Quotes & Sayings About Shooting Film

For most of my films, I've had to go out and start shooting before I could get the rest of the funding. That was the case with 'Hoop Dreams,' 'Stevie' and 'The Interrupters:' We started them quietly out of Kartemquin Films, only really going to funders once we had something to show and a firm idea of what the film might be. — Steve James

In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it. — Wong Kar-Wai

I used to be a die-hard defender of physical film, which I still am. I love shooting on physical film and I think it's great. — Christopher McQuarrie

When I was 16, I made some little 35mm documentaries about the poor in London. I went round Notting Hill, which was a real slum in the 1950s, shooting film. — David Suchet

When you're doing a film, it's your film and it's, you know, your blood and - is in it along with everybody else's, and it's the greatest picture ever made when you're shooting it. It's only after the critics and then the public say you were wrong that you realize that you were wrong. — Richard D. Zanuck

Before digital, I spent thirty years shooting color transparencies, which are very unforgiving of exposure. A half stop can make or break a good photo on slide film. — Peter Menzel

I was shooting for a Telugu film at the Taj Mahal in Agra, and there were all these women and children pointing and screaming, 'Rowdy Rathore.' But I am not really 'Rowdy Rathore.' I am the guy who did the original version of 'Rowdy Rathore' six years ago. — Ravi Teja

So I tried to get my shot with a 50mm and I did it - this is when we're shooting film, not digital. The guy that hired me looked through the pictures and was like, "Oh, this is pretty good. You did a good job." And I was like, "Yeah, I'm sorry. I only had a 50mm. My girlfriend rented the wrong lens ... " and he stopped looking at the pictures and he looked up at me and he said, "You shot this with a 50mm? You're hired." — Jeff Vespa

If you wait until the right time to have a child you'll die childless, and I think film making is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something even if it's bad. — James Cameron

I'm not very aware of styles. We never talk about styles before we start shooting, or even during shooting, because I think the film will bring you there. — Wong Kar-Wai

Shooting film is not for everybody, but if you're crazy enough it might be for you. — David Burnett

Off the southeast tip of Italy a young Austrian U-boat commander named Georg von Trapp, later to gain eternal renown when played by Christopher Plummer in the film The Sound of Music, fired two torpedoes into a large French cruiser, the Leon Gambetta. The ship sank in nine minutes, killing 684 sailors. "So that's what war looks like!" von Trapp wrote in a later memoir. He told his chief officer, "We are like highway men, sneaking up on an unsuspecting ship in such a cowardly fashion." Fighting in a trench or aboard a torpedo boat would have been better, he said. "There you hear shooting, hear your comrades fall, you hear the wounded groaning - you become filled with rage and can shoot men in self defense or fear; at an assault you can even yell! But we! Simply cold-blooded to drown a mass of men in an ambush! — Erik Larson

I never accept lengthy film roles nowadays, because I am always so afraid I will die in the middle of shooting and cause such awful problems. — John Gielgud

The other thing is that when people mention computers - and I'm pretty much the same - they find it hard to comprehend that there's a performance there. They look at it as something that's just been made by a computer but in a way the difference is that when you make a normal film - and I'm simplifying it here - you put on the make-up and you put the scenery in before you start shooting, but with this you still perform in the same way but then you put the make-up on after, along with the costumes and scenery. — Ray Winstone

Comrades in the struggle! The position of modern man is not merely lamentable; one might even say that there is no condition, because man hardly exists. Nothing exists to which one could point and say: 'There, that is Homo Zapiens.' HZ is simply the residual luminescence of a soul fallen asleep; it is a film about the shooting of another film, shown on a television in an empty house. — Victor Pelevin

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

From a production point of view, I still have one foot firmly planted in the independent film world, and much of the shooting on 'Jumper' was done 'Swingers'-style because that was the only way we could afford to do it. — Doug Liman

The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film. — Stanley Kubrick

I think people are willing to take more of a risk on an indie film, about character, etc ... but at the same time, when I work on projects that are substantially bigger, in a way they do feel small. Even though the catering is way better and we actually have someone shooting with real film ... The budgets are bigger but the story still feels small, like an indie film. — Adam Driver

In TV, you're basically shooting an episode in 10 to 14 days; 14 days is a luxury situation. And in film, you have anywhere from a month to three months, or it can be even longer than that, depending on what the production is. — Chadwick Boseman

