Wyatt Cenac Quotes

I'm a documentary filmmaker by training. You got to start with the real people and the real place.

I'm a big fan of documentaries. I've always loved them, and I've just never had the opportunity or the time to make a feature.

Ever since 'Star Wars,' there was a rash of how a movie was made. I remember that as a kid. I never really understood how movies were made until that movie, because it was such a technical accomplishment. Since then, you've seen more and more and more, for all different kinds of films, about what goes into the process.

I try to learn from both, from features and documentaries. In both cases you have to find a way to make the camera as discreet as possible, and flexible enough to be able to capture the moment when it happens. I know from documentary how to not have a preconceived idea of what the scene could be.

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

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

We ended up with 19 hours of footage and had to narrow it down to an hour and a half. Our instructions were to film everything that came up, including the more mundane moments.

I came from a background of directing behind-the-scenes documentaries.

As the director, I try to go in and know as much as I can about the material. I really try to go in and understand what all the characters are about, what the movie's going to look like.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I've been directing a few commercials, and I would probably like to direct a feature one day. It's not a priority - I'm not dying to do it. But what I realize is that every time I direct something, I learn how to be a better cinematographer. I learn much better how a director feels, the loneliness of a director, how you need to have a great crew.

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.

In a film we have limited time and space to say what we have to, hence the visual language and brevity needs to be paramount. In a novel, however, we can dissect each thought and emotion and build on it.

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

I started as a documentary maker, and they're my first love.

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

When I was studying photography, I became interested in conflict photojournalism, and that got me interested in lighting. Then I realized there was this amazing thing called cinematography where you could kind of tell more complete stories photographing for film. So I ended up going to AFI grad school for that.

As a documentary filmmaker, 'Meru' was an irresistible challenge. You can spend years searching for the right story, but this one had all the elements: the obstacles, the characters, and the drama.

When you make feature films, you have a script, which is a bible. The final result should be as it was written down on paper. And in documentary, you can write whatever you want, but life brings you situations where you have to be fast thinking, fast moving.

A lot of the fear about being a first-time director is just starting with a completely blank slate and thinking: 'Is this going to connect with anybody?'

My first camera job was filming workplace safety videos, which involved months of watching and videotaping people doing their jobs. I was hooked - from there, I wanted to know where they lived and the rest of their habits and desires.

Documentaries are inherently instinctual; you're constantly moment to moment, determining what the best place for the camera is to tell the story, usually in service of natural lighting.

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

We are not documentarians, we are filmmakers.

My job is to find the stories, find where to go, do the research, do the logistics, be there on location, and do as much as possible to get the footage that we need to make an incredible film.