Thelma Schoonmaker Quotes

It's not a film-maker's job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way he can.

We talked a lot about The Best Intentions and how we could shoot certain scenes in different ways with slightly different bits of dialogue and information, so that later on, we could cut the piece more easily and it would still feel complete, even though it was shorter.

You're always just trying to make your film, tell the story you're trying to tell - best you can, you know.

I make films about stories that I get interested in.

In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.

Videos are more like photography. It's not as much about trying to tell a story as it is creating images.

I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.

The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it's all in the story.

Being a filmmaker is kind of like being a glorified spy.

I never had any master plan about directing, and I don't really write.

TV and film taught me to think cinematically. Teaching others to edit, for example, provides a great deal of insight into the millions of ways in which given elements can be put together to tell a story.

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

We ended up with 19 hours of footage and had to narrow it down to an hour and a half. Our instructions were to film everything that came up, including the more mundane moments.

There are times when I'm driving home after a day's shooting, thinking to myself, That scene would've been so much better if I had written it out.

I'm working on a few different films and I'm just searching for the right new story to tell. As a director, you just have to kind of like just get through the first project before starting on the next one.

I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.

I love telling stories. But I believe that nobody could teach you to direct a movie.

I'm a documentary filmmaker, I know what it means to craft a story, especially when you've shot a lot of material.

When you make feature films, you have a script, which is a bible. The final result should be as it was written down on paper. And in documentary, you can write whatever you want, but life brings you situations where you have to be fast thinking, fast moving.

The making of the documentary is an involving and collaborative process where you go deeper unlike in movies where you just borrow someone else's script.

As a director, what I'm trying to do is to create interesting stories.

To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can't write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content.

I've always been a relaxed person on set, but I think the main thing is I think about it from an editing point of view way more than I did before.

In the first season (of 'Californication'), when we had the threesome with the nipple clamps, I was, like, 'I don't get this, I don't know how you're gonna do it.' And then, all of a sudden, there's a crane with a camera hanging over our heads, and you're, like, 'Okayyyyyyy. But how are you gonna sell this? How are you gonna make it work?' And they ended up shooting it brilliantly, cutting it together, and it just all ended up working without me having to compromise my own personal morals.

I really got into filmmaking through photography.