of each other. There's no other reason. — Jeff Vespa

When you're done shooting, the movie that you're going to release when you're done shooting is as bad as it will ever be. And then through editing, and finishing the effects and adding music, you get to make the movie better again. So I'm really hard on myself and on the movie. — Barry Sonnenfeld

As soon as you're finished shooting, you have to go into the edit room and choose all of the shots that you're going to commit to because the visual effects vendor has to get it because they'll spend months on it. So, you're editing out of sequence before you've gotten a film for the movie and the performances. — Richard LaGravenese

Actually shooting a 3-D movie is not different at all than making a 2-D one. You never really notice that you're making a 3-D movie. The terminology used around the set is a little bit different, but other than that, you'd never know. — Billy Burke

I became really aware that when you're making a movie, you're making it three times. You're making it when you're writing it. You're making it when you're shooting it. And then you're remaking it again when you're editing it. — Mark Ruffalo

It was a tough movie to make, with lots of stunts and injuries and craziness and night shooting and dust. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

When you are shooting a movie, you have to collaborate with many, many, many people. First of all, the director with all his own ideas and I can only just help him with that. I cannot change his idea. — Vilmos Zsigmond

Maybe if I'd gone in younger, I wouldn't have had that feeling, but I've seen an enormous amount of changes since the early-'70s in how this stuff is shot. I did the first TV movie ever shot in 18 days; before this film the normal length of shooting a TV movie was between 21 and 26 days. We shot a full-up, two-hour TV movie in 18 days with Donald Sutherland playing the lead, who had never worked on television before. — Richard Masur

When you're shooting a movie you are away from home most of the time. It's an amazing thing that we get to do what we get to do, but you definitely are away from the family more than you'd like to be. — Adam Sandler

There's always something going on on movie sets. Even just from, you know, maybe you come in tired some days and you're not in your best mood. It's different when you're shooting movies because you're on a schedule and you gotta come with your A-game every day. — Ja Rule

Four months after we finished shooting, I'd been in New Orleans shooting another movie and my agent and I were having a bite to eat - actually in London - and he's sitting there and goes, 'Wow, I just can't believe how ripped you are.' — Ryan Reynolds

The next movie will be in Mandarin. I enjoyed shooting all the Japanese stuff in Kill Bill so much that this whole film will be entirely in Mandarin. — Quentin Tarantino

I used to throw up before I went on stage, every time. Even though it's only 200 people in the audience, and a movie like RoboCop is going to be seen by many, many people, I know I'd be much more nervous doing a play than being on set shooting. — Joel Kinnaman

Before shooting, I prepare with the actors much more like it's a theater play than a movie. Apparently, that way of working is very unusual. — Pedro Almodovar

The first day I start shooting, I start having a recurring nightmare that every single night that I am lying in bed, and there is a film crew surrounding the bed, waiting for me to tell them what to do, and I don't quite know what movie I am supposed to be making. — Peter Jackson

If you are not in the red playroom of pain and pleasure, ... shooting the movie is much like doing any other movie. — Marcia Gay Harden

You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting. — Steven Spielberg

You do need to edit yourself as you shoot because you have fewer options in a smaller movie. In other words, when I'm shooting a big movie, and I got an 85 day shooting schedule or more, then I'm saying I have enough time to shoot option A and B and C and D for every scene. — David Twohy

I don't ever want to do a movie where you shoot it on a motion capture stage. I just don't like taking the reality out of it. I like being on the set in real environments. I don't like shooting on green screen. I think it gives the actors so much more to play with when there's real stuff happening on the set. — Michael Bay

You never have any idea where your movie's going to go when you're shooting - you're in this little bubble. Everything you care about is getting the next step right: getting the script right, finding the right actors, shooting it. — Morten Tyldum

More often than not, the experience of shooting the movie has been disappointing and the end product has been a mere shadow of what I hoped it would be. But immersing myself in the story - that's what I like best of all. — Viggo Mortensen

'True Blood' is shot on film. It's more like a movie, and they take more days to shoot it, plus it has an hour of content. 'The Good Wife' is network. They're shooting on HD. It moves quicker and they only have forty minutes of content instead of a full hour. Not to mention the difference of shooting, you know, rated-R stuff! — Carrie Preston

You have to know what you're shooting. Don't just make your movie in the editing room and just get everything you can on the day. — Patrick Wilson

It's all about having fun and shooting something that you like. Where it goes afterwards is up to the movie gods. — Devon Bostick

I'm vomiting days before I start shooting a new movie. — Joaquin Phoenix

Editing is the only process. The shooting is the pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editing. — Garry Marshall

We do like digital projection. We like shooting on film, finishing digitally, and projection digitally. That's what I like best. It's still a movie. It's not someone's camcorder and it got projected. That's mean, I know. — Zack Snyder

