Harold Pinter Quotes

When you make a movie, you do it so piecemeal. You're doing it, not only scene by scene, out of order, but shot by shot, line by line. And there's this idea that the director has the whole thing in his or her head and they're going to somehow weave it all together in the end.

The film is made in the editing room.

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

I'm a filmmaker, so I always think: When is the breaking point? Sometimes you've got to go beyond the breaking point, and then you catch it. When is long enough? It's one of those things you have to look at, walk away, and go home and find out what it is.

I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

Even a fiction film is hard to end. You can going on shooting and editing a documentary forever.

I have considered the directing, actually. Not so much the writing. That is not really interesting, but the directing is really interesting to me.

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

After directing movies, I respect any director in this world, because making a movie as a director is tons and tons of work.

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

I'm working on a few different films and I'm just searching for the right new story to tell. As a director, you just have to kind of like just get through the first project before starting on the next one.

I'm always coming back with too much footage. Most filmmakers do, but I'm always surprised that it keeps happening to me.

The way films establish the order of scenes is very artificial.

There has to be the right pacing of images to tell the story. I'm always stunned at how little you can put in.

A film ingeniously directed does indeed give the impression of having been laid end to end, but a film ingeniously edited gives the impression of having suppressed all direction.

I started in documentaries. I started alone with a camera. Alone. Totally alone. Shooting, editing short documentaries for a French-Canadian part of CBC. So to deal with the camera alone, to approach reality alone, meant so much. I made a few dozen small documentaries, and that was the birth of a way to approach reality with a camera.

I've always wanted to be a director; it's just how my mind has always worked. If I hear music, I see music videos and all the shots and setups to edit it all together. If I interact with a person, I'm seeing a whole scene come to life.

Number one, I am a true movie maker. And, you know, I am very much - I don't want to say infatuated, but I'm impressed with the art of making a movie and invoking emotion. You know, when I started making movies, I thought it was easy, and then when I got into it, I was like, 'This is not easy at all.'

When you cut a film, certain scenes fall away and don't fit into the shape of the movie.

I think that's the key to being a director: to be able to get the shot and move on quickly.

For me, I see filmmaking as art.

The only way you can learn about making films is by making them, by putting your stamp on the thing.

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

As a director, you're looking for ways to tell the story with the whole image and not primarily dialogue.