Doug Liman Quotes

Ultimately, as a director, you try and tell people where to look, but unlike film or television, where you force them to look at something, you can't control it completely.

The 3D world allows you to engage even more with a film because you're somehow drawn into the landscape or the universe of that scene. Even when it's two people talking at a table, you feel like you're a third party.

There's no reason my films can't work as hard as VR does to hook an audience and never let them go, so I think that that it turns the volume up a little bit on storytelling. The same way when I was doing commercials and then I went and shot 'Go,' and 'Go' has a level of pace that is unlike any of my other movies.

I have a brilliant sound design team who's been working with me since 'Mr. Robot,' and one of the things we always think about - and it's also something we think about with cinematography - is how we get inside the characters' heads and how do we place the audience where we want them to be or how we want them to feel at any given moment.

What's the fundamental problem that VR solves better than anything? To me it's straightforward. It's story. VR tells stories better than any medium.

I've tried Oculus Rift; I've played with the Steam VR rig. Both are mind-blowing. In a traditional video game setting, in a first-person shooter, you can see a tower in the distance. You can walk up to that tower and use your controller to look up.

We have new tools that can give the audience a sense of not only being there, which is the key element in an IMAX film, but also seeing things in a way that they won't see on television or in feature films.

If you film a scene in a wide shot, especially a disturbing, distressing moment, I do feel like that helps you feel as though you're the room with these people, instead of cutting it up and getting close - which you wouldn't be doing if you were actually in a room with these people.

I've directed a fair amount of television series - so I'm always trying to learn new things. One episode was all hand-held and I'm trying to get better at when you should do things and when you should just shut up and watch what the people are saying.

While films are a very visual and emotional artistic medium, video games take it one step further into the realm of a unique personal experience.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

When you go to the theater, you are slipping out of your life into someone else's imaginary world.

The camera must point at the exact spot the audience wishes to look at any given moment. To find that spot is absurdly easy: you only have to remember where you were looking at the time the scene was made.

There's a lot of films that have relatively rigid road maps because they have a script and others that are less rigid because they have less of a script, like 'Elephant.' The road map becomes more interpretive, maybe, than one with a detailed script. Editing-wise, they all have their problems.

It's quite amazing what 3D is doing to movies. Just simple things like a paper plane flying at you or flower petals fluttering about are wonderful.

Just like those little Viewmaster slides, there's a inherent magic that's captured in 3D that you can't get in drawn animation or in CG.

In a play, you dictate pace, you dictate rhythm, you dictate when people look at you, when people should be looking at something else. In film, the editor does that.

There's going to be all different price points, and you get what you pay for. There's certainly low things made of cardboard that you don't put on your head, you just hold up little viewers that give you this glimmer of what VR could be.

On 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' we started exploring shots that are longer, where the camera is moving around the actors, and there are no cuts, and you feel like you're there.

There's a fashion for a macho style of filmmaking. How long can your longest take be? And shooting things in one shot. For me, if you can sort of disappear and make people feel that they are there, that involves massive amounts of work.

I'm a huge gamer. I'm very excited, and the idea of the Rift was as a headset that was designed around the specific uses of VR gaming. But I'm excited about a lot of stuff that's outside of it, because I was a VR enthusiast. I want VR to be the thing that we all live in, that we all use for everything, not just games.

I've always been drawn more to film. But 'Bloodline,' to me, feels like a 13-hour piece of cinema. And the great thing about Netflix is you get to be almost like an editor. You choose how much of the narrative you want to watch at a time, which makes you complicit in the story.

VR is so immersive, and when it works, it draws you into the story in a way that is truly unique and powerful.

One of the reasons why I think virtual reality, as a narrative format, is never going to go beyond the short-form immersion space is because the bedrock of visual storytelling is the reverse angle. If you can't look into the eyes of the protagonist, you cannot hold people's attention for more than 15 minutes.

When I set out to make 'Bourne Identity,' my main goal for the franchise was to create something where it feels like you're in the action. You're not just passively watching it from far away. That's something that I have constantly aspired to do - even in 'Swingers,' to feel like you're Jon Favreau; you're not just watching him.