Moviemaking Quotes & Sayings

I think it's always good for the author to stay a good cattle prod's distance from the actual moviemaking. — Carl Hiaasen

Pixar started as a company that sold a special computer for doing digital animation; it took a while till they got into the moviemaking business. Similarly, Starbucks originally sold only coffee beans and coffee equipment; they hadn't planned to sell coffee by the cup. — Reid Hoffman

It's easier for me to get comedies made because of my track record. Everybody needs to find their niche. I love dramas, but I understand that I am still just a young man in moviemaking. I know there will be some time to get back to that. — Ice Cube

There's a scene [in the 1990 film Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael] in my bedroom where I start eating Almond Roca. I was so young. It was before I knew the tricks of moviemaking, and I didn't know you shoot a lot of different angles. I gobbled them and didn't realize I had to keep doing it. So I had to eat 64 Almond Roca that day. I got so sick. In the beginning you're like, 'Ooh, that looks good.' But hours later, no. — Winona Ryder

I grew up on movie sets, I'm comfortable on sets. A movie set is like a circus. I don't understand why moviemaking has to be such an insane environment. — Jason Reitman

I would be extremely stupid if I said that my looks had absolutely nothing to do with what I do, it [moviemaking] is a visual medium. I'm perfectly aware of that, the face and the body help. Of course they do. — Keira Knightley

I never make a movie for awards consideration. I will use the hope of getting an Academy Award a) to honor the people who work so hard and also b) it's the greatest Good Housekeeping seal in the world. It's the greatest brand. It's as good as Louis Vuitton and Dior in the world of moviemaking. It's the Super Bowl. — Harvey Weinstein

If you think you're going to be up for an Oscar, you schedule your moviemaking. — Michael Caine

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

Moviemaking is a time machine: narrative spliced into fragments and reassembled into a constant present, the end of a story shot before the beginning, which is shot after the middle. — Steve Erickson

With moviemaking, the audience always has to keep asking, 'What happens next?' If you have the wrong piece of music over a scene, people aren't going to get the scene. If you have the wrong camera angle, people aren't going to pay attention. That's as much a part of the process as getting people to talk to you. — Josh Fox

I have wasted the greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paintbox, which is a movie. And I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. It's about two percent moviemaking and ninety-eight percent hustling It's no way to spend a life. — Orson Welles

I don't believe in doing thousands of cuts, then giving it to the editor to make the movie. 'Dump-truck directing' is my reference to that style of moviemaking. You have to know how to cut before you can shoot well. The lack of definition in movies today is appalling. Very few people know how to mount a narrative anymore. If a scene works in one cut, you don't need 10. Or it might need 10. Let's not make it 20. — Gordon Willis

For me, it [moviemaking] is about social relevance. I want to make a movie that has some type of relevance where as the audience can't help but relate it in some way, and to continue that conversation outside the theater. I want people saying "this happened to my father" or "this happened to me." That's what I want. — Ric Roman Waugh

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired. — Frederick Wiseman

It [moviemaking] is not really done on a yearly basis. It's about how the material, and when the material comes in. If you develop your material and the script comes in great and you can attach a director and a cast and go off and make it, then I could make, I don't know, six [movies] a year. Or I could make one. It really depends. — Graham King

Usually a lot of moviemaking is boring. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me? — Dale Carnegie

I can see how a person could get addicted to the adrenaline of moviemaking. — Suki Waterhouse

When you're adapting, you are working on someone else's problem that they have already solved. The work has been fine-tuned and read countless times, and you're just arriving at the end and taking what you want, so of course it is the regal way to moviemaking. Plays are just the ideal scripts - the structure is there and waiting for you. — Xavier Dolan

If you make films, you're changing rhythm the whole time. You go from a quiet life to an absolutely turbulent life which is typical of moviemaking. And then you get back to your normal life and you have to have nerves of steel. — Geraldine Chaplin

It's difficult to find a movie that feels true to itself. You feel the hand of Hollywood, the moviemaking by committee, on everything. — Zack Snyder

I think American cinema, particularly, has become so disposable. It's not even cinema, It's just moviemaking. — Eriq La Salle

I think there's escapist moviemaking, and we want to be captivated and taken away. If it's done right, you can craft an incredible film. There have been superhero films that I think are brilliant pieces of art. — Ryan Reynolds

Filmmaking isn't if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it's about. It's not just about getting a performance. It's also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window. — David Fincher

It's very, very rare in this business [moviemaking] where a script lands on your lap ready to go. — Leonardo DiCaprio

With moviemaking, you can be halfway around the world for six months. So there are amazing benefits to doing TV, and with the platform change and the way it is, I would never ever rule out doing TV. — Chris Pratt

Moviemaking is so male-dominated now that they think they're being pro-feminine when they have women punching each other out. — Pauline Kael

