Michel Gondry Quotes

I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always 'let it keep rolling.'

When you shoot a movie, the camera is always taking, taking, taking and not giving anything back.

On 'Mr. Robot,' because I run the writers' room and know every decision behind every line of dialogue, I'm able to be nimble and adapt with the scripts and the moments. I never have to question what I'm doing as I'm directing the actors or going through the scenes.

I'm in total awe of the technique of great film people. Because if you get your emotional life up to perfection by miracle on Take One, you better have a technique to keep doing it again and again and again.

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

The challenge of film is making it right there at that moment, and then you get to move on.

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

I really got into filmmaking through photography.

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

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.

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.

It is Method on 'This is England;' it is. But it can't be Method on every job because it just doesn't work for everything.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

Working on movies made me realize how fluid the medium of film was.

I started out my career as a screenwriter and quickly discovered that adhering to a script isn't always the best way to make a film. You have to take into consideration the nuances of the characters and what the actors bring to their roles.

I don't use film in the way that the great auteurs do. I use film, the camera, to record as effectively and as perceptive as I am able what I want to say through the actors.

I started in documentaries. I started alone with a camera. Alone. Totally alone. Shooting, editing short documentaries for a French-Canadian part of CBC. So to deal with the camera alone, to approach reality alone, meant so much. I made a few dozen small documentaries, and that was the birth of a way to approach reality with a camera.

I love good TV shows, but it's not what I do. I kind of sculpt my films as I go along. And TV is all about writing, so you just shoot, shoot, shoot what's written.

Being a cinematographer taught me a lot. I got to expedite the visions of many directors and learned how to navigate many styles and worlds.

We are not documentarians, we are filmmakers.

Directing is a tremendous art.

I don't like to dwell all day over one scene as you do in a big feature.

I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.

I can still recall the thrill of shooting my first film.

I never studied anything about film technique in school. Eventually, I realized that cinema and theater are not so different: from the gut to the heart to the head of a character is the same journey for both.