Leslie Cockburn Quotes

My background is sociology. Combined with my graphic approach, if I could do some film projects, I think I'd be very good at making documentaries eventually, but people don't think of me for that, of course. But dialogue is something I know I can be good at.

To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can't write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content.

So I do tend to do documentaries where I can move in and out of them.

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.

Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room.

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

I'm a documentary filmmaker, I know what it means to craft a story, especially when you've shot a lot of material.

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

Every frame and every scene has to have an intention.

But one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made.

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.

When I started my filmmaking journey 17 years ago, I honestly didn't know what a documentary film was.

I did documentaries for maybe 10 years before I turned to fiction films.

I love the idea of documentaries. I love seeing documentaries, and I love making them. Documentaries are incredibly easy to shoot. The ease with which you can hear something's going on, somebody's going to be somewhere: That sounds so interesting. Pick up your camera and go.

With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist's observational eye.

It's hard not to want to become Ken Burns at times. I'm interested in being a Ken Burns who reaches that 17-year-old who goes to the multiplex just to see a good story well-told. And if there's history in it, all the better.

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.

I don't think there's so much difference between making documentaries and feature films. I think it's even harder to make documentaries.

The making of the documentary is an involving and collaborative process where you go deeper unlike in movies where you just borrow someone else's script.

Documentary films have always been my passion, I have done documentaries.

I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.

People say to me, "You make fantastic films" and I say, "No, I make documentaries.

You know, when people talk about filmmaking and the techniques of filmmaking, we use them all the time in network television news in order to make our stories simpler, tighter and more understandable to the general public.

I grew up not reading fiction; I watched movies and read comic books, and one of the ways I taught myself to think about narrative was through film.

I fell in love with film and its potential. The idea of putting one image next to another image and creating meaning blew my mind.