Dan Scanlon Quotes

Every Pixar film, when we start developing the story, it takes about four years to make one of our films.

Actually, no, but I am close to the people who are working on Chicken Little, and I'm very close to the people over at Pixar. I mean, as far as stories are concerned, almost everything we have could be told that way.

I actually think storyboards are great. I don't draw well enough to do them myself. I've only used storyboards a couple of times. We used two storyboards in 'Margaret': one for the bus accident and for the opera sequence at the end.

It took me a good two-and-a-half to three years to write 'Dhobi Ghat' and more importantly be satisfied with it.

The idea of 'Roja' was with me for seven years before I made it.

Sometimes the nature of a big movie, the nature of the material, the scene doesn't have the richness that you'd want it to.

I'd be really interested in making a dramatic, low key 3D film.

Working on a green screen set, yeah, it's almost like reading from a novel, taking those black words and creating a world around you.

You can't, no matter what anyone says, build a movie around someone.

With me, I probably work a lot more than people assume I do, but people don't realize how much work goes into writing and producing and making a movie.

I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.

'Alice' took over two years to make and took a great deal of planning, obviously much more than usual. We spent so much more time prepping the film, and that was unique for us.

By and large, the making of motion pictures is all about, 'Let's ratchet it up.' And I always think, 'We don't need to ratchet this up.' If you do, don't call it 'Captain Phillips' or 'The Maersk Alabama.' Call it something else, and then you have carte blanche to do anything, down to sea serpents and aliens.

I love all kinds of movies. I'd especially like to make some, you know, violent crime drama.

I've never directed before, so I need to make sure that people know that I can. The movie that I've written, 'The Sophisticates,' is a... small ensemble comedy and I hope it's charming and funny.

'Shadow Hero' was a dream to work on.

I've produced a couple of films and really enjoyed starting it from the very beginning and seeing it all the way through to the end; that was very gratifying.

It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.

More often than not, the experience of shooting the movie has been disappointing and the end product has been a mere shadow of what I hoped it would be. But immersing myself in the story - that's what I like best of all.

Making a movie is a lot of problem solving.

Mr. Disney and his staff were constantly scouting for great stories to bring to life on film.

Films are all about decisions, and that's what I love.

The whole thing with animated movies is that it's very hard to get out of your head because it's very moving through each line systematically.

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

Meanwhile, the Ice Storm was still in development, And that was something I really wanted to do, and frankly I don't think I was ready to do a big production like this.