Stephen Daldry Quotes

Making a film, setting it up and getting it cast and getting it together, is not an easy thing.

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 thing about movies is that till it goes on floors, it's just preparations for the film.

I think a film should have a gestation period of at least two or three years.

Being in front of the camera, you never got to see the whole process from the conception of the script all the way through to the filming process.

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.

Production for movies or TV is very painstaking and slow.

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.

The hardest thing for me about making movies, and that included 'M*A*S*H' because it was made like a movie, was starting and stopping.

Movies are in a much longer production conversation before an actor is even involved. I always thought of actors as the last piece of the puzzle - so you're a tool.

'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.

Making a movie is a long, dull process. There's a lot of waiting around.

Film, for me, is in two stages. One is when I write the script more or less on my own - that's the nice bit. And then comes for me the unpleasant bit when they all go off, 100 people - actors and camera people and film and sound - and I stay away. When they go into the editing room, I come in again, and that's the bit I like.

There are so many decisions in making a movie.

Movie-making is telling a story with the best technology at your disposal.

It takes a while to get a movie together, and they don't start talking books until the movie is close to being finished.

Directing a film is a lot of work.

I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started.

My time on the set is the least of my involvement. Most of my time is in pre-production and post-production.

To make a film is eighteen months of your life. It's seven days a week. It's twenty hours a day.

As an actor, you see a sliver of how the show is made, but to see the actual writing process and the re-writing process and the casting process and art direction and set design - all of this is happening in a very intense period.

If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.

Making a television show is a difficult, collaborative, creative endeavor, and it really requires everybody to band together and all work together every day.

I know how to write a movie. I know how to direct a movie.

As for direction, I definitely do not have the patience or the resilience to make a film. Directing a film is very, very hard.