Jane Campion Quotes

The funny thing about directing is that you have your own opinions, but it's a collaboration. Directing is a group effort. Even though you might think something works, the smartest thing you can do as a director is try and weigh the opinions of the people around you.

Directing is a unique endeavor where you are in charge of so many people. As a writer, it is sort of the opposite.

As a director or writer, you have to be so controlling.

There is a director for a reason, because a director knows what's best for the movie. You just give your director as much as you can to work with, and hopefully, the decisions they make are going to be great.

I haven't worked with a director who is a crazy person at all.

I like working with directors I respect, who give me freedom but also give me a good base from which to work.

I know it sounds earnest, but I do really feel in my bones that acting is just a small part of the equation when you are making a movie. The director really is in charge. Actors are as important or unimportant as the rest of the people around them.

Collaboration is just, really, a group of people getting in a room with their eye on a very similar prize and wanting to come out with the same show. The director, ultimately, is the guy in front of whom the buck stops. So, he has to have the courage to prevail. But, he has got to have a huge amount of respect for his collaborators.

As a director, if you know what you want, then it's not scary.

The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There's a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.

And I think one way or another it's evident to those who work with me that as a writer, a director, a friend, as somebody's there that's very anxious to get the movie made.

The idea of an animated film is you always kind of get a little bit daunted by it as a filmmaker because it feels like a lot of your communication is going to be with computer artists, and you're going to have to kind of channel the movie through extra pairs of hands.

I feel I should defer to the writers and the directors because they're the ones who have the complete vision. They see things through from the beginning to the end. I'm responsible for one small part, so my scope is much more limited than theirs.

I used to think that, when I was a director, I would have a very specific vision of what everything would look like, but now I am more of a camp counselor.

I think every director's different. Every director's got his own style. I mean, when I directed, I basically just screamed for eight hours a day, twelve hours a day.

As a director, I never feel that I have the answers.

I think that directing is the ultimate martyred task of filmmaking, that it has nobility to it. It takes three years to make a film, for the most part. I think it requires the attentiveness of a mother hen.

I love the experience of getting to direct because I can have all of the fun of helping shape the show, but I don't have to actually do it, so I don't have to deal with the nerves.

When the director has a vision for a piece that I've never heard before, and they can back that up with visuals, and they talk a good game, I get really interested in the world that they're trying to create.

I've certainly worked with really great directors who haven't acted.

Directing takes a lot of time.

As a director, I love being able to really be a contributing factor to the overall vision of a project.

I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there's got to be a captain.

When you're a director, you really live whatever you do.

Good directors say, Here's where the play is. They stand by the heart of the matter. Some of them stand beside it.