Max Joseph Quotes

I'm a documentary filmmaker by training. You got to start with the real people and the real place.

I'm a big fan of documentaries. I've always loved them, and I've just never had the opportunity or the time to make a feature.

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

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.

I have a great little camera, and I had a theory that if the story is interesting, it doesn't matter what medium you shoot it on. You just have to make a good film.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

It's incredible to see the creativity, beauty and hardships people capture when filmmaking is opened up and shared with the world.

As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.

I came from a background of directing behind-the-scenes documentaries.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

When you make documentaries or short films, you have to have eyes and ears in the back of your head and on the sides and all around you. I like that in my films.

We filmmakers are control freaks. For us, it's about bending the elements of a story into existence.

I started as a documentary maker, and they're my first love.

When making documentaries, the most important thing I learned was to listen, observe gestures and facial expressions.

Documentaries are inherently instinctual; you're constantly moment to moment, determining what the best place for the camera is to tell the story, usually in service of natural lighting.

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.

I look at the stories that Spike Lee tells... Great stories. Great director, great storyteller.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.

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

I never know going in if I've even got a movie to make. Once you start making a film, you hope there's going to be enough material! My job as a director is always to push for more.

Architecture has a strong link with the movies in terms of time progression, sequencing, framing, all of that.

Most of my films have been documentaries, but I'm also very interested in narrative filmmaking.

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.