Active Viewing Quotes

As a filmmaker, I believe in trying to make movies that invite the audience to be part of the film; in other words, there are some films where I'm just a spectator and am simply observing from the front seat. What I try to do is draw the audience into the film and have them participate in what's happening onscreen.

People love conversation, and movies are conversations, and an audience has to participate; it has to fill in some blanks.

You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

Both me and Edgar are firm believers in never underestimating or talking down to an audience, and giving an audience something to do, to give them something which is entirely up to them to enter into the film and find these hidden things and whatever.

Watching a movie should be like hunting. Out of context, every image of the cinema is yours for a split second. Take them before they bury it.

I think you can't be passive in making this film - or in watching it.

You can't be a passive recipient of images, you have to engage with images and read their subtexts. These are critical things that will be taught to the students by a film club.

What challenges me is this - I want to walk out of a film with the experience of having done a film, not with a feeling that I have sleepwalked through it.

We all consume Netflix and other streaming services in different ways. Sometimes, it's a movie you're really going to focus on; other times, it's background noise to something else, where you won't really pay attention.

I give the spectator the possibility of participating. The audience completes the film by thinking about it; those who watch must not be just consumers ingesting spoon-fed images.

I believe that if you go and see a film you should have to sort of invest something yourself and you have to do a little bit of the work as an audience member, so when you leave the cinema you should be having those conversations either with yourself - if you're crazy like me- or with friends afterwards.

Audiences are smart, and they don't need to be spoon-fed everything.

The more personalized television gets, the less passive the experience will become.

I like a movie that the audience actively has to participate in and not just casually observe.

Audiences like making discoveries.

I think movies in general should have more respect for the audience than they do. Too many films are afraid to confuse people, so all the information is given to them right away, and there's nothing left for the film to do. It ruins many stories, because everything becomes obvious and predictable. I want my films to engage people more and make them more actively involved in the story.

You don't have to do anything in the movies. You just sit there. Well, that's not entirely true. You do less.

The biggest thing that I get most excited about is, my family and I would watch television together, and we weren't just passive viewers. Something would happen, and then we would talk about it. When Will Smith was shot on 'Fresh Prince,' that sparked a conversation about safety.

TV's job is to make you lean in, and a film's job is to make you lean back.