Orson Welles Quotes

You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.

A film ingeniously directed does indeed give the impression of having been laid end to end, but a film ingeniously edited gives the impression of having suppressed all direction.

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.

An epic is the canvas Brian DePalma paints on.

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.

As a loyal believer in the Auteur Theory I first felt editing was but the logical consequence of the way in which one shoots. But, what I learned is that it is actually another writing.

With film, so much is in the director's hands. Once something is cut together - unless you're in the editing room - you don't really remember what the alternatives are.

I became really aware that when you're making a movie, you're making it three times. You're making it when you're writing it. You're making it when you're shooting it. And then you're remaking it again when you're editing it.

The director makes the movie. The director has to have the story in their head, has to know the style of the piece, has to answer questions from actors, design, set, lighting, every department throughout the pre-production, production, and post-production, because they've got it in their mind. They've got to know exactly what they want and what the style and story of the movie is. It's them. They make it.

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

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 are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

There's the movie you write, there's the movie you shoot and the movie you edit, and often, you find that you're getting the same information out of a scene that you already have and a scene that's actually more powerful, so you have to make the tough decision to take it out.

The only reason for using another cut is to improve the scene.

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

Technically, maybe I learned most of all from George Stevens, and among his movies I learned the most from 'A Place in the Sun.' It's a lesson in moviemaking.

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.

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.

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

After directing movies, I respect any director in this world, because making a movie as a director is tons and tons of work.

I really love Hitchcock; I think he was a complete genius, to me one of the best directors. Such a sense of how to put things together.

The director is the channel through which a motion picture reaches the screen.

You ought to have a perspective when you're making a film.

I would love to direct a western. I love taking photographs and I'm always fascinated with angles. Also, my father was a film editor, and I have a talent for thinking of things that aren't always in a script.

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.