Out of perverseness, I jumped on the subway and went down to a sound stage on Fourth Street to watch the shooting of Kay Doubleday's big strip scene in Mad Dog Coll, a gangster film that can still, to my embarrassment, be seen occasionally on late-night TV... Kay Doubleday was in my class at Lee Strasberg's; it was in the interest of art, I told myself, to watch her prance down a ramp, singing and stripping her heart out. — Brooke Hayward

With animation, if something does not fit, you always have the time to change it. When you make a live-action movie, when your days of shooting are over, they are over forever. — Marjane Satrapi

We all believe what we read. I read how Tom Cruise and I were two big egos holding up shooting. I know that isn't true - but if I wasn't making a movie with him and I just picked up the paper, I'd believe it. That's interesting, isn't it? — Dustin Hoffman

I read the Phantom comics when I was in Australia shooting 'Dead Calm' and when one of the crew told me that there were plans for a movie, I went for it. That was in 1987 and I told (producer) Graham Burke I was going to be the Phantom. We had a laugh about that recently because you usually get what you deserve, not what you desire, and that is especially true in Hollywood! — Billy Zane

Literally, people probably came up with a budget and said, 'It'll be cheaper if we cut down the prep,' but it's not cheaper, because then you're shooting, you're fumbling through the movie and you are prepping at three times the cost because you're quadruple-time as you're shooting and then prepping after you're done shooting. — Howard Berger

I could only shoot when the subway was on the other platform. Little things like that, and the platform is very narrow. It's not like you can hide if a subway comes so a lot of things happened because of that. Or a thousand people just came and looked straight into the lens like they didn't expect a movie to be shooting. — Jaume Collet-Serra

I didn't even think about it when I read the script and then shooting their movie and someone was like "boy, press is going to be fun". And I didn't really know what they were talking about because to me it's just a film shows it as an extremely viable option which is obviously the most important thing for young individuals. — Ellen Page

During the preproduction when I'm shooting and then once we wrap we go away. And then the visual effects guys take over. And then they add all those little bits and pieces. They come up with ideas during the cut in the editing, and they said while would be really cool if we did this thing here where the blade pops out. So then you see the movie and say wow that's a really neat idea. I wish we would have thought of that. — Gregory Nicotero

I had this vision of shooting a great white in the studio with all the edge lights I use for movie posters. I knew that I couldn't bring the great white to the studio, so I had to bring the studio to the great white. — Michael Muller

When you try to be true to the script, changes occur. A script is there to show us a certain direction. But when you actually have the actors in and you start shooting the movie, you have the actor say a line and it doesn't sound right so you change it and make it different. It's the script that gives birth to these changes and the more you try to stay true to the script, the more that happens. — Takashi Miike

I recently had a few days off while shooting a movie in Budapest, so I took a cab from the set to the airport, looked at the departure board, and decided where I wanted to go right then and there. I spent four days in Rome and didn't tell anyone I was going. — Cory Monteith

They told me I'd have to be there for the entire shooting of the movie which was two and a half months and again, I was surprised. Most movies I'd worked on before took only a day or so, so I realized this was a pretty big deal. I got to the set and was involved in a very integral way, which was a fun experience to be a part of. — Mike Vallely

You never know what a movie is going to look like when you're shooting it and you just hope it's going to look like it's supposed to be. — Sophia Bush

By the end of the shoot [of Wrestler], my trainer was pushing me up three flights of stairs to my house and holding my arm like I was an old cripple. I had three MRIs in the first two months of working on the film. I felt like it really was over by the time we started shooting the movie. — Mickey Rourke

Q: Are you guys shooting a movie?
A: No. We're opening a mid-priced Italian restaurant.
Q: Huh?
A: Yes of course we're shooting a movie.
Q: What's the movie about?
A: It's a documentary about human stupidity.
Q: Can I be in your movie?
A: We'd be stupid not to put you in it. — Jesse Andrews

I've made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I'm the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you're the boss, if it ain't good, you don't use it. You just cut it out. — Tom Hanks

I've always wanted to be a journalist, but what am I going to do? Write articles about which movie star had the fat sucked from her ass and injected into her face? Which professional athlete just confessed to shooting steroids? The last celebrity baby names?" Cara lowered both brows in frustration. "Who cares? — Melissa Landers

When I make a movie, I don't break it down and analyze it. I could but it would get in the way of doing a job - on instinct based on all the research we did going in. you want to trust yourself and your director and your acting partners in the circumstances you're shooting. I don't like to have any kind of overview. — Viggo Mortensen

When we were shooting the movie, and of course in the editing room we had to make choices, but the shots fall almost exactly where we thought they would. They're not about content; they're never meant to be about what just happened. There's that weird phenomenon where the more you like a movie the more your mind wanders and goes all over the place. — Philip Morrison

If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead. — Adam Haslett

I grew up going to school and high school and then shooting a movie for a few months. It's an odd way to grow up and is kind of forced maturity. — Logan Lerman

I think movie making can sometimes make you lazy in your approach. Occasionally you'll be shooting a scene and it's not even your coverage but you'll catch yourself slipping away and you'll see your mind going somewhere else. But you just can't afford to do that on stage. — Jamie Bell