Quotes & Sayings About Short Films

Certainly, I've loved musicals for a while, so I did some short films in college that had musical numbers and things like that, so I've kind of been obsessed with Fred and Ginger and Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen and Jaques Demy forever. — Damien Chazelle

You can write when you're dyslexic, you just can't read it. But I started writing short stories as a child and I found the short story format a real nice one. I love short stories and I love short documentaries or short films of any kind. — Billy Bob Thornton

I made lots of short films, about nine or ten short films. And then I made a television film called 'This Little Life.' — Sarah Gavron

Sometimes, if you're shooting a complicated scene, you have to stay in a position and wait for the technician to do his job, and then you have to be where you're supposed to be, right on the spot. You don't rehearse all that much on films. If I think of the amount of time I spend on set compared with the time spent shooting, it's ridiculously short. — Catherine Deneuve

I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet - the documentaries on homelessness and drug addiction, the funny short subjects, the half-finished romantic comedy, the boxes of slice-of-life photographs that spoke volumes about the human condition. I wondered how you stop caring about what you've ached over, sweated over. (Thwonk) — Joan Bauer

All of my short films are about marriages, and I think that this probably comes from some kind of unconscious fascination with my parents' story and what they went through. — Sarah Polley

That's the thing with the young these days, isn't it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short. — Nick Hornby

When I do short films, I try to do something completely out of my comfort zone, out of my element. — Brett Ratner

I make short films, little documentaries, about the co-evolution of humans and technology. — Jason Silva

She once said, 'I'm really a little prudish, which people may think incongruous'. I take a prudish point of view on certain films, books, and trends. Then, I pull myself up short and ask myself how Gypsy Rose Lee could possibly be this way.I thought that quote was so telling, a key insight into the way she so carefully separated who she was from her meticulous creation. — Karen Abbott

I made three short films of my own which I wrote, produced, directed ... you did everything in those days. My favourite one was something I shot on VHS ... a little documentary. — Asif Kapadia

I made some probably very cringe-worthy short films that shall hopefully never make the light of day. — Steve Toltz

I made several short films with very little dialogue. I'm still not a fan of talking heads. My stories are told with images as much as possible. — Asif Kapadia

When I was in architecture school, rather than giving us drafting boards and t-squares and lead pencils and stuff they gave us all the same tools that places like Digital Domain and ILM used to make features films or special effects. They gave us all these digital tools like Alias and Mya and Soft Image and all these kind of high-end computers, so I came out of architecture school knowing how to use all that stuff. And I started making short films at night. — Joseph Kosinski

My tutor was a film director on the side, and she introduced me to film. She then put me in one of her short films, and it came out of that. That's when I fell in love with the process of making a film. After that, I was about 15 and I was like, "This is what I've gotta do." So, I started taking acting lessons, and then I applied to college to do acting. I got an agent, and it all just happened. — Eve Hewson

By 1950, Brennan was settling into a schedule that saw him making three films a year, giving him more time on his ranch and with a new business he started in Joseph, a 487-seat movie theater that opened on July 27, 1950. It was housed in a Quonset hut made out of surplus war materials also used to build the civic center. "The reason he got the theater built," Mike recalled, "was because the civic center was the same size, and they [Frank McCully and Walter] got the chance to buy two of them for half the price." At the theater's grand opening, actors Chill Wills and Forrest Tucker said a few words and signed autographs, and Joseph's mayor and other local dignitaries attended the event. A La Grande radio station broadcast the event. Curtain Call at Cactus Creek was the feature, following a musical short with the Nat King Cole trio. — Carl Rollyson

I used to spend $25,000 of my own money on my short films, and I wouldn't make that back, not even close. So I think the Vimeo thing, because it's pay to download, that helps — Shane Dawson

All the jobs I've gotten in the last two years are because directors have seen the work I've done - indie films, plays, short student films, TV - since I moved to the states in 1996. I mean, I have an entire career in Canada that nobody has seen. — Sandra Oh

I have not read most of the big 19th - century novels that people consider "essential," nor most of the 20th-century ones for that matter. But this does not embarrass me. There are many films to see, many friends to visit, many walks to take, many playlists to assemble and many favorite books to reread. Life's too short for anxious score-keeping. Also, my grandmother is illiterate, and she's one of the best people I know. Reading is a deep personal consolation for me, but other things console, too. — Teju Cole

After college, I funded my short films with acting roles in film and TV. I learned my craft through the great opportunities British television gave me as a director. — Justin Chadwick

By far, the content of Canadian films. You're able to push the envelope in ways you can't in the U.S., I find. But also, because of the budgets and everything, it's all condensed, quick, and short. — Kristen Hager

As I get on and films take four years to complete, I tend to have a hankering for very short projects so you can move on to the next idea. It's the ideas I'm interested in. What comes out of your head. — Nick Park

