Matthew Vaughn Quotes

I don't write on set. I also - in a funny way, I don't really differentiate between the writing and directing. I think it's all sort of the same thing.

I had a philosophy, which may have been proven right, that directing isn't as hard as everyone says it is.

When you're actually making the film, you're constantly battling to maintain its integrity.

By the first week of shooting, you know exactly where your film is heading based on the psychology of your director.

As the director, I try to go in and know as much as I can about the material. I really try to go in and understand what all the characters are about, what the movie's going to look like.

Most of the things I've had a producorial involvement on began as things I was going to direct, or I set out to direct myself and realized either I don't have the fire in my belly to do it, or I don't feel like I've licked the story enough.

Directing is its own monster with its own set of muscles and exercises.

The dream, I think, with any project is it starts with an idea, and then somebody writes it, and the writer hopes that a director comes on and makes this piece of material visual, and both the director and writer hope that they can have actors come in and bring something to it that neither one of them expected, elevating it along the way.

The movies sort of tell you what they want to be as you're writing them.

Nitesh Tiwari is so particular about his pre-production, where he plans every aspect of his film.

I think making a film is as much knowing what you don't like as what you do like, and avoiding the things that you don't like like the plague and making sure that they never appear onscreen in any shape or form.

I've always written the storyboards for the music videos, and it's been hard working with directors trying to get them to understand what I'm thinking.

If I have an idea I want to put in a movie, I know what camera will make that look best, and I have ideas for future projects and stuff I'd like to build for those. I think it's just part of how I work, though.

The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

My scripts are always filled with notes. I like to just analyze everything from the point of view of the whole picture, of the movie, my whole picture.

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with. My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something. It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

One of the most important tools that a filmmaker has are his/her notes.

I have a notebook, and I know what decisions will be made in pre-production. Everything is pre-determined in the pre-production period. I visually design the whole thing, and I know when things will happen.

You don't want to be starting a film not knowing what you want to do.

You become the movie you are making.

'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.

I think a film should have a gestation period of at least two or three years.

I think about my films for a long time, maybe years, but I write them in days.

You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.

Films are not mathematics - that's the first thing you need to understand. At least, that's how I feel. They are not words on paper. Films are made with people, with teams and with individual bundles of creativity coming together to fulfill the vision of an individual who is the director of the film.