Going from a short to a feature is like going from crawling to flying. It's a big jump, really. Everything triples - size of crew, budget, shooting days, the cast. Not to mention the stakes - as a first time feature filmmaker so much rides on this film. — Aurora Guerrero

If you have ten grand, set a date and move forward. If Tom Hanks calls you on Sunday and tells you he wants to be in the film, if he's not there Monday morning, you're shooting without him. — William Dickerson

Well, there are three different processes of making a film, of course. They're sort of re-written three times. You write it to start with, and then you shoot it and you re-write it while shooting and you sort of re-write it as you edit. — Stephen Daldry

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

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

We're still working out the details, but I'd be delighted to do the film. The problem at the moment is my busy schedule. Shooting on this film has been extended by a month, but I need to be in the U.S. by Dec. 20. — Zhang Ziyi

No matter how much I plan the overall arc of the character, you get there day one on the film and you shooting certain scenes first, and it goes completely different to anything you ever thought of, and then it's done. — Lin Shaye

Once the screenplay is finished, I'd just as soon not make the film at all ... I have a strongly visual mind. I visualise a picture right down to the final cuts. I write all this out in the greatest detail in the script, and then I don't look at the script while I'm shooting. I know it off by heart, just as an orchestra conductor needs not look at the score ... When you finish the script, the film is perfect. But in shooting it you lose perhaps 40 percent of your original conception — Alfred Hitchcock

Back before 'Brick,' I wrote a short film that I never ended up shooting: hit men in the present who work for a mob in the future who send their victims back in time. A guy is sent his future self, he lets him run, and the whole short was them chasing each other across the city. That sat in a drawer for 10 years until after I made 'Brothers Bloom. — Rian Johnson

The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted. It is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four year old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream. — Werner Herzog

Film is very much about capturing the essence of things - if you feel it, and you've got the right person shooting it, it'll come across. Theater's a different animal; it's physically different and requires a different discipline. In the theater, you're mining the same material, constantly honing the same thing, executing it and keeping it alive and fresh. — Clive Owen

Shooting against greenscreen ... my choice of filming is, like, I'd rather shoot on location than shoot on a set, and I'd rather shoot on a set than shoot against greenscreen. You start stripping away the layers of reality, and it becomes a lot less fun to actually film. — Neil Marshall

It's a bit like school camp, shooting a film. Everyone's on heat. It's a strange energy. It's full of adrenalin. I funnel my excess energy in funny little ways. I do a lot of dancing in my trailer. I love music. — Alice Englert

When you do a film, you know you're shooting for 6 or 9 weeks, you've got your cast and crew. Overall, no one can just pull the plug and say, 'This isn't working.' There's just no security on television, especially for African Americans. It's a tough market. — Vivica A. Fox

When I was shooting 'Mud,' every day was my favourite! I had so much fun on this film and loved working with all the cast and crew! It was a great experience. — Tye Sheridan

Nobody ever starts out to make a mediocre, commercial film. You always think it's going to be something. And then, once you're done with your shooting, you have no control. You're just done, as an actor. — Janeane Garofalo

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. — Francois Truffaut

I remember when it was reported that I was going to do the film in this format, people were actually speculating, and I guess I understand it. They were like, "Yeah, okay, that all sounds really great, but why would he do it for a thing that's so set bound?" That's not very profound thinking when it comes to 65mm. It's not just for shooting travelogues, mountain scenery and nature. — Quentin Tarantino

One of the advantages of shooting digitally was that we had a lot of time. When you shoot, even if you do a good performance, it may get lost in the editing room. It's just one more way that a potentially good film might go astray. — William Mapother

Shooting a film is like a kismet quest. You have thirty days and you need magic to happen. So that's why I wear suits. I'm praying to the gods, and I'm doing everything I can to respect the powers of the world. — Mike Mills

Just someone trying to shoot in 70mm deserves the nomination, and he[Quentin Tarantino] is shooting interiors, like tight interior shots, for that matter. Obviously [Quentin] is the director and demanding the shots, but all credit for the beauty of that film [Hateful Eight] goes to the director of photography. — Bun B.

