Ingmar Bergman Quotes

Whenever you write script without a director, you put in things that point toward a style in which the story will be told, a subjective style.

Screenwriting you don't necessarily have to do the job of the costume designer and the prop master and the set designer. It's more just about finding the visuals and finding these characters through dialogue.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you'll ever do on your film.

A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.

When I storyboard, they're just fragments of thoughts. I write in three acts like a movie, so I have my plot points up on the preliminary storyboard.

I've done a lot of ad films where an idea can be translated in 30 or 40 seconds. But in a movie, an idea needs to be stretched for two hours, and requires you to draw a bit from your experiences in life.

I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker... But it is not an art form, because screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.

I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me.

Anybody can write a film script 'cuz it has been reduced to a formula.

So with 'There Will Be Blood,' I didn't even really feel like I was adapting a book. I was just desperate to find stuff to write.

I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.

I don't really have a drive toward being a director at all. Not that I wouldn't rule it out, but I just don't think my instincts lie necessarily in a very visual way. But I am very interested in storytelling, narrative and character development, so writing is something that I absolutely want to do.

It really just gives you a sense of when you need to have dialogue and when you don't, and if your pictures are telling the story, you don't need to have all this talking.

I think when you're writing films that just come fresh out of your own imagination - I think probably anyone who's done that, there are certain themes or styles.

Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up.

I've come to find more satisfaction and enjoyment in writing screenplays over the years because that's what I do primarily now.

The reason most novelists are not good screenwriters is that you don't have time for a lot of details. Novelists can really create a richer experience for the reader and have many subplots. You only have 90 pages because each page is a minute of screentime. You have to have certain things happen by certain pages, a certain story arc in the movie.