Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes

When American producers see my film, they think that I had a big budget to do it, like 23 million. But in fact I had 10 percent of that budget. I did 'Mars et Avril' for only 2.3 million.

I think that there's a lot more freedom in the low budget, the independent films where, unfortunately, you don't have the money, necessarily, to get the orchestras in there to play a lot of stuff. But, you have a lot more freedom, very often.

At the end of the day, the less money you have, the easier it is to make a movie.

I don't choose to make low-budget films. But that is the reality of surviving in the Japanese film industry. However, the trade off is, since we're working on small budgets, we have freedom. You can't buy this freedom with money. With this freedom, I think there are an infinite number of possibilities.

I've made movies that cost less than one car chase.

Definition of an independent film is torture with less money and time.

If you want to make movies you need to think on a micro-micro level and figure out how to make them for nothing with people who really care about your movie and really want to make it.

When you're shooting super-low-budget - we had 20 days to shoot 'Diary,' and a little over $2 - time is money.

There is no reason why excellent pictures can't be made for $4-5 million.

I love making cheap films. I really do. What I've found is that I work better when it's both a fairly low budget and a short schedule. It focuses the mind, and it's a better atmosphere.

I can't speak for other people but the budget of my films is super tight to an extent that people can't even imagine.

Independent films now, they want to give you $2 million to make it, 21 days to shoot it and they want 10 movie stars in it.

One of the reasons I really love low budget filmmaking is you don't have to think about that as much. You can have more fun and be more playful and be freer creatively.

We didn’t want to disrupt the creative process. We have the chance to make the films we want because the films are not expensive. It’s very rare to be able to do that. It’s completely pure.

When you're on a lower-budget film, with one guy who maybe has a camera strapped to him, you're a much bigger part of that pie. You can be a sliver in a big Hollywood movie, but you can be a quarter of that indie movie pie. And I feel like, first of all, there is a real freedom that you feel from that, because it's like, you know what, if this is terrible, nobody's gonna ever see it, so I can be more brave.

None of the pictures I take a risk in cost a lot, so it doesn't take much for them to turn a profit. We don't deal in big budgets. We know what we want and we shoot it and we don't waste anything. I never understand these films that cost twenty, thirty million dollars when they could be made for half that. Maybe it's because no one cares. We care.

Any asshole can make a good movie for $100 million. I think it's way harder to make a movie with no money, and to start with no contacts and work your way up to international productions.

When you're starting out, you know, you have to do something on a very limited budget. You're not going to be able to have great actors, and you're most likely not going to have a great script.

I didn't have a lot of independent film connections. It really took until the digital film revolution came along that I realized that I could do it myself.

With an independent movie, it's like, 'Okay I know what I want, and I got to go for it.' I just got to get the A version of this. Occasionally we'll try a B version, but not often. We'll just get what's scripted and try to do that as best we can, so you sort of edit while you shoot an independent movie.

Occasionally I'll be a producer for hire on a larger budget movie, but with Blumhouse Pictures, we mainly focus on micro-budget, under-$5-million-dollar movies. That's what we're in business to do, and that's what we're in business to make.

Oh, I love making independent films, it's such a special, magical thing because you collaborate with a small group of people and everyone's pitching in. You'll see producers setting up the lunch table and the sound guy driving a van. We're all really there because we want to be.

I did this film for less money than it costs to stay in this hotel. We shot it in 20 days. We couldn't screw up takes for fun because we didn't have enough film.

I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made; I set out with a budget first. I said, 'What can I do well for $40,000?'.

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.