Debbie Allen Quotes

Film is shot in fragments, and the same moments can be shot again and again until the director is satisfied.

My biggest role as director on the film is keeping a sense of the overview - how to cast the movie and shoot it in such a way that it will cut together. And how to design the style and tone.

In a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.

Most screenplays depend primarily on the vision of a director.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

Going to directing wasn't a reaction away from acting as much as it was a move towards something I always wanted to do. Ever since I was a kid, I was interested in the camera and how it worked and why one director would place it in this part of the room and then another would place it in that part of the room.

Shooting on film is great because it imparts discipline: What do you need to see so you're not finding it in the camera. When I'm shooting, I have the scene in mind, where I'm going to have certain lines. I learned to overlap and to shoot more than I think I need. That was the learning curve.

Direction is something that interests me. Even while shooting, I always have conversations with the director to get a better understanding of shooting technicalities.

In films, you have to follow the director's vision. Filmmaking is a director's medium. So everything happens as per the script and his vision.

I really enjoy being behind the camera. A ton of projects I've done that are my most favorite projects would be where I actually executive produce and I'm behind the camera.

I can't sit on my bum very long in a movie theater seat, and when I'm directing, I always want to move the camera or edit.

All film directors, even the ones using 3-D today, want you to look at what they chose.

As a director, you're looking for ways to tell the story with the whole image and not primarily dialogue.

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 think you cannot make films without choosing everything.

Zhang Yimou is an artist. Sometimes we did only two or three shots a day because we were waiting for the sun.

Film work can be very interesting, but it also can be awfully boring because who creates the film? The actors? No. It is the director. It's his piece of work.

As far as writing or directing a film, I've worked with enough people who have done that that I know it's just a whole other level of responsibility and chaos and murder that I could not see happening. For now, I'm just going to see what comes. I know what I like and what direction I have.

If you are making a record, you are the one saying 'action', and you are the one saying 'cut,' and you have to be sure that the most interesting thing is not going on outside the frame.

When you're working with film, you can only shoot one angle at a time, and then everything has to stop, and you re-light it and shoot everything else from the opposite side, so it's really important that you stick exactly to what's written.

The director is the only person on the set who has seen the film. Your job as a director is to show up every day and know where everything will fit into the film.

When you shoot a movie, the camera is always taking, taking, taking and not giving anything back.

I love directing more than anything in the world, and I love being in the editing room. I love cutting. When I'm shooting, I cut it in my head anyway. That's not to say that it always turns out that way, but you have a sense when you're composing a sequence or a scene how you want it to look anyway.

I feel like I'm a filmmaker; I don't feel I need to yell action and cut.

Visual elements are, of course, the director's job.