Film Students Quotes

When I talk to film students, I always say, 'Buy the DVDs and listen to the commentaries, look at the making of, look at the behind-the-scenes,' because that's such a great learning tool. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

I like doing commentary. As a filmmaker and film student, I think it's really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things. I often like the technical commentaries myself. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

Film theory has nothing to do with film. ~ Roger Ebert

I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it's hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don't get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I'm sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

I love my work, apart from when it's driving me crazy. But I get to be interested in stuff and think like a filmmaker as I'm buzzing about the world and then see an opportunity to make a film, and then make it happen. ~ Lucy Walker

We applaud the people who are film stars, who get elected to an office, who are very athletic, the small group who play with power in a very limited way. But we're completely oblivious to what can be done to the infinite realities that exist in front of us. We deny them. ~ Frederick Lenz

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

Love, too, has to be learned. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

My brother and I are huge fans of foreign horror. Some of the most interesting movies are coming from overseas. I guess if there was one change we'd like to see, it would be more original horror films made by the studio system and less of a reliance on remakes. ~ Michael Rasmussen

Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy? ~ Allan Bloom

For me, the film has to be incredibly bad to make me want to pack up and leave. ~ Jacques Rivette

Eighty percent of the cases used in the typical MBA program are about successful companies. Students graduate with this notion that 'If I do everything that the people in those cases did, then my organization will grow and be successful, too.' ~ Clayton Christensen

Sometimes little things can prolong an experience in a way that you run over budget. It's very scientific; a lot of people don't understand the science that goes behind making a film. ~ Nate Parker

Life without kids is like a camera without film. ~ Dirk Benedict

I made my first film on 16mm. Then I began using 35mm.Then I began working in Hollywood. And I began to really understand how films were made by professionals. I have to say I wasn't very impressed. ~ Mike Figgis

Just as trying to impose sharia law wouldn't make people into good Muslims, imposing the hijab wouldn't automatically confer modesty. Without fear of God and a true submission to Him, these outward displays of Islamic identities were just about showing off an identity, he explained, not about faith. "There could be people who follow sharia law, but they're not believers," he said. "Or they could be someone who doesn't cover, but they are believers," he said.

Covering your head required true commitment before it truly worked. "Clothes don't make your pious," he told his students. "If you're pious, the covering can protect you. But trying to force women into the house, or into the hijab, it's not going to make them pious. ~ Carla Power

I am writing this during my free . . . oops! un-assigned period, at the end of my first day of teaching. So far, I have taught nothing - but I have learned a great deal. To wit:
We have to punch a time clock and abide by the Rules.
We must make sure our students likewise abide, and that they sign the time sheet whenever they leave or reenter a room.
We have keys but no locks (except in lavatories), blackboards but no chalk, students but no seats, teachers but no time to teach.
The library is closed to the students. ~ Bel Kaufman

I've definitely become more aware and conscious of what directors I'm working with because it's so important. The director is really more than half the battle of the film. You really rely on that. That's become really, really important to me, for sure. ~ Kate Mara

Students will sometimes decide that they don't like where they are sitting, and I probably won't notice if they re-seat themselves over by their friend. And they are right. I'm very busy in class. So if I don't have a serious consequence, it's worth it for them to take that gamble, and pretty soon it becomes rampant. Then I start nagging, and I hate nagging. So on the first time, I warn them that what they are doing is actually in the category of defiance which should earn them a referral, or at least a detention. ~ Kristen Coad

Tom Cruise only makes one or two film appearances a year. A baseball player can be the hero or the goat one-hundred and sixty-two times a year. ~ Dave Winfield

It is the opinion of most thoughtful students of life that happiness in this world depends chiefly on the ability to take things as they come. An instance of one who may be said to have perfected this attitude is to be found in the writings of a certain eminent Arabian author who tells of a traveller who, sinking to sleep one afternoon upon a patch of turf containing an acorn, discovered when he woke that the warmth of his body had caused the acorn to germinate and that he was now some sixty feet above the ground in the upper branches of a massive oak. Unable to descend, he faced the situation equably. 'I cannot,' he observed, 'adapt circumstances to my will: therefore I shall adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here.' Which he did. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

