Jet Li Quotes

With film, you stop and go. You have to do 20 takes or whatever.

Filming is repetition and many takes.

I don't like to watch playback. But being on the set, watching the way the camera is being moved and the way the light is being used, you do get an idea of it.

Zhang Yimou is an artist. Sometimes we did only two or three shots a day because we were waiting for the sun.

Action to me is something very fun to shoot.

In a very real sense, all you do when you're shooting film or television is you shoot a scene, and then you shoot another scene, and then you shoot another scene.

I think when you watch the dailies, the film that you shoot every day, you're very excited by it and very optimistic about how it's going to work.

Everything about camera movement, about how film was made, shot architecture, and time management... I was horrible at all that.

Direction is something that interests me. Even while shooting, I always have conversations with the director to get a better understanding of shooting technicalities.

By the time I was 10 or 11, I knew I wanted to make films.

I've been in enough movies to know that when you're on the set and you start shooting, you're looking at playback and you get a sense of what it's going to be like.

You do need to edit yourself as you shoot because you have fewer options in a smaller movie. In other words, when I'm shooting a big movie, and I got an 85 day shooting schedule or more, then I'm saying I have enough time to shoot option A and B and C and D for every scene.

When you think of a movie, most people imagine a two hour finished, polished product. But to get to that two hour product, it can take hundreds or thousands of people many months of full time work.

When I went to film school about three years ago, the first two years you're required to make a series of short films. I started making films based on short poems.

When I make a live-action movie, it's a very physical process. It's like running a marathon.

Most screenplays depend primarily on the vision of a director.

Making movies is time-consuming and it's boring. You spend most of your time waiting between takes. It's like a big machine that moves slowly.

It's possible for an editor to break down a dream, if you like, into its components and being able to shoot the wide shots in sunshine, when the weather was at its best and you know, we would get sort of almost a 3D effect sometimes if you chose the right time of day to shoot the thing.

I remember in Shallow Grave I remember a few times when we'd only have to do one take. But when you did have to do more than one, you'd build on the one you'd done.

On an independent film, you really learn about pace. You have so little time to do things, that you really have to know your scenes.

As an actor I want to do as many takes as I can. I wanna shoot the scene... or shoot the shot 'til they make me quit.

If you are making a record, you are the one saying 'action', and you are the one saying 'cut,' and you have to be sure that the most interesting thing is not going on outside the frame.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

I usually do about five cuts as a director. I haven't ever directed a film where I haven't made five passes through the movie, and that takes a long time.

Film is shot in fragments, and the same moments can be shot again and again until the director is satisfied.