Film Technique Quotes

As Frances had learned to do in times of uncertainty, she created a project over which she had total control and began writing a book "Dedicated to the memory of Irving Thalberg as a tribute to his vision and genius." How to Write and Sell Film Stories was written for "serious students of film technique." She filled the straightforward textbook with anecdotes from her films and others' to convey the lessons on the development of plot, motivation, and characters she had learned with Thalberg. She had come to believe that because of increased censorship and the limited number of adaptable plays and novels, "eighty percent of the motion pictures produced will be soon be stories written exclusively for the screen" and the time was right for a book on original screenplays. The audience for the book was immediate; universities ordered copies before it was published and it quickly went into several printings. The book led to her taking on an advice column on screen writing for Cinema Progress, a serious educational film magazine published by the American Institute of Cinematography based at the University of Southern California. She opened her house to roundtable discussions with students and sponsored a scenario contest with the winners serving as studio "apprentices. ~ Cari Beauchamp

If you need to strap a camera to you or get in a small space, then it makes sense to use digital.I do think it is possible to use a digital camera artistically, but it can only be good if you are using film technique. Film has grain, and digital has pixels, and there is not that much of a difference, but digital does not replace the need to create a scene and light it properly and spend time considering the shot. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

If a writer has to find a rhythm if his novel is to come 'right', a rhythm which he may well discover in the rhythm of an individual sentence, then likewise a reader has to find a corresponding rhythm in his reading, which may equally well be discovered in responding to local effect.
The intimacy of this relationship between writer and reader is well caught in a recent observation made by Graham Greene, 'Novels should always have, if not dull, then at least level patches. That's where the excessive use of film technique, cutting sharply from intensity
to intensity is harmful. . . . The writer needs level passages for his subconscious to work up to the sharp scenes . . . and the reader needs those level patches too, so that he can share in the processes of creation - not by conscious analysis, but by absorption?'
To reflect on the wide-ranging effects of rhythm
in reading would seem to be one way of making a start on tracing that obscure route that leads from 'absorption' to 'conscious analysis'. ~ Ian Gregor

All film technique, I am convinced (and like many of my theories I am probably alone in adhering to it), originates in dreaming. We could dream slow motion before the moving camera was invented. In our dreams we could cut between parallel actions, we assembled montage shots long before some self-important Russian claimed to show us how. This is where film derives its particular power. It re-creates on screen what has been going on in our unconscious. ~ William Boyd

I would always slip away to the cinema. I always found something absolutely extraordinary about the fact that these actors were always kind of kicking hard at some new dimension they were doing on film. ~ Geoffrey Rush

Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers. ~ Roger Ebert

I'm not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel. ~ Martin Scorsese

When I was in school, and even after, I did a lot of classic plays, and I guess it sort of extended into film. ~ Andre Holland

I'm the spokesman for ADT, and ADT, brother, pays better than most actors make on film. ~ Ving Rhames

As a filmmaker, you complete a film you have spent years obsessively making, and you know the release prints will never look quite the same; prints get scratched and dirty. ~ Asif Kapadia

I actually don't see that strong of a connection between my background as a rock 'n roller and my early films. In a way I think your musical identity in film work is determined by the jobs that come your way. ~ Cliff Martinez

I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house ... love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp. ~ David Byrne

I would be perfectly happy doing an indie film that had some really cool creative ideas. ~ Robert Stromberg

I'm just looking for the best story being told by the best people and the best part that I can find. If those things add up, I want to be a part of it whether it's a studio film or, more likely in that instance, an independent film. ~ John Hawkes

A technique I developed quite naturally to help me make smooth transitions was to use a word or phrase from the next routine in the preceding one. ~ Franklyn Ajaye

I'm a bit of a pessimist, oh yeah, and I always think the film I'm about to make is going to be a disaster. ~ Lenny Abrahamson

I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements. ~ Martin Scorsese

TV and film are very different media with different requirements. In a TV show, you have actors and fellow writers and directors, who are interpreting your work. With a novel, you only have ink, words and your reader. ~ Howard Gordon

Don't worry about techniques. Don't worry about chakras. Instead, concern yourself with finding the dharma and meditate. Then the kundalini will release. ~ Frederick Lenz

When I make records I have full control of everything and I know how it sounds before it comes out, with films it's outta my hands. ~ Ice-T

The mind of a child is where the Revolution begins, ~ Immortal Technique

For many, what they see on television becomes more true than what they see with their eyes in the external world. But this is not so, for one must never forget that every television and has been edited. The viewer does not see the event. He sees in edited form of the event. It is not the event which is seen, but an edited symbol or an edited image of the event. An aura and illusion of objectivity and truth is built up, which could not be totally the case, even if the people shooting the film were completely neutral. ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

