Filmmaking Inspiration Quotes

I think people like Lena Dunham really opened up the door to what was possible, and they've inspired young women to go into filmmaking and writing and directing and acting in a way that maybe they didn't before, because now there is a path and there are jobs.

When you first start out, you want to be Fellini, or you want to be Bergman.

I discovered the 7th art at home when I was kid, through Charlie Chaplin's movies and those of my father who shot documentaries. He was my biggest influence. So I took his camera and started shooting.

Oh yeah - I watched Knife in the Water, saw the shot, and repeated it. But even if I hadn't seen that film, inevitably the camera would've ended up on top of that mast, I mean if you think of it there are only so many dynamic shots on a boat.

I was imagining films in my head and trying to gather friends together to make movies since I was a kid. I tried to do comedy skits and a horror film.

The new 'Avatar' BluRay is a lesson in filmmaking. It really is inspiring.

Wong Kar-Wai is a really great inspiration. He's always referred to as the Jimi Hendrix of filmmaking.

Someone asked me the other day, 'What's the biggest influence on your filmmaking career?' And they started naming filmmakers. I went 'Naw, it's Jesus actually.'

The reason I make movies now has a lot to do with having seen Star Wars when I was seven years old. That's the formative movie-going experience of my life.

I think by around the time I was about 8 or 9, the idea of filmmaking probably took hold. I made little Super 8 extravaganzas when I was a kid, the first being my own version of 'Romeo and Juliet,' and where I played all the parts except for Juliet.

I love that first-time feeling that I can't build in myself anymore, where I can learn and emulate other filmmakers. Be it Ayan Mukherjee, Punit Mahotra, Karan Malhotra, Tarun Mansukhani or Shakun Batra, all of them have taught me something or the other.

I had wanted to make a film about World War II for some time, but I didn't really want to do something that was set in the trenches, so to speak.

Following a pre-cellphone world of children on an adventure is incredibly appealing for me. These are the kinds of movies I fell in love with and made me want to be a filmmaker in the first place.

The problem with shooting in Paris is, it's been shot to death. When you're in it, you already think you're in a movie, so how do you get away from that feeling, and give some frisson to the viewer?

I am definitely writing letters to lots of directors in my mind when I'm making a film. I'm chasing Woody Allen and Godard and Milos Forman and all these people.

It was only when I saw films in my early 20s by Jane Campion, Mira Nair, Sally Potter and Kathryn Bigelow, I started to think, 'Oh, it's possible.' I dared to suggest that I wanted to train to be a film director.

I'm always inspired by other filmmakers, whether it's a shot or the way they handle tone.

A large part of my filmmaking self has to do with my love of being in the cinema audience, and my relationships to what I want to see on the screen, what I have seen on the screen and what I don't want to see on the screen again.

Painters can study the masters can't they? Musicians can hear Beethoven. What will filmmakers do?

I can go back to my very first movie, Thirteen, and think about that exact moment when I saw Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood do their chemistry read audition together. It just came alive. I was filming it with a video camera and I was like, "I know I can make a good movie now."

I hope I inspire children to make films.

I've been inspired by films since I started dancing, and I'm married to a filmmaker, and I think it was one of my secret desires, but I was afraid to just say, 'I want to be a director'. But then one day I said, O.K., stop dreaming and do it. But I didn't want to do it the Hollywood way, and talk through agents. I decided it all had to be generated by me, so I wrote it.

If anything, I learned most from being a huge fan of his and watching movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan over and over again - that influenced the kind of movies that I wanted to make more than anything else.

I'm a fetish filmmaker, in that I don't know why I do what I do, I just like to see things. When I figure out what I would like to see, I will put it in a film.

I'm always surprised when some director says, 'When I saw this film, that changed my life.' I don't have that.