Alan Ladd was a marvelous person in his simplicity. In so many ways we were kindred spirits. We both were professionally conceived through Hollywood's search for box office and the types to insure the box office. And we were both little people. Alan wasn't as short as most people believe. It was true that in certain films Alan would climb a small platform or the girl worked in a slit trench. We had no such problems together. — Veronica Lake

I love doing features, but it's a very different ballgame. Sometimes I yearn for short films again, working with a small team, getting my hands on the clay. — Nick Park

I've only made short films and two features, which are very different. One is a surreal comedy, and the other is a period tragedy. I'm curious to know what misconceptions this could trigger — Sophie Barthes

Short films don't go too far. — Matthew McGrory

I'd already started directing short films when we were doing 'Lord of the Rings,' then videogame projects. — Andy Serkis

I guess short films have a bright future ... The advantage is budget. — Anurag Kashyap

I didn't start publishing literary texts until I had left Iraq. At the Academy [of Cinematic Arts] I was busy with short films. — Hassan Blasim

The short-term problems are economic - royalties, unions, irresponsible management. The long-term problems are artistic, and they started 40 years ago with the advent of television and the upgrading of films. — Emanuel Azenberg

When I went to film school about three years ago, the first two years you're required to make a series of short films. I started making films based on short poems. — James Franco

Before my commercial success, I had difficulty doing what I wanted, but my sincere short films always won prizes in festivals. So I was ready for larger successes. — Michel Ocelot

I acted in a couple friends's short films and thought I was gonna be really good and mysterious and sexy. And I was just terrible and self-aware. — Max Winkler

I was a bartender in New York and I overheard this girl saying she made $3000 doing a commercial. A kid at work told me, 'Hey, I know this director and he'd really like you!'. So I walked into this guy's office and was like 'I was thinking maybe I could make $3000' and he hired me for commercials, short films, like 15 jobs in a row. — Pauley Perrette

I'm an unusual director in that my cut is usually shorter then the final released film. I like short films. — Barry Sonnenfeld

I don't just act to pay my rent. I really like doing it, so I get frustrated when I don't get to do it all the time, so short films are a really great way to be doing it and working with your friends, working on smaller, more specific things without limiting yourself in other ways. — Mackenzie Davis

Go out and make something that reflects your interests, your taste, and your ideas. No one will pay you to make something until you have a few things you can show that you've directed. I got my start by making short films on my own. — Joseph Kosinski

I had seen some films made about the underground music world in Tehran, and most of them were short documentaries about 30 or 40 minutes long. And I always wondered why they weren't publicized more. Really, their only flaw was they were short documentaries. — Bahman Ghobadi

With films, you completely immerse yourself in a character, get into who they are, live it and then release it. — Columbus Short

Not everyone can experience what other people can... That's why movies come out... films and books... and short stories and novels... — Deyth Banger

I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films. I got grants from NYSCA and NEA for an idea, which later became 'Huckabees,' about a guy in a Chinese restaurant who had microphones on every table and heard every personal conversation and would write perversely personal fortunes. — David O. Russell

I did the drawing and writing - for five years. I made a lot of short films the whole while and I made a promise to myself in front of the mirror that I would stop drawing when I signed my first contract for a feature film. — Patrice Leconte

I was writing short films and I was going through this really, really, really terrible end of a relationship that I didn't want to be going through. It was too much for me to process and all of a sudden I had this idea for my first feature film and I knew right away I had to start writing it. — Evan Glodell

It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I'm just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing. — Lena Dunham

I'm more of a sprinter than a marathoner when it comes to many aspects of life. For example, when I'm running. Over short distances
up to two yards
I can run faster than cheap panty hose on an itchy porcupine. But over long distances, I'm not so impressive.
I try to compensate for my lack of long-distance endurance by having good form. I'm told that my running style is quite majestic. That's probably because I learned to run by watching nature films in which leopards chased frightened zebras. Now when I run, I open my eyes real wide and let my tongue slap the side of my face. If you saw it, you'd be saying, "That's very majestic." And then you'd run like a frightened zebra. That's why my homeowners association voted to ask me to do my jogging with a pillowcase over my head. — Scott Adams

I have a lot of incomplete short films and incomplete scripts out there. — Bill Hader

I've learned that I can't do it all at once. So, you have to figure out your angle of attack. Coming in on the acting front, acting is a passion of mine. It's a true love. Dancing, I kind of just fell into. Choreographing, the same thing. But making films, producing and directing, that's the heartbeat of my existence. — Columbus Short

There are only 24 hours in a day, and my top priority is working on my films, but I love short film experiments. — David Lynch

When I was younger, me and my brother got a video camera, and he used to direct and I used to act. We used to make these silly, stupid short films, which, looking back now, were probably horrible. — Iain De Caestecker