In Hollywood, moviemaking used to be about escaping reality to go to the movies. — Chris Kattan

A lot of people who watch DVDs are people who are interested in, if not moviemaking, then creativity in general. — Robert Rodriguez

Before I discovered moviemaking, I hadn't found anything where I could kind of galvanize or meld all of the things that I wanted to do. — Maiwenn

It [moviemaking] is all a relationship business. It's a personal business. It's all personal relationships, if you're lucky enough to build on one to the other. — Graham King

This business [moviemaking] isn't easy. It's a hard business. You just keep plugging away until you figure it out. You write something you love and keep banging on people's heads until somebody lets you do it. — Amy Sherman-Palladino

I've been writing plays since the seventies and only came to moviemaking when I basically realized that I needed some money to pay the rent. I started to watch films with an eye to figuring out how to write them. — John Patrick Shanley

Although he had read that Pittsburgh was becoming an in-demand moviemaking town. — Lee Child

Collaborative is my favorite word in moviemaking. — J.K. Simmons

It goes back to a style of moviemaking I remember seeing as a child, in movies like The Man With The Golden Arm, which I think was shot all on a sound stage. — Debbie Allen

I do not want to admit to the world that I can be a bad person. It is just that I don't want anyone to have false expectations. Moviemaking is a harsh, volatile business, and unless you can be ruthless, too, there's a good chance that you are going to disappear off the scene pretty quickly. — Tom Hanks

I really think that life isn't logical and life isn't always meaningful. I'm just trying to go into that zone without being too random, and just trying to create some new logic [in moviemaking] that feels like dreams. — Quentin Dupieux

It [moviemaking] is like a dream. When you're dreaming, you make some very strange connections between some random stuff and random people. — Quentin Dupieux

A certain type of critic doesn't really want French movies to be visual. They think movies started from books and they forgot this part of moviemaking, like Chaplin and Buster Keaton, which I didn't forget. — Audrey Tautou

As a filmmaker, I ask questions but don't have answers. Moviemaking is a philosophical exploration. I invite the audience to come on the journey and discover what they think and feel. — David Cronenberg

All I can to, and the only sense of control I have over this crazy business [moviemaking], is to pick things that I like with people that I love and respect, and then just hope everything else works out. — Ari Graynor

My grandpa told me, 'Learn to love anxiety, because it never goes away in moviemaking.' — Gia Coppola

On the times when I used to make movies that were with a lower budget, nobody was expecting it to be a hit, and nobody was paying attention to what I was doing, and it was a free type of creative process. So, one way to reset myself is to go back to that kind of moviemaking. — Takashi Miike

On the whole, the politics of moviemaking is something that actors are kind of blissfully ignorant of. — Kate Winslet

We mystify the art of moviemaking, but it's not amystical science. You take a good screenplay, put a group togetherand you hammer it out. — Bill Paxton

My favorite thing in moviemaking is to shoot in chronological order if at all possible, because it just helps for continuity and all the logistical purposes. It also helps with performance and the journey of each character, but I also think it's good for the director and everyone [else] involved. — Zoe Bell

Technically, maybe I learned most of all from George Stevens, and among his movies I learned the most from 'A Place in the Sun.' It's a lesson in moviemaking. — Mike Nichols

The art of moviemaking seems to get thrown away. The cinematography is gone, and the look of everything becomes of little importance. You lose the memorable images; everything looks like it's been shot at night with a security camera. — Rob Zombie

Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process. — Leonard Maltin

You have to live in order to have something to write about - you get caught up in moviemaking and celebrities and money, and it's very intoxicating, but it doesn't give you what you need as a writer. You have to do something else for that. — John Patrick Shanley

When it comes to the selections, I heard several observers claim that the Academy was embracing "nostalgia" by honoring The Artist and Hugo. Give me a break! Hugo represents cutting-edge storytelling by a world-class director - in 3-D, no less. The Artist dares to revisit a form of cinema that was abandoned in the late 1920s. The Academy members admired these films for making the past seem immediate and relevant. That has nothing to do with nostalgia; it has everything to do with great moviemaking, which is what the Academy Awards are all about. — Leonard Maltin

I have an issue with the commercial aspect of moviemaking: I don't see why a movie can't make a lot of money and also be good. — Joel Edgerton

In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and 'get' everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don't understand each atom of the potato! — Jean-Luc Godard

I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who said 90 percent of successful moviemaking is in the casting. The same is true in life. Who you are exposed to, who you choose to surround yourself with, is a unique variable in all of our experiences and it is hugely important in making us who we are. Seek out interesting characters, tough adversaries and strong mentors and your life can be rich, textured, highly entertaining and successful, like a Best Picture winner. Surround yourself with dullards, people of vanilla safety and unextraordinary ease, and you may find your life going straight to DVD. — Rob Lowe