Jane Campion Quotes

I think most people agree there is a component of skill in art making; you have to learn grammar before you learn how to write.

I really got into filmmaking through photography.

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?

But let's speak of art for a moment. Yes, art. I know a gentleman who makes excellent portraits. This gentleman is a camera.

Right before 'American Dreams,' I started to pursue these avenues, like short films and getting into a couple night courses to really study photography and cinematography, and the language of visual storytelling.

I think that an artist should be a skilled craftsman.

I've always been interested in the camera and the effects of it - that's what drew me to film in the first place.

When you create a movie, you create something in your image.

Growing up, I enjoyed drawing, but it was always in the service of an idea. I drew all the time, and I enjoyed making.

It's a really exciting thing to collaborate with production designers, cinematographers and gaffers and costume designers and editors and composers.

I've always painted or drawn pictures or taken still photographs; now I shoot movies. It's just about making images, really.

I've worked in the film business for 45 years, and I want to keep on growing as a filmmaker. I want to see my visual life grow and be increasingly effective in this world.

I started in documentaries, and that was a great help to me with improvisation, because with documentaries, you're handed a big lump of footage, and you have to shape it and make it into a story - which I love doing.

Film shouldn't be a pain. It's a creative process.

I study myself. I study film, and I make sure that everything's on point.

I'm not much of an art guy but I really do love Shelby and Sandy's work - they look like they're made on a computer but they're hand-painted.

Basically, less is more when it comes to film.

When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there's something innate in my music where it partners well with images.

I wanted to be a filmmaker, so my parents helped me by encouraging me to save my allowance. So I bought my first video camera, and I would make movies, but I never made a movie that I finished until I was in college. There was no expectation, but I would make movies every day.

Scorsese has very defined ideas about how to shoot a scene, and he's an editor himself - we cut together. It means he's constantly thinking about my problems while he's filming.

I want to get out as much art as I can while I'm here, and I seem to get better the more that I do it.

In art, practice always comes before theory.

I really enjoy behind the camera stuff and I'm a frustrated photographer myself and just love the camera. I love that side of it and that part of the filmmaking world and I enjoy developing things. It's an area that I'll continue to be more active in as time goes by.

Art does not begin with imitation, but with discipline.

I love working with actors. I love visual things. I always intended to be a writer who directs and a director who writes.