David Ogden Stiers Quotes

I usually do about five cuts as a director. I haven't ever directed a film where I haven't made five passes through the movie, and that takes a long time.

I've been in enough movies to know that when you're on the set and you start shooting, you're looking at playback and you get a sense of what it's going to be like.

Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.

It's funny to see the finished product of a movie, stuff that's so beautiful, and to remember the particulars.

I don't know how anyone ever makes a good movie. It's a miracle every time.

It's very rare to watch a movie and think, 'That's the movie we shot!' So many things happen, with edits and things getting cut out.

I directed a movie and now, I'm going to do the editing.

First of all, in the old days, if you wanted to show someone getting shot on film, all you could do was place an effect in the original take. And if you wanted to brighten somebody's face and leave the rest of the room dark, that was a very expensive process.

Being in quite a few movies... there's always things that are changing about a film.

Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.

Editing is where movies are made or broken. Many a film has been saved and many a film has been ruined in the editing room.

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.

You do need to edit yourself as you shoot because you have fewer options in a smaller movie. In other words, when I'm shooting a big movie, and I got an 85 day shooting schedule or more, then I'm saying I have enough time to shoot option A and B and C and D for every scene.

It is not as though the process of production holds any mystery for me, I know exactly what it involves and I know the predominant concern in shooting one of those things is production values - or as they would say, seeing it all up there on screen.

The organization that it takes to make a movie like 'Star Trek' is amazing, intimidating and fascinating.

When you think of a movie, most people imagine a two hour finished, polished product. But to get to that two hour product, it can take hundreds or thousands of people many months of full time work.

Watching the completed version of The Two Towers for example, I was very conscious of scenes - sometimes whole sequences - that I had seen being filmed or edited but which hadn't made it into the final cut.

I like pre-production and post the best. I don't like shooting at all. I find it grueling and tough, but I love post and the whole process of seeing the film finally come together. You start ironing out all the rough spots, and the really bad bits you just throw away. So from day one of post to the last day, you see nothing but improvements.

Of course, a movie is in constant flux.

I don't think people understand what it takes to make a movie unless they've experienced it themselves or been around it. It's a miracle every time you make a movie, and a bigger miracle if it turns out well.

I loved being behind the scenes and finding out how they make movies.

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

When I'm working on the scripts or working with the other actors or rehearsing with the director, and when the director is cutting the movie, and we've shot the scene, the director is not looking at the visual effects.

I would love to produce a film.

People have a different idea of how movies are made than they really are.