Charlie Kaufman Quotes

There are some directors who don't like the set much. They like post-production, where you have all the ingredients in the can - you've got all the footage, all the music, the various effects - and then you have to do the alchemy necessary to make it all good, a long and very key process of putting everything together and making it into the cogent thing that you want.

It seems like movies normally take a long time to get made. When you focus on it, and you're waiting for something, it seems to take longer.

Even other movies I wasn't involved with, I'd watch them edit 'cause I really enjoy watching them go through their process. It's a very economical, educational process.

Whenever I'm doing any film, there's always three different things. There's the script, which is really just a blueprint. And then, you shoot the movie and it's an entirely different experience than you would expect from reading the script. And then, there's the whole post process and the editing, and it becomes something else entirely.

A lot of it is found in the editing room and part of that is due to some of the improvisational tactics we employ on set. Part of it is that the shot goes a little bit long and they end up coming down to fit time.

With 'Sin Nombre,' there are parts that I wish were longer. And with 'Jane Eyre' especially, there were parts that I had to compress that I thought it would have been really nice to spend more time with - to spend with the characters.

Normally, if you're lucky, the idea of a film you have in your head is more or less what you get back when you see it after the editing and the whole post-production process.

There's some things that you learn as you're shooting, and as you're editing that are key, because when you start you don't have the brain that can finish it. You don't really know what it is, and that's the key job; figuring out what you actually have, not what you're dreaming of having.

Any film I've made, I've only really begun to understand in the cutting room. That's when the story shows itself to you, like a wreck coming out of the sea.

I've never made any film that I wouldn't go back and re-edit.

I guess why the Ocean's films are hard for me is because on the one hand you have to make sure the performances are there, but on the other hand it's a film that demands, to my mind, a very layered and complex visual scheme. That takes a lot of time to figure out.

Four months of preparation and about 12 hours of shooting turned into about 30 seconds of screen time.

The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.

I never watch the dailies. What I usually do is have a look at the rough or final cut, and I just get something from the story. Sometimes I start composing even before the director has shot anything. The dailies don't help me at all.

I don't think you can be a great director without knowing a lot about editing.

From 2005 to 2010, I was exclusively shooting 'The Act of Killing' and then editing it.

I can lock myself for months in the editing suite with no noise or distractions. It's fascinating to see the film taking shape.

I don't think enough directors know enough about editing.

I remember walking into the editing room when I was a junior in college, and I watched the guy make cuts, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. He was just putting these shots together and telling the story, and it was amazing.

You never have any idea where your movie's going to go when you're shooting - you're in this little bubble. Everything you care about is getting the next step right: getting the script right, finding the right actors, shooting it. Then you spend half a year in a dark room editing your film, and you don't talk to anybody.

I wanted to complete 'Maryada Ramanna' in a short time, but it took me almost a year, and now 'Eega' took double the time, but in the end, it was worth it.

When I make a film, the yardstick is my mind. If I laugh at the jokes and feel sad at the serious undersides, then the subject works.

Everything else - music, cinematography, costumes, design, acting - can be judged at face value. But when you're looking at editing, you don't know what the totality of the material was, and you don't know the working dynamic between a director and an editor - whether the editor was micromanaged or given free rein. It's very difficult.

I never think about it much, the visual aspect of it, until we start making the movie. I don't really think about it when we write. When we finish, and I start putting the film together, and we pick the locations, I do think about that a lot.

It's not writing in the traditional sense, but I've always said that the writing process continues on the set and even into the editing room.