There's always the influence of music, film, art and the other things that drive me. I'm usually inspired by my environment and whatever is making me happy or mad. ~ Adam Jones

Many teachers are concerned about the amount of material they must cover in a course. One cynic suggested a formula: since, he said, students on the average remember only about 40% of what you tell them, the thing to do is to cram into each course 250% of what you hope will stick. ~ Paul Halmos

Sometimes film kills the room to dream. ~ David Lynch

It's easy to make a film, but it's hard to make a career of being a filmmaker. ~ Ira Sachs

My advice to people who want to teach is pretty simple and very likely to be ridiculed: don't believe the bullshit. You're not there to help students get skills for a workplace. You're not there to make them more marketable. You're not there to provide them with answers to petty, superficial questions. You're not there to impress them – or yourself – with the latest technological wonder that promises to make something "better" but will probably only shorten some algorithmic process and benefit an employer. You're not there to mass produce replaceable parts for the machinery of the global economy. You're there for one reason and one reason only: to make them better people than they were when they came in. ~ Peter K. Fallon

When it's time to film and to actually take on the role of Precious, I felt an immense responsibility to do it justice. ~ Gabourey Sidibe

Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. ~ Peter Thiel

When you're doing a film, people are always telling you exactly what to do. Literally, your own decisions are taken away from you. ~ Ben Barnes

but what I want you, my students, to take away from your middle-school experience," he continued, "is the sure knowledge that, in the future you make for yourselves, anything is possible. If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, whenever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary - the world really would be a better place. And if you do this, if you act just a little kinder than is necessary, someone else, somewhere, someday, may recognize in you, in every single one of you, the face of God." He ~ R.J. Palacio

I always feel that crime films are about capitalism because it is a genre where it is perfectly acceptable for all the characters to be motivated by the desire for money. In some ways, the crime film is the most honest American film because it portrays Americans as I experience a lot of them, in Hollywood, as being very concerned with money. ~ Andrew Dominik

Not many people get to play the lead character in a gigantic film and model for Ralph Lauren; it's amazing. ~ Levi Miller

Sometimes I have experienced at the start of a film you're very excited and enthusiastic and you've done all your preparation internally and externally and you start the film and it's all go ... Then your attention goes somewhere else. Your energy goes into telling the story, so you don't have the same amount of energy to be objective, and that's okay because sometimes you become a subject of the story and you're inside it so much that you don't need to keep on looking on the outside. ~ Colin Farrell

People say my films are dark. But like lightness, darkness stems from a reflection of the world. The thing is, I get these ideas that I truly fall in love with. And a good movie idea is often like a girl you're in love with, but you know she's not the kind of girl you bring home to your parents, because they sometimes hold some dark and troubling things. ~ David Lynch

Film festivals are a great vehicle for gaining an audience for your film, for exposure for the talent in the film and for the film makers to leverage opportunities for their films. I love the energy that film festivals bring. ~ Jamie Hector

I run upright mostly when I see daylight, so if you watch film you'll see I don't get hit in the chest much. ~ Eric Dickerson

People have no idea how physically tough doing a film is. ~ Ridley Scott

I started my career giving a clinic in bad acting in the film, "The Silver Chalice," and now I'm playing a crusty old man who's an animated automobile [in "Cars"]. That's a creative arc for you, isn't it? ~ Paul Newman

It's nice that we have all these different films. ~ Charlotte Gainsbourg

Ordinarily if an actor gets chosen for the lead in a film, he or she has already built up a repertoire, and everyone knows what he or she is capable of. ~ Zhang Ziyi

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

I directed the first "Twilight" movie. It was in my contract that I could have gone on to do the other films, but I didn't feel as connected to the other books. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

Nonconformists aren't just going against the grain; they're going against the brain. Either their brains aren't taking the easy way out to begin with, or in standing apart from their peers, these students are standing up to their biology. ~ Alexandra Robbins

I believe it's impossible to claim you have taught, when there are students who have not learned. With that commitment, from my first year as an English teacher until my last as UCLA basketball teacher/coach, I was determined to make the effort to become the best teacher I could possibly be, not for my sake, but for all those who were placed under my supervision. ~ John Wooden