Dan Scanlon Quotes

With 'Toy Story,' which is a fantastic film but is essentially animation, you get to make all your decisions beforehand. 'Jumanji' is shot much like any other action film.

On Fantastic Mr. Fox, I got used to working with animated storyboards as a way of planning for the shoot. We did a lot of sequences that way with this movie. Partly as a result of that, I decided to build more sets in order to do certain shots.

'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.

Animation is a great way to work. No early morning call times, no make-up chair. In live action, you're always fighting the clock; the sun is always going down too soon.

In live action movies, you just hope that everything works. Because the actor may had a bad morning and doesn't play good, or accidents happen continuously. Many things contradict what you are trying to say. But in cartoons, nothing contradict what you want to say.

Pre-production and post-production is something that I've never been exposed to. I was pleasantly surprised that you could accomplish a lot during pre-production.

Whether you make an action blockbuster or a comedy or a drama, you've got the right camera and all the right technology to do it. In games, it's not the same yet, and I would like to see technologies dealing with cameras the way we do - dealing with bouquet, dealing with performance capture, with lighting - with all this stuff the way we do.

A movie goes from several stages, from idea to script. As you continue shooting, you will make some adjustments. You're constantly adjusting. It's like a piece of music. You're constantly trying to make it better.

I'm attracted to directors in general because I appreciate the work and the job they have to do. I watched the post-production, I watched the pre-production... post-production is something that I'm very interested in and I did spend a lot of time in editing rooms when I was young pretending to be sick.

Movies are in a much longer production conversation before an actor is even involved. I always thought of actors as the last piece of the puzzle - so you're a tool.

Now, I just made an animated movie a few years ago, 'The Tale of Desperaux', and that had twelve hundred shots in it. Twelve hundred CG shots is a pretty big plan.

I moved out to Los Angeles with the idea of becoming a director, which thousands, if not tens and hundreds of thousands, of people do, every year. It's a very competitive field, of course. I immediately got swept away into the visual side of things, starting with visual effects, and then designing.

Motion picture making is a very, very involved affair. It is completely my baby. I'm a thorough professional. I plan films right from the conception of an idea to its final execution.

A live action movie is work, and an animated movie is you showing up in your pajamas once every three months, or in my case, just a splash of baby powder. It's not any kind of heavy lifting.

I got involved in script development from the beginning. It was nice to see how a film gets made right from the beginning. It was quite hands-on for me.

'Iron Man 3' was very educational. There's a train that starts moving which already has so many moving parts, and it's a constant process of animatics and storyboards and consulting meetings, and it's a very mechanical process once the script is written. It's sprawling, and they're throwing money at it to get these things accomplished.

The question I get more than any other is, 'What does it mean to direct an animated film?' And the reality is that it's not a whole lot different from what you do in live action.

Every aspect of filmmaking has lured me. Although I'm an actor now, one day, I'd like to direct a film. It's not as though I'm all set to take the plunge; I cherish this dream of calling the shots, but only after I groom myself with the right kind of preparation and the technical know-how.

I think with any movie, directing is more in the preparation. You just have to prepare for everything that's going to happen.

When you're working on a film, it's not always finished visually, what you're looking at.

There's a process in the movie industry in both live action and animation called development hell!

Show-running is a very difficult job that includes so many responsibilities; I'm working with the actors, working with directors, writing, making decisions like, 'What fabric is that sofa gonna be?'

Eventually one day I want to direct, but as of right now my next cap that I'm looking for is the producer cap.

As a filmmaker, I'm very collaborative. I don't pretend to know everything that is needed to make a movie. What I like to do is get together with a group of people, starting with developing the story and bounce around ideas.

I made tons of films. I did animation for my friends' films. I animated scenes just for the fun of it. Most of my stuff was bad, but I had fun, and I tried everything I knew to get better.