Amanda Cardinale, Abby Koons, Emily Sweet, and Sharon Krassney also deserve my thanks. I appreciate all that you do. The Cyrus family deserves my thanks not only for welcoming me into their home, but for all they've done with the film. And a special thanks goes to ~ Nicholas Sparks

For the first time ever, I was alone in a different country. I was nervous about how I was going to cope in this big bustling city and so I employed a technique which still serves me well today. I imagined myself as someone who relished new exciting opportunities, who was utterly unafraid and perpetually optimistic. It was a kind of reinvention. Everyone I met was new. These people didn't know me, there was no shared history, so I could be anything or anyone I wanted to be. My theory was that if I behaved like a confident, cheerful person, eventually I would buy it myself, and become that. I always had traces of strength somewhere inside me, it wasn't fake. It was just a way of summoning my courage to the fore and not letting any creeping self-doubt hinder my adventures. This method worked then, and it works now. ~ Dawn French

This place is just a trailer for a film, Brandon. Our lives here. Heaven is like the movie. Except there's only one trailer before the movie. And the movie won't ever end. ~ Travis Thrasher

When I was a kid in London there was just something about the light and there's something about the way London went onto film in those days, whether it was Technicolor or Technicolor plus the flatness of the light, or whatever. ~ William Monahan

I would certainly say that films like Time Code and the Loss of Sexual Innocence were far more rewarding to me in terms of being able to move forward as a filmmaker. ~ Mike Figgis

Over the years, I have been subjected to many indignities, all for the sake of Art. If I ever catch him, I'm going to kill the guy. ~ Bob Hope

I am not quite comfortable with people identifying themselves as my fans. You know nothing about me. You have just seen me perform in a film. How can you be my fan? If I have to tell you honestly, I want an audience and not fans. ~ Kangana Ranaut

Television cannot film corruption. Television cannot spend five days on a rattling railway train, talking endlessly. Television needs excitement, it needs an angle, it needs a 'sound bite. ~ Paul Theroux

The thing that interests me is the good and evil in everybody. I don't have conventional heroes in the films that I directed, because I believe there's good and evil in everybody. ~ William Friedkin

My work in books, films and talks lies almost wholly with children, and I have very little time to give to grown-ups. ~ Enid Blyton

If I had to catalog all the moronic plot turns in The Day After Tomorrow, we'd be here until the next ice age. It's just so very bad. You can have a pretty good time snickering at it-unless, like me, you think there's something to this global warming thing, and you shudder at the irony of a movie meant to warn people about a dangerous environmental trend that completely discredits it. Is it possible that the film is a plot to make environmental activists look as wacko as anti-environmentalists always claim they are? ~ David Edelstein

I love films. I love music. I love poetry and stories. All of that I feel ... I sort of get very excited and fed by. ~ Ben Whishaw

Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel. ~ W. H. Auden

It's a very strange experience to watch yourself in a movie anyway. I most frequently don't do it, but if I was going to do it, I would do it in a private way, not at a public screening at a film festival, which is just an overwhelming experience. ~ Jesse Eisenberg

The beauty of the collage technique is that you're using sounds that have never met and were never supposed to meet. You introduce them to each other, at first they're a bit shy, clumsy, staring at their shoes. But you can sense there's something there. So you cut and paste a little bit and by the end of the song you can spot them in the corner, holding hands. ~ Jens Lekman

I don't feel that fear is a good incentive on a film set. ~ Andrew Lincoln

'The Road' is about that fear that all parents can have. What's going to happen to your child if you're not around? It takes those concerns to an extreme. In the film, without me the boy has no food, no shelter, no resources at all. ~ Viggo Mortensen

I have always believed that directing a film is like telling a story. You have to tell it well so that it is appreciated. ~ Anupam Kher

There's a beautiful forgiveness practice I love which is quite simple. It's called "Ho'oponopono" (pronounced: ho-o-pono-pono) and it's a lot easier to do than it is to say. It's a Kahuna Hawaiian technique, which involves repeating four phrases internally toward yourself or the person whom you're having a hard time forgiving. ~ Marci Shimoff

My childhood dream was always to be on Broadway. I wanted to end up in TV and film. It's kind of flipped, and I'm not mad about it, but my childhood dream is Broadway and I want to end up there. ~ Grant Gustin

When I graduated from Brown after majoring in women's studies, I made my first PBS documentary, 'Women of Substance.' My first feature documentary was called 'American Hollow,' which I did for HBO and was at the Sundance Film Festival. ~ Rory Kennedy

I do not mean to impugn the social justice and social expediency of the redistribution of incomes aimed at by N.I.R.A. and by the various schemes for agricultural restriction. The latter, in particular, I should strongly support in principle. But too much emphasis on the remedial value of a higher price-level as an object in itself may lead to serious misapprehension as to the part which prices can play in the technique of recovery. The stimulation of output by increasing aggregate purchasing power is the right way to get prices up; and not the other way round. ~ John Maynard Keynes