Morten Tyldum Quotes

When I begin to write a story, I usually know how things will end. It's the journey toward that point I must discover. The process is sometimes painful, but also exciting.

I learned there's an amazing unexplored territory in terms of narrative. Before, I thought the unexplored territory was the form, the way you shoot a movie. Now, I'm learning about the beautiful marriage between form and narrative.

Every stage of filmmaking's important while you're doing it, so I spend most of my time figuring out how to tell the story. I have all these stories and ideas, but it's how to tell the story.

I leave the story room to grow into what the movie is driving me to do.

The stuff that I learned on 'Sons,' the education of how to tell stories, was part of that mythology. It's hard to look at it and go, 'Oh, if I knew this, I would have done it this way,' because the fact is I like to think that all that sort of unraveled as it was supposed to.

I like directing. It takes a lot out of you, but I'd like to do it again - I just have to find a story I want to tell.

As far as personal philosophies go, I think you should know your ending. I know that's radically different from a lot of other writers who just organically like to find the story. Other than that, I try different things and mess around. I'm still just playing a good bit.

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.

It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.

I love doing television; it's such a brilliant way to tell a story over six hours rather over the two hours of doing a movie.

I never know as a writer when I set out into a novel where it's going to take me.

The whole thing with animated movies is that it's very hard to get out of your head because it's very moving through each line systematically.

As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between issues.

The idea led me into the research, which continues to give me more ideas for the story.

'Rocket Science' is really where I fell in love with filmmaking, I think 'Camp' was incredible, but it was so bizarre, and I was trying to find my footing in this world where you don't have an audience for immediate validation.

Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.

You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.

If you don't generate tension in the film to begin with... you can't really make a purse out of a sow's ear, you know.

I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.

Writing a nonfiction story is like cracking a safe. It seems impossible at the beginning, but once you're in, you're in.

In any great art, you create a world, and you invite people into that world, and hopefully, it's fleshed out enough and you've explained it well enough.

Every film's different; every story is so different. But I think I've always been attracted to try to take something minimal and to maximize it cinematically. To find out if I can I really go all the way with one idea.

You're always just trying to make your film, tell the story you're trying to tell - best you can, you know.

I start each of my scripts by going on a journey of painstaking research and discovery, much as I do a piece of long-lead journalism.