Debra Granik Quotes

I just use all the skills that I learned in film school, and I just incorporate them into my sketches. People don't realize that, with a story, there has to be a beginning, middle and end. There has to be a problem and a resolution. Just because it's six seconds doesn't mean it's not a story.

I've always been a bit of a documentarian.

I still want to direct. That's my main love, and that comes from being obsessed with subtleties and people.

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

We should not confuse having a Flip camera with making a documentary.

I'm not an activist at all. I'm a filmmaker, and I wanted the people involved to tell their own story.

I used to hate, with a capitol H, making videos. It was nothing but a chore. It was something you had to do to have your music accepted in the visual medium.

Directing has completely changed the way I write and watch films.

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

It's a director's job to tell a story and he's very well versed in telling stories with a bit of comedy in them and keeping the pace of the movie right and that's exactly what he did. He was observant of a world he didn't understand but he told a wonderful story.

Nature is full of drama. I know nothing about biology, about birds, about insects, about the details of politics. I just make movies about human interest stories.

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

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'm really excited to be a part of it and sharing the legacy, any documentary I look up at the sky and Kevin Burns did and Bryan did and showed me again you know the history that's in this character and you know.

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.

Videos are more like photography. It's not as much about trying to tell a story as it is creating images.

I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.

Film is the only language I speak, and I have been lucky to be involved in some great stories. You don't want to preach to people, but you want them to think about why things are the way they are, the history that is there as well as the possibilities.

I think film, to me, as a director, is about telling a story.

Short films really helped me develop as a story teller, animator, and as a director.

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

I want to venture into film more, and I think that a nice way to transition into doing that would be a documentary. I think it would be interesting to find one person that really fascinated me or maybe a band and travel with them, but I don't think I could do it like I used to do it.

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

Being a filmmaker is kind of like being a glorified spy.

I think films are bigger than structure.