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

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

I play Father Francis in 'The Exorcist Prequel.' It's fantastic. We are shooting in Morrocco and Rome. Paul Schrader is directing; Stellan Skarsgard plays the younger Max Von Sydow character. It's just a fantastic script. It's a very eerie, very scary script. It encomposes a growing dread that I think is really appropriate for the film. — Gabriel Mann

Hard Day's Night was one of those great films that will never happen again to anyone in their lifetime. UA were in profit before we'd even finished shooting - The advance sales on the album - the film was out before the album was out was more than it cost UA to make the film. — Richard Lester

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. — Kevin Kline

When I was shooting the film I did not see the story as an everyday tale or a social one. To a great extent, the film is a mythological look on human life. This is probably what I would like the audience to keep in mind before they enter the screening room. — Andrey Zvyagintsev

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

By the first week of shooting, you know exactly where your film is heading based on the psychology of your director. — Jodie Foster

Though I am born into a film family, I hardly had much exposure to shooting during my growing
years. My first film actually taught me about the breakdown of shots in a film. My aim is to do three
memorable roles in the next five years; films I can be really proud of. And I want to work with the best. — Alia Bhatt

If you're a film fan, collecting video is sort of like marijuana. Laser discs, they're definitely cocaine. Film prints are heroin, all right? You're shooting smack when you start collecting film prints. So, I kinda got into it in a big way, and I've got a pretty nice collection I'm real proud of. — Quentin Tarantino

In film, I think that you do have a little more time to invest in the character compared to television, where you are shooting from the hip and making quick choices. It is the speed of things that is the major difference - certainly in my experience. — Henry Ian Cusick

I found my father's Super8mm film camera when I was around eight years old and started shooting with it. I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but that's really where my filmmaking began. — Gabriel Campisi

You know, whenever you're shooting a film there's different obstacles and challenges, whether it be from the makeup artist getting fired that you liked or whatever - the one that did the makeup the way you wanted. There's always stuff that changed, like the DP leaving the set, and there's a new guy in there, and the way he does lighting isn't the same as the last guy. — Ja Rule

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

But, in each case, as a filmmaker who's been given sizable budgets with which to work, I feel a responsibility to the audience to be shooting with the absolute highest quality technology that I can and make the film in a way that I want. — Christopher Nolan

Learn from your experience shooting your film, and then move on to the next. — Alfonso Cuaron

It's been 50 years since I was on the roof of my parents' house shooting Hag in a Black Leather Jacket when I didn't even know there was such a thing as editing. I thought you just shot the film and showed it. That's exactly what I did. I'm not that different 50 years later. — John Waters

We don't work in the traditional TV format where we're like writing concurrently to shooting. Like, we really view it as a large feature film. — Jay Duplass

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

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 was shooting all this time. And there was only one guy who helped to pull him. And I had to think whether I was going to keep shooting or help the guy. And so I kept shooting and then they put him in this little clinic, and I photographed through the window while they had to amputate his leg. And I felt very strange because I didn't - I felt I could have helped, but I didn't help. But then I also felt elated that I was getting a shot that would be important to the film. — Haskell Wexler

In a very real sense, all you do when you're shooting film or television is you shoot a scene, and then you shoot another scene, and then you shoot another scene. — Ben Mendelsohn

I like pre-production and post the best. I don't like shooting at all. I find it grueling and tough, but I love post and the whole process of seeing the film finally come together. You start ironing out all the rough spots, and the really bad bits you just throw away. So from day one of post to the last day, you see nothing but improvements. — Martin Campbell

If you mention any ideological thing about shooting 'Last Tango in Paris,' I was thinking I was doing a political film. — Bernardo Bertolucci

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

I was shooting a scene in my new film, No Strings Attached, in which I say to Natalie Portman, If you miss me. you can't text, you can't email, you can't post it on my Facebook wall. If you really miss me, you come and see me. — Ashton Kutcher

I'd like to have the script in a much better place from day one of shooting, rather than trying to continue to work on it while you shoot it. I think those are lessons you learn on any film. — Joseph Kosinski

When I'm shooting a film, I don't look at playback. I don't go and do a scene and then hurry up and watch what I just did. I never look at it so I haven't seen any of it. — Andre Benjamin

I dropped out of school at 17 and joined the Irish band The Frames, getting my first glimpse into the world of professional film making while shooting of a number of rock videos. — John Carney

