Louis Malle was the best filmmaker I've ever worked with. He was such an artist. He was dealing with the theme of innocence and experience.
I think my passion for cinema really started when I was on the set of 'Mud' and my third film 'Joe.' That's when I really started to fall in love with the art of filmmaking.
Ah, there's a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who's, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he's a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art.
There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors
Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theatre. It's a completely different discipline, it exists on its own. I would say that the beauty of it is it's not the theatre, it's not done over again. It's done in bits and pieces. Things are happening which you can't get again. I forbid anyone to say "Cut", the soundman, the operator, or whatever.
People who are making films today are too concerned with mechanics - technical things instead of feeling.
Kodak has always represented innovation that is approachable while delivering the craft of filmmaking.
I had to see if I'm a real filmmaker. I mean, I have proven myself in movies and franchises, but am I an artist? Can I contribute something to a medium that I love so much?
With today's fast films, you can light the way your eye sees the scene. You can abuse the film and create subtleties in contrast with light and exposure, diffusion and filters. That's what makes it an art.
I think Frank Capra was a much craftier filmmaker, a wonderful filmmaker. He had enormous technique, and he knew how to manipulate the public quite brilliantly.
The kind of filmmaking excitement that director Peter Weir brings to movies is bone deep.
This whole business of documentary being a second-class citizen is bullshit. A documentary can be as interesting, as dramatic, as sad, as funny, blah, blah, blah, as a fiction movie. Or it can be as awful as a fiction movie!
I love the art of filmmaking very much in all aspects.
I think the camera was always my obsession, the camera movements. Because for me it's the most important thing in the move, the camera, because without the camera, film is just a stage or television - nothing.
I love romantic comedies. I have a deep respect for them. I think they're really difficult to write and write well.
You need to be a good filmmaker to make a compelling two-minute film as well.
Being open to what's happening in front of you is the most important thing about being a director. To allow the magic to exist and to be light enough on your feet to harness it as it's happening. That's what makes cinema interesting.
That sort of detailed filmmaking is one, hard to do and not have it be pretentious, and two, have it tell the story, which is what you're taught, that cinema is the language of images and you really should be able to make a film with no dialogue and tell a story.
I am a serious filmmaker, and I see the whole process of filmmaking more as a piece of art.
It was 100 feet of 16 mm black-and-white film of a car coming to a stop sign, and driving off. I had to decide how to frame and light it. It was magic. There was a sense of mystery.
I don't like it when a movie becomes a series of 'tour de force' shots, and in a way, I was disappointed that with 'Children of Men,' people noticed that the car scene was one shot with no cuts. If people notice that, it's like they're noticing my trick, you know what I mean? I'm doing it so people will get immersed in the movie, not to show off.
There's an ecstasy about doing something really good on film: the composition of a shot, the drama within the shot, the texture... It's palpable.
We're able to push the envelope with what we're doing, both on a technical and artistic level, which is the most that any filmmaker can ask for.
Of the hundreds of points to enter and exit that are offered to me, I have to choose the one that I feel is the least wrong, the least fake. It is fake, it is a moment that I choose to erupt the story, but I make it as smooth as I can. What enables me to do it is the skill of filmmaking.
I don't know of a more noble, a bigger deal as a filmmaker than to be a YouTube filmmaker.
