Lenny Abrahamson Quotes

The only time I scream is when I see the 5 A.M. start on the call sheet.

Whenever you're working on a film or TV set, the hours are very, very long.

Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.

On the set I never know what day of the week it is.

A normal day of working in Burbank is 14 hours, sometimes more. On 'The Revenant' sometimes it was eight hours, but we were shooting only five. So they were short days, but they were very strenuous because of the weather. And it was very dark.

When you're shooting super-low-budget - we had 20 days to shoot 'Diary,' and a little over $2 - time is money.

You may work under incredible pressure over two hours in a day, but you're often around that studio 14 to 16 hours of that day.

As an actor, if you want to while shooting, you can run back to your trailer and take a nap. But you cannot do that while directing.

The agency was desperate to get started with the commercials in 1976, but I was working on Star Wars.

I don't feel isolated on a film set. In a way you do because you don't really mix with the outside world; you're just sort of working non-stop for a few months, but you've got so many people around you.

That would be getting up at 5 am... I don't understand why film's shoot such brutal hours. I think it'd be worth it to not be so strictly cost-effective and have an 8 hour day. The film's would benefit in the end.

But I'm very happy to work within tight parameters, and when you know you have an actor for two days, and you have to get that work done in two days, that focuses the mind wonderfully.

In film, you get to take your time and make it right. In TV, it's all about the schedule. The train is moving and you sometimes just don't have time to make things right, which is painful 'cause you know it could be done better and you just have no choice.

Often times people complain about the lack of time in television, but I have to say, you don't have any more time to film in feature films then you do in television. It's just a question of how many scenes you'll be doing in the course of a day.

We shot on location in our very first weeks, in our very first shows. I would like to go on location again, Hawaii would be good!! But normally, we tape five days a week in the studio starting at about 8:00 a.m. and continuing until about 8:00 p.m.

Making films can be absolutely fantastic, but it can also be incredibly dull. You spend the whole day sitting by yourself in your trailer and then you get called to deliver one sentence - then you're told to come back and do it again at 5:30 the following morning.

The only difference between working on a huge-budget film and a lesser-budget film, is the quality of lunch and dinner.

'Dark Knight' shot in London and Chicago, and we were on that for so long.

I recently found out about this other super movie star. He only works from about 11:00 to 4:00, so all his movies take like 120 days. But this was a lot of stuff to do in 35 days.

When you're shooting a movie, it's two months of your life usually. You don't really have time to see anybody else. Your friends are put on hold while you're shooting, and what you have is the family that you create on set.

If I'm right in the middle of a deadline, I'm up really early.

The fact is, you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots and you're only going to get two.

Larry Kasdan wanted us all there, all the time, even if we weren't filming.

On a movie set, there's so much down time, adjusting the lighting. It gave me time to nap, call my friends, relax, work out. But with TV, there's no break time. None.

For an actress, everything is always fine - you are looked after, you have your trailer, and everything provided. But the crew are the ones out there in the wilds all the time, hours before and after us.