Overall I think the show went well, kudos to Miss Jeanie It was well rounded. From artwork to singing, to spoken word to short films, I think it definitely stimulated the audience's senses. — Angie Brown

Alternate between short films, long form films, with or without stars, small budget or big budget films. Basically a filmmaker needs to be flexible. — Marion Vernoux

It's funny: I put money into short films, and I put really good actors in it, and I write some stuff that's really funny, and I'll get, like, a million views. But to the right of me, there will be a video of a kitten that falls into a toilet bowl, and it's three seconds long, and it will get 25 million views. — Ben Schwartz

Modernism has a reputation for being a forbidding phenomenon: its visual arts disconcertingly non-representational, its literary efforts devoid of the consolations of plot and character - even its films, it's argued, fall well short of that true desideratum: entertainment. — Will Self

Right before 'American Dreams,' I started to pursue these avenues, like short films and getting into a couple night courses to really study photography and cinematography, and the language of visual storytelling. — Tom Verica

To answer the question, though: I didn't always want to direct. I just liked the idea of it. If a friend was making a short and needed someone who knew screen direction, I would jump in. It would be horrible, but it led to a short, then another, and another. It was like student films. — Ben Affleck

Ignore the glass ceiling and do your work. If you're focusing on the glass ceiling, focusing on what you don't have, focusing on the limitations, then you will be limited. My way was to work, make my short ... make my documentary ... make my small films ... use my own money ... raise money myself ... and stay shooting and focused on each project. — Ava DuVernay

Films to the degree that they glorify mindlessness and short attention span they are bad, to the degree that they encourage empathy with people not like ourselves and encourage us to think about life, they are good. — Roger Ebert

I've made two short films, both of which my father deemed "interesting but beside the point," and am so paralyzed as a writer that I've started translating poems from languages I don't speak, some kind of Surrealist exercise meant to inspire me but also prevent me from thinking the perverse, looping thoughts that come unbidden: I am hideous. — Lena Dunham

Who reads short stories? one is asked, and I like to think that they are read by men and women in the dentist's office, waiting to be called to the chair; they are read on transcontinental plane trips instead of watching banal and vulgar films spin out the time between our coasts; they are read by discerning and well-informed men and women who seem to feel that narrative fiction can contribute to our understanding of one another and the sometimes bewildering world around us. — John Cheever

I actually went to film school and was making experimental films for a short time, so it wasn't such a leap. — Jim Coleman

My friends and I make short films. We pretended to rob the Dairy Queen where our friend worked, but someone thought we were real thieves and called the cops! Soon, the cops burst in with guns drawn! — Josh Hartnett

I did a lot of short films online, so I come from that background where a lot of people see your stuff. — Ben Schwartz

And we had the perhaps unfair advantage of not having to worry about what an audience was gonna think. We were in a vacuum. We were making little short films, really. — Rick Moranis

I managed to get a short film with Channel 4 Films. I cast a young actor who'd done a bit of television before, a young actor called Ewan McGregor. That was very first thing. This writer had won this competition, and I made this little short, black and white movie. I think for both Ewan and I it was the start of our careers. — Justin Chadwick

I'm looking to produce more stuff: TV shows, commercials, music videos and short films. I'm building my catalog so I can have some fun in between the times that I get to a movie. — Larenz Tate

Personally, I think 'Dead Americans' is the best title I have, but you can't win with everyone. Titles have to be short, catchy, not too obscure, not offensive, and still capture the genre, and so on and so forth. Takeshi Kitano has it about right when he says he'd just like to title his films by number. — Ben Peek

I love to produce, and I've directed two short films. — Kirsten Dunst

Short films really helped me develop as a story teller, animator, and as a director. — John Lasseter

I respect BMW for not interfering in these projects. They're just trying to support short films with their brand, which I think is great. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation. — Satyajit Ray

With the Ford Foundation grant all of a sudden instead of being an artist that had made a couple of short films, I became a filmmaker who dabbled in the arts. — Bruce Conner

I love doing short films because they're much more intimate and there's far less waiting around than on the bigger films. — Natalia Tena

A life, remembered, is a series of photographs and disconnected short films. — Emily St. John Mandel

While I was doing the residency in Paris, I found out that I was chosen as one of the five winners of the Focus Features Africa First Program. All this happened less than a year after I made my first two short films. — Chika Anadu

The intention was to shoot short films that can exist as shorts independently, but when I put them all together, there are things that echo through them like the dialogue repeats; the situation is always the same, the way they're shot is very simple and the same. — Jim Jarmusch

Sometimes books feel like the only thing that keep her sane. Actually, she knows that they're the only reason she's still even vaguely okay right now. That's what she clings to: reading great books and seeing great films and, for as long as she's immersed in them, being able to forget, if only for a short time, about the reality of her life. — Steph Bowe

