Nothing is cut while I'm shooting. I edit between nine months and a year, and usually have around 80 hours of footage I have to get down to an 82-minute movie.
'America' took at least five days of actual filming.
I won't say I'm not fascinated by the way advertising works. I like the sleekness. But a picture in advertising doesn't last too long. They have to work for 30 seconds. And I'd like to reach at least two minutes. This is my goal: to break that two-minute record.
What I've learned is that life is too short and movies are too long.
No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.
I've learned that I really want to shoot short films on a short schedule. There can be very good films that run 110 minutes, but 90 minutes is beautiful.
I don't know what has happened to movies, but lately every movie is at least 20 minutes too long. It used to be that if you were three hours long it was because it was epic - a movie about Gandhi; something with very important subject matters.
You can't show a four-hour movie in a theater, really.
I like films that are about two hours not more.
I love the 'Dark Knight' movies, and 'Dark Knight' and the last one are well over two hours, and I could've sat there for three and a half hours, so if it's good you have some leeway.
The wonderful thing about film is that you have something that has a beginning, middle, and end, and you have a concrete amount of time to shoot it.
Each film is different. Time Code was very quick - a matter of months. Miss Julie has been on my shelf as a script for some seven or eight years. But then the shooting process was very quick - 16 days.
There are good and bad movies, and long ones, and pretentious ones, and fun ones, and it's kind of healthy not just being able to switch off after ten minutes, but have patience.
I don't like extremely long movies. I tend to get a bit impatient. There are definitely exceptions, like 'Lawrence of Arabia,' but for the most part, I feel that movies should usually be shorter and not longer.
We did this film in 13 days, mind you. And 13 days is not very long for a feature film. Nobody in their right mind would argue that. Nobody in their right mind would do that.
I'm used to doing U.K. indie films, like, six weeks of filming, tops.
All my movies, like Revenge, are under two hours.
I don't want to make a habit of just playing small roles, because I really enjoy the process of being part of a film and staying on it for the length of time that everybody else is as well.
I'm not a great fan of very short films.
'She's Gotta Have It' was shot in twelve days and two six-day weeks.
The great thing about film is you start and finish. It's a journey that lasts so long, TV lasts a long time.
To me, length is an artificial and arbitrary factor in a film.
You have to find the movie in the editing room, and it can't be four hours; it has to be two hours.
In a perfect world, I'd love to make 90-minute movies, but for me, a movie needs to be as long or short as it can sustain itself.
My audience is comprised of three categories. The first category contains the people who decide after the first five minutes that they've made a mistake and leave. The second category is the people who give the film a chance and leave annoyed after 40 minutes. The third category includes the people that watch the whole film and return to see it again. If I'm able to persuade 33% of the audience to stay, then I can say that I've succeeded.
