Brian Stelfreeze Quotes

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.

When I watch a film I get swept away. I don't really watch the camera.

We go to movies to be taken away to another place, to be dazzled, to dream, to hopefully be filled with wonder. The design of the world and the look of the film is all in service of trying to create that feeling of wonder in the audience.

The experience of a film is immersive, and music is supposed to underline and help that experience.

If you are not moved by the character, no amount of CGI will give you a performance that is emotionally engaging or devastating - what a live-action performance does.

When you see 'Lord of the Rings,' you want to feel like you've been dropped into it and that you're part of it. You don't want to be aware of how it's being done; you just want it to feel really seamless.

I wanted to make people feel the same way I feel when I see a good movie.

What I try to do - I mean 'try,' because you don't get there all the time - is to have impact with content. It's those moments in which you're trying to bring people beyond filmed theater. If I have an ambition, it's that.

Movies have these transcendent moments where everything is just right, from the dialogue to the music to the lighting to the narrative context; everything is just perfect, and something magical happens - the film breaks through the screen and does something to you.

As a viewer, I love watching movies. There has to be an emotional connection.

When I worked on 2001 - which was my first feature film - I was deeply and permanently affected by the notion that a movie could be like a first-person experience.

Every movie has three things you have to do - you have to have a compelling story that keeps people on the edge of their seats; you have to populate that story with memorable and appealing characters; and you have to put that story and those characters in a believable world. Those three things are so vitally important.

When I watch a film, I watch it as an audience instead of thinking as an actor or an intellectual. I see whether it made me laugh, get involved or shocked me at certain points. Something has to stir inside me.

The big thing for me is to make films that you feel, whether you feel happy, whether you feel sad, whether you feel sick; it's to make the audience feel so that the next day they remember what they saw.

First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.

That's what film can do in a way that TV and other long-form storytelling can't. It gives you this very immersive moment.

The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.

I don't know - music in film, for me, is not another part of a soundtrack; it is something that also helps to approach a character, to foresee the type of image - you see what I mean - it's like a part of the process.

I've often been accused of, 'Oh the movies looked good but there's no story,' but I disagree with that in theory, and '9' is a perfect example for me because the feel, the texture, and the look of that world, and those characters, is the story. That's a major component of why you feel the way you do when you're watching it.

Just the textures of things are really important to me as I'm writing; I think atmospherics and visuals can have such emotional impact if you can harness the thematic thread between how scenes look and how your characters feel. I like to tug on that thread.

A script like 'The Sixth Sense' is fun to read: It's so well-written, and you get a vivid sense of what's going to be onscreen.

When you make a film, you realize that the audience will be powerless to stop it or flip back to refresh their memories or skip the boring parts. They are at the mercy of your storytelling.

I think what I look for in a script, it's the relatability quotient that matters the most.

We used to go to movies to see stories about ourselves. It would transport us to new worlds and we'd see aspects of ourselves reflected back.

During script narrations, if I feel the screenplay mood jumping abruptly, I tell the director, and they work on it.