Ed Helms Quotes

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move!

Every inch of my writing career has been influenced by my screenwriting education. I was lucky enough to go to film school at USC, and I got a crash course in how to tell a story efficiently. I learned structure, pace, my style, how to know your audience, and most importantly, how to take criticism and edits properly.

When I shoot a film, I take my camera and put it among the characters and let it show you their world, their problems, their happiness and the little things that matter to them.

For me, the filmmaking has to be about the dramaturgy.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

I am not at all interested in theories about cinema. I am only interested in images and people and sound. I am really a very simple person.

I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.

A screenplay is really a blueprint for something that will be filmed. Therefore you must always keep in mind that whatever you write is going to be staged, for real.

When you make a movie, you do it so piecemeal. You're doing it, not only scene by scene, out of order, but shot by shot, line by line. And there's this idea that the director has the whole thing in his or her head and they're going to somehow weave it all together in the end.

I have considered the directing, actually. Not so much the writing. That is not really interesting, but the directing is really interesting to me.

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

I think film, to me, as a director, is about telling a story.

As a director, the biggest job is to discern the imperfections in emotional tone and then view it in the global picture of what you're trying to do, if that makes sense. It's a rhythm, like music is a rhythm or composition and art is a rhythm. Dialogue is a rhythm as well.

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

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.

With moviemaking, the audience always has to keep asking, 'What happens next?' If you have the wrong piece of music over a scene, people aren't going to get the scene. If you have the wrong camera angle, people aren't going to pay attention. That's as much a part of the process as getting people to talk to you.

TV and film taught me to think cinematically. Teaching others to edit, for example, provides a great deal of insight into the millions of ways in which given elements can be put together to tell a story.

I want to direct. Definitely a goal of mine.

I always want to be telling stories in whatever fashion I can, and directing is really just understanding and learning a different element of that storytelling process.

Every story is different, every movie is different, every director is different.

I would love to direct - or try my hand at it, anyway.

I still want to direct. That's my main love, and that comes from being obsessed with subtleties and people.

Whether you're an actor, producer, writer, or director, it's all about the story you're going to tell.