Jodie Foster Quotes

For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie.

With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life.

I love more than anything looking at a movie scene by scene and seeing the intention behind it. It allows you to really appreciate the hand of the filmmaker.

I have been in advertising and I know my craft well, but ultimately in cinema every scene has to matter, and that has to do with the writing.

Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes.

In a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.

Most writers have no idea how to make a film. It's a totally different skill set. Nor is it just to translate exactly what's on the page directly on to the screen - because that would be terrible. It would be five hours long, and the structure would be a mess. But the writers know the characters and the story.

What I do have to get across is the truth of the moment within the given scene. It's my job, as a director and screenwriter, to create the environment in which all those moments will come together eventually.

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.

Film is drama. You've only two hours, so you lie by exclusion, and try to make up for it by portraying the environment.

A film is a great deal about what you see, and the silhouette of a character tells you a lot. I'd love to go into film costume.

I think films are bigger than structure.

I have always believed that directing a film is like telling a story. You have to tell it well so that it is appreciated.

Film allows me to ask some really big questions with the time to explore them deeply. I love the form.

I don't study films particularly. I plan to direct, but I'm not watching film - I watch the entire film to see how the story goes, but I don't say, 'Oh, so he does a slow pan here, or he pulls here, watch the crane shot, or look at the composition,' because it's got to be my eye.

Certainly as an actor, half of your work is not going to end up on the screen anyway, because in the editorial process, they need to cut to the other actor in the scene. Very often, your best work ends up on the cutting room floor, because it just doesn't work with the overall narrative drive of the story.

Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image.

Everything a director does must help the story and the performances. Otherwise, it is useless.

I don't really make movies with an intention other than asking myself, 'Do I love the character, and do I love the story?'

The key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes.

For me, storytelling is the most interesting part of movie making.

A movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas. They're in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, the pacing.

I like to shoot feature films because it's about capturing emotions... words like guilt, hurt, betrayal.

When I shoot a film, I take my camera and put it among the characters and let it show you their world, their problems, their happiness and the little things that matter to them.

Rehearsing is more about blocking in the case of movies, I think, and blocking, of course, is very important to the beauty of a scene.