Every industry has standards. For example, the motion picture camera, there are 2 or 3 film formats with a number of brackets and number of speed, a shooting speed that is standard. If we didn't have that, then some motion pictures will play back too slowly, and people would talk very slowly, and it will be bizarre. — Jeffrey Zeldman

I almost always do things that I like, in some form or fashion. Every once in awhile that means that I don't think the script is any good and I don't have any trust in the people, but the film is shooting in Sri Lanka, or somewhere like that, so I'm going. — Billy Campbell

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it. — Michelangelo Antonioni

The great thing about filming a film is that you all have your final day's shooting, but you always know that you're all going to be coming back for the premiere. — Matthew Lewis

Hits and flops will come and go. But what stays with you is the experience you had while shooting a film. I am happy learning something new each time. — Sonakshi Sinha

I was at a Madonna show many, many years ago and I was in the sweet spot and she came out and I mean it was the best part of the show. And I was shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. And I'm like, "God, I must have shot a hundred pictures have I not run out of film?" And I opened the back of my camera and there was no film in there. So that happened to me only once. — Danny Clinch

I wrote the plot [for the Persepolis ]and Vincent [Paronnaud] and I wrote and discussed the shooting of the script. Vincent then took care of the production design, the actual shooting, and what was going on within each scene. It's very difficult, though, to draw a line between who did what. Because Vincent would say something, and I would add something, and at the end you have this film, yet no clear idea of who did what. — Marjane Satrapi

'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

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

The content dictates the style all the time. That's the way it is. If the content of the film is highly jagged, neurotic, fast-paced, it just called for that kind of shooting, editing and performance. — Woody Allen

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

I became passionate about nature filmmaking when I graduated from UCLA, and one of the things I always wanted to do was shoot really high quality film, so I got into time-lapse photography - so that means when you shoot a flower, you're shooting, like, one frame every twenty minutes, so that's basically two seconds of a film per day. — Louie Schwartzberg

My original goal was just to do stand-up but then I became interested in films - writing a film, shooting one someday, and getting to act in them. — Demetri Martin

I'm a grafter, I like working, but like for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the film company only paid me for the shooting schedule, which was supposed to last six months. But it lasted 11 months and you don't get paid for extra shooting. — Jason Flemyng

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

It was closer to manual labor than shooting a film. I always think of something Michael Caton-Jones told me: 'Pain is temporary. Film is forever.' — Leonardo DiCaprio

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 remember doing a little student film where we had a guy that couldn't pull focus. We ended up spending three times the amount of time shooting this thing as opposed to if the guy could've just pulled focus. — Stephen Amell

The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

With the RED, I didn't have this impression at all. I felt that it was as heavy as a film camera. Having this great crew, with the DP and his assistants, I found it making as much of an impression as a very big film camera. I didn't relate to it as much. I remember avoiding it during the shooting rather than paying attention to it. — Abbas Kiarostami

Even a fiction film is hard to end. You can going on shooting and editing a documentary forever. — Leos Carax

I can still recall the thrill of shooting my first film. — Conrad Hall

I do like working on independent films where it is a smaller budget and less pressure. The pace is also quicker than that of a big budget film. You are shooting at a fairly fast pace. Sitting around for three or four days can be quite draining. So I guess in terms of film or television, I would say filming an independent feature. — Colm Meaney

For the last 10 years, I've felt increasing pressure to stop shooting film and start shooting video, but I've never understood why. It's cheaper to work on film, it's far better looking, it's the technology that's been known and understood for a hundred years, and it's extremely reliable. — Christopher Nolan

When you're shooting a film, you really don't get to be a dad, and you don't really get to be a husband. You don't really exist at all. But I do drag my family with me on location whenever I can. — Eric Bana

Each film is different. Time Code was very quick - a matter of months. Miss Julie has been on my shelf as a script for some seven or eight years. But then the shooting process was very quick - 16 days. — Mike Figgis

In film, I find it very useful always to do some preparation before you start rehearsals or start shooting, because there's so much that's against you on a film set. — Ben Whishaw

I'm always thinking, 'What next,' even while working on one play or shooting for a film. — Lillete Dubey

I'll need every ounce that I have to drive it through. Film and TV require that energy. Sometimes fight scenes can be pretty intense. When I was shooting 'Heaven' it was truly guerrilla film-making. — Karl Urban