Debra Granik Quotes

There are so many decisions in making a movie.

Having spent a lot of time on sets, I was really interested in the overall storytelling aspect of shows and projects.

Storytelling is storytelling. You still play by the same narrative rules. The technology is completely different. I don't use one piece of technology that I used when I started directing.

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 learned a lot about filmmaking from my dad. Starting when I was a child, I would listen to my dad as an actor, writer, director and producer talking about films - you know what the treatment would be in the opening, in the middle, and in the ending.

'Alice' took over two years to make and took a great deal of planning, obviously much more than usual. We spent so much more time prepping the film, and that was unique for us.

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

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

One day I had an idea for a movie. Everything came after that.

If you would ask me what my ideal process is, I would say, long pre-production, long production and long post-production.

I think part of the problem sometimes is that there's so much happening in my books, to whittle it down into a single script is hard.

When you make your first film, there is a hell of a lot to think about, and you've got to have a gut understanding of your material.

The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it's all in the story.

If you want to be a director, work with writers and find different ways of telling stories with film, then do a course. This way you can consolidate what you've learnt and use the course to go further.

Every Pixar film, when we start developing the story, it takes about four years to make one of our films.

Film-makers must decide what story to tell and how to tell it.

When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

I have always meticulously storyboarded my films from beginning to end.

I don't do storyboarding, ever; I'm not interested in that.

I got involved in script development from the beginning. It was nice to see how a film gets made right from the beginning. It was quite hands-on for me.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.

Pre-production and post-production is something that I've never been exposed to. I was pleasantly surprised that you could accomplish a lot during pre-production.

I recommend to any of you, that's always a good way to make a film: use the interesting bits.

I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.

It's such a complicated thing to put a movie together. The book world is so much simpler.