Lucy Walker Quotes

In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.

I really admire Werner Herzog and Spike Lee. They're amazing documentarians. If you took away all the narratives, they'd just be amazing documentarians.

Documentaries have always inspired me in narrative filmmaking.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

The key fact missed most often by social scientists utilizing documentary films for data, is this: documentary films are not found or reported things; they're made things.

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

The thing about documentary is that you don't really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.

Documentary films are created in an inverted funnel of declining possibility.

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.

I'm not one of those people who sees documentaries as a stepping stone to doing fiction. I love documentaries and watch tons of documentaries. But, I like fiction films a lot, too.

I love the idea of documentaries. I love seeing documentaries, and I love making them. Documentaries are incredibly easy to shoot. The ease with which you can hear something's going on, somebody's going to be somewhere: That sounds so interesting. Pick up your camera and go.

I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.

I don't know if I'd mastered that documentary format, but I wanted to move on from it.

It's hard not to want to become Ken Burns at times. I'm interested in being a Ken Burns who reaches that 17-year-old who goes to the multiplex just to see a good story well-told. And if there's history in it, all the better.

I always thought of documentaries as films through which you find your voice as a narrator.

With documentaries, what's beautiful about them is that you capture something unique in a shot, something that will never repeat itself.

I just like documentaries.

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

When I'm filming a documentary, I feel like I should be the straight man, watching with a raised eyebrow.

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

Documentary films have always been my passion, I have done documentaries.

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 never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.

As a filmmaker, I always took my inspiration from a filmmaker named Marcel Ophüls, who said, "I always have a point of view, but the trick is showing how hard it is to come to that point of view."

I never saw myself as a director. It's certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.