I never thought about acting before I started modeling, but since then I've been in short films and music videos, and I got interested. It felt natural to switch over. — Rila Fukushima

Louis C.K. directs his show, which is very much like a series of short films. — Mike Birbiglia

Pixar's short films convinced Disney that if the company could produce memorable characters within five minutes, then the confidence was there in creating a feature film with those abilities in story and character development. — John Lasseter

When you make documentaries or short films, you have to have eyes and ears in the back of your head and on the sides and all around you. I like that in my films. — Bruce Weber

Having made films, I know very well that the scope of the average 90- to 120-minute movie is about the same narrative heft as a long short story or a novella. — Paul Auster

My problem has been with purely digital films. I feel the danger there is that the kind of short-cuts you end up having to take are the ones that are most telling in the main characters. — Rick Heinrichs

I started making little short films with friends, and then I decided I wanted to get into the school play in high school. — Bill Hader

Screenwriting involves an often un-personal process. Co-writers, directors, producers, everyone has a say in what you put on a page, and stories are constantly changing according to budget, actors, and commercial needs. Films are a collaborative process and are also inherently narrative and structured, so you are always working within very tight parameters. Short fiction unleashes a more intimate voice and a passion for language. I believe short narratives can have the same amount of danger and drama as any action film. — Chiara Barzini

Television and cable have become the new independent films, in a sense, for writers and actors to gravitate towards. That's why I like short films, too; I love doing readings, audio books, working with young filmmakers; anything that keeps you from getting blase about yourself or in a rut. — Campbell Scott

I always try to approach things from the point of authenticity. I've done that for my short films, working with non-actors from the real environments where you go exploring and placing them into the cast alongside professional actors. — Tom Green

To be honest the future of The Life of One Kid... won't go very far... but I won't only put books/films.... and so on and so on... and some short stories I am going to put... from my darkness. — Deyth Banger

I was frustrated because I couldn't get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films. — David O. Russell

I always think it's just best to just make stuff and to carry on making stuff, even if it's not off your own back, because that's the only way ... especially as a comedy writer, I make short films and then show them to live audience, so if they're laughing you know you're doing something right. — Alice Lowe

Film has always been a really good tool for me to communicate emotion about why I create a collection. I'm probably one of the first designers to make short films. — Ozwald Boateng

I think it's a mistake for young filmmakers to just buy digital equipment and shoot a feature. Make short films first, make your mistakes and learn from them. — Jason Reitman

My background is in largely in theatre and acting. I grew up in a town with a well-respected Shakespeare Festival, and I fell in with some kids whose parents worked there. We staged all-kid versions of 'Hamlet', 'Cymbeline', a few others. All the while, I was making short films; monster movies, slapstick comedies, claymation. — Matt Ross

I think that short films often contain an originality, a creative freedom, an energy and an invention that is inspiring and entertaining. I think they are, as Shakespeare put it, a good deed in a naughty world. — Kenneth Branagh

In 'Thor,' that was my own hair. I grew it out. But I have naturally curly, blonde hair, so I'll never look like that. By the time I got to 'The Avengers,' I had come off two other films, which required me to have it very short. So I dyed it again and it was long enough to use a part of my hairline. — Tom Hiddleston

I had a really small role (playing goddess Aphrodite), and I was only working for just over a week with Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson. I'd done a few short films before and thought acting was really creative, but when I worked with those guys, I was just like: "Wow!" They had such fun and freedom. They were trying things and stretching themselves. It was so inspiring that I was like: "I definitely want to do this!" — Agyness Deyn

I started making my own short films as a way of being able to give myself something to do and to study my craft. — Ruby Rose

Then in college, besides economics, I also majored in studio art and got involved in photography and making short films and acting. But I didn't know you could make a living that way. — Brit Marling

Short Brief Story, How I started to make this which you see today?
I'm talking about the works, most people doubt about that I will become a writer. Most people said me this, you must drink a lot of teas, to become a writer (you must have a rich vocabulary and many other stuff!). But check out what Stephen King said in his book "Memoir and Craft" this
amazed me.
Most people know him as an actor or as an book writer...Maybe this can change some people opinions which didn't believe in me (in their opinions), I just show in my books a new world, YEAH I read some books in this time, I watched some films, I finished some games, some interesting stuff happened and many other things. But the best thing everything as much as possible was added in the books Series The Life Of One Kid! — Deyth Banger

Around age 18, I decided to start writing my own stuff. I wrote some bad short films and shot them. I tried to make them better and better. I slowly learned how to make movies, and I think I'm still learning. — Quentin Dupieux

The more you create, the more ambitious you become with your projects. Short films were a direct result of over 200 web series sketches and vlogs. After you create enough 2-minute videos, you start to wonder what else there is. Deadlines and discipline and quantity with a focus on quality have always been what keeps me going. — Anna Akana