Joel McHale Quotes

In TV, you are much more likely to see the episode closer to the script as written - in terms of the order of the scenes - than you would in a movie, and here's why: you don't have as many days to edit. You have 10 to 12 weeks or more to edit a feature, and you have four days to edit TV. That's a huge difference.

The craziest thing about TV directing is I turned in a version, and then they made their final changes - so I don't know what they are. So I'm like, "Ooo, I'm dying to see the final print."

In TV, you have no time and sort of just carpet bomb the scene with as many angles as possible as quickly as possible and find it in the edit.

'Game of Thrones' is shot on a very similar kind of schedule to a TV show, but there's a lot more time and focus put into the script.

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.

With TV, you just have to finish the days and get the episodes out. And it's always going to be an impossible schedule. That's the funny thing with TV that not a lot of people realize.

You know, episodic TV directing is a very long and arduous job. You have very short schedules, short short shooting days, and you have to get lot of pages done.

We had an amazing experience shooting the first season of 'Leverage' with such a talented cast and crew and with the full support of TNT behind us.

When you're working on a television series, you only get a very short off-season. The scheduling of TV is relentless.

A lot of directors, they don't go into the editing room during the shoot. When they come back, they've forgotten what they've shot. That's why their films come out a year after they shoot them.

I come out of TV, where you never reshoot, because you don't have time. If you do reshoot, it's because someone really screwed up.

Being on a show like 'Fear the Walking Dead,' I started to learn more about camera work, learn more about the way the crew operates, and had more of a stronger opinion on how I think a television director can operate in the healthiest way.

You have to edit it, mix it, color grade it, there are processes and the audience doesn't care when they binge-watch a show. They think in four weeks you should get the next season.

My son works as a production assistant in television.

Working on 'Roadies' has been a fantastic experience.

The craft of putting together a performance on film or television is incredibly intricate; you're putting together a story that is completely out of order, that you have to make some sense of, that you have to keep some coherence to the story, to the character.

I've made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I'm the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you're the boss, if it ain't good, you don't use it. You just cut it out.

The way I work is that I never let people do an assembly. I don't like it because it shapes the film in a way that I can't really control. To me, editing is making the film and it's a huge process and editors are under-rated.

Generally I try to be on set as much as possible, especially during the early part of a season. I read all of the outlines and scripts and look at the auditions and the cuts for my other shows and give notes on all of that. There's a lot to do, but I enjoy nothing more than being on set because that's where the magic happens.

There are always things I have to remove. I might look at a shot for five months, when somebody new to the screening room will say, 'hey, there's a modern air conditioner in that window.' It's a process.

I'm not one of those directors who can just kind of walk away from the edit room and come back and check in.

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.

There's this kind of incredibly mistaken idea that because it's so much cheaper to roll the camera than it used to be and it's so much easier to accumulate a ton of footage, that then you can just go shoot a ton of footage and the editor will make sense out of it. But if you don't have something deliberate made, you're not gonna save it in the editing room.

The way television works is that directors come in and out, and they're not there all the time, following every character through every scene. They're vagabonds who go from one show to another.

If you're onstage and you're improvising and nothing's happening, people are racing for the door. But the director can go shopping later and pick up pieces and moments and insert them.