Travis Knight Quotes

I never have particular actors planned when I'm in the process of writing.

It's very hard to adapt something. You end up changing it too much to make a good movie out of it. I prefer to work with things that are custom made for my kind of animation.

You have more creative freedom with writing, in certain ways, because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your character is reacting to situations.

Because characters are your creations, you are the one who ultimately gets to decide their fate.

I live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems?

When I was working on 'Big Fan,' I didn't really feel like any lines needed to be changed or enhanced or expanded upon in any way. I thought it was a solid script. All you had to do was what it said.

I never write with an actor in mind - never.

You do a film and you know where you're going, you have this material to stretch and play with as much as possible because you know how it ends.

In discussing the process with the actors, I made it clear to them that they could improvise but that the sum total of their improvisation needed to impart certain plot points, and schematic material.

To be honest, when you're running a series and you have an open end, you don't want to limit yourself too much with the choices you've got for a particular character.

I'll generally write out every scene that's in the film on a couple of pieces of paper, just with a little one-line. And then I can scan it a bit and go, 'This first third of the film, generally, I'm kind of calm.' Then I might do something on one piece of paper that just relates to the energy of the character.

You know, I've always just made the choices on my characters based on my connection to them, and I've made decisions that maybe other people haven't understood; why I passed on something, for instance.

Same job, whether it's comedy or drama. Regardless of the weight of the role, I feel like the job is always kind of the same. Who is this person? What's this guy here, and how is he playing with this thing, and what's he trying to say? And what's the volley with all these other people around him?

I create my own backstory regardless of if I'm told something about the background or not. There's always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest.

I do think you need to understand a character's motivation and perspective.

There are times that you have a plot in your head, but then you find that the characters don't want to do that. When you're looking at the story from the outside, you can create whatever twists and turns you want. But when you're writing, you're inside the characters' heads, and you see that they may be motivated to do something different.

I never look at how many songs I have or how many girls are there in a movie. If I like my character, I play it.

I honestly feel it is important for a director to get obsessed with the characters.

I love the novelist's freedom of going into different people's subjectivity and being able to work with them as characters.

I think I approached 'Captain Phillips' as I would any project. I always try to understand the story, characters, and themes as deeply as possible and then work as hard as I can to make those things come to life.

I want to do content-driven film, powerful roles which I've never done before.

I look at the story and see what I have got to do in the film. Sometimes the story is great, set-up is good but there isn't much for you to do. I don't want to do that.

If you're creating your character, you can have full ownership of the emotional range they go through. You can make bolder choices.

In general, I don't really think too much about pacing, myself. You kind of look at each script and what each script demands.

It's hard to hold the focus that strongly on a single character for that long.