John Boorman Quotes

The first thing I put down on paper is a storyboard, like a film director.

One of the main reasons I am so drawn to Hitchcock is that he planned his shots way in advance on story-boards, which he designed like classic paintings (he was an art connoisseur). It's why he found shooting on set boring - because he had already composed the film in his head.

I roughly draw the scene beforehand to be more confident on the set. Instead of talking and explaining certain things, I try to visually communicate the scene to my team with the story board. This is how I work.

The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script.

It was important on The Shipping News to have my house far enough away from each location so I had this time in the morning to think about my shots and still remain open to surprises once I got to the set.

I never storyboard. I hate it. I don't understand why so many directors want to make comic strips of their films.

I only make storyboards for action scenes. Once you make a storyboard, you don't film; it can be a stiff move.

Walt put everything he knew about communication with images into the park, so it was very familiar.

The storyboard artists job is to plan out shot for shot the whole show, write all the dialog, and decide the mood, action, jokes, pacing, etc of every scene.

I don't do storyboarding, ever; I'm not interested in that.

I don't believe in development. I believe in pre-pre-production, so when I sit down with an idea for a movie, I'm thinking I'm going to make this film. I don't think about anything else.

I've storyboarded for things other people have shot. So thinking in shots and orchestrating shots is not foreign to me at all.

We ended up realizing that's not an economical way to create creatures, putting people in green leotards and figuring it out later. You can maybe do that if you're making 'Avatar,' but we need to know what the creatures look like before we turn on the camera.

On 'Sicario,' we storyboarded key sequences but not everything.

I actually think storyboards are great. I don't draw well enough to do them myself. I've only used storyboards a couple of times. We used two storyboards in 'Margaret': one for the bus accident and for the opera sequence at the end.

I definitely storyboard, but I only start once I have cast and location. I like to find the world first.

I sort of feel like my job is to be a conduit to opportunities, to maximize the creativity of the day itself - because that's when the cameras are running. That's the important thing to me. Some of these shots you need to think about in advance; you need to have some ideas for them.

Not every director does this, but I did: I made a list of every shot you're going to set up for every scene in the script.

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.

Well, what we do is we have a script, of course. But for us, writing is also like storyboarding. It's drawing. And so we will cut all of those drawings together with music, sound effects and dialogue. And we screen this kind of stick-figure version of the film.

You never really know what the director has got in his mind as far as the scene visually and art direction wise.

You have to know what you're shooting. Don't just make your movie in the editing room and just get everything you can on the day.

The Coen brothers: Of all the directors I've worked with, they're the only ones who have given me the storyboards attached to the script. It was very cool for me, because I knew when I was in close-up or if it was far away, and it also made me know that anything that happened in the edit wasn't personal. Because they edit their own movies, so they were editing it as they went.

I actually think storyboards are great. I don't draw well enough to do them myself. I've only used storyboards a couple of times.

I storyboard every shot of my thrillers in general. I draw them out and do them.