Immersive Filmmaking Quotes

In 'The Bourne Identity,' I wanted to give the audience the feeling of being in the car with Jason Bourne, not just watching him drive but be in the car with him, and 'The Wall' is the continuation of that immersive filmmaking style. Where you're trapped behind the wall with Aaron Taylor-Johnson - for better or worse, you're trapped there with him.

If I do a film, I go to the place where it is based on, interact with people, and then, I believe, you pick up things without you even noticing.

I don't belong to the slums, but to play Naru in 'City Of Gold,' I had to live for months in a real chawl before we shot the film.

Usually, when you're in a movie, you're disconnected from it. You're never going to feel what you felt when you made it.

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.

I always prefer shooting on locations, because when I'm at home, it's harder to sort of get lost in the world of whatever you're making. It does, it does force this bond and community amongst a group.

I've always tried to do camera moves that I felt were immersive. So I think, as a filmmaker, my style of filmmaking is very well-suited to 3-D anyway, so it's not like I'm having to change a huge amount of the way I shoot to work in 3-D.

Alejandro Amenabar is a different kind of director than I lot of the directors I've asked for. He really asks you to enter his dream as opposed to, you know, a guy like Sidney Lumet or something is going to ask you to create a character almost like a documentary. He wants you to make the people really real and he's going to capture it like a documentarian.

I remember when it was reported that I was going to do the film in this format, people were actually speculating, and I guess I understand it. They were like, "Yeah, okay, that all sounds really great, but why would he do it for a thing that's so set bound?" That's not very profound thinking when it comes to 65mm. It's not just for shooting travelogues, mountain scenery and nature.

And the best films feel like a fist punching you in the solar plexus and all elements of the filmmaking process - the acting, the design, the cinematography, the music, is all working to one end.

A lot of cable television is shot on a single camera. Our eyes are more trained to that. It takes the camera off the crane, away from observing the action, to becoming a character in the story along with everyone else. People are getting used to that.

Of course, you do not do any research: you have to go there and do your film. It's not that I would travel there before without a camera and spend half a year on one of those volcanoes and then come back with a camera. You have to have some sort of a clear mindset.

I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.

I want to get out of the way of the actors. I want to get out of their eye lines. I want to them to stop thinking they're making a movie. I want them to just go and live. It's like you take these great actors and put them in an aquarium of life, and just watch them swim. That's what makes editing tough because you get all these beautiful, unplanned moments.

Noah Baumbach does more takes than any director I've ever worked with. He runs a very quiet set and he runs a very hard working set. He has such an intense level of dedication to what's happening that he cultivates a group of people around him who have an equal level of dedication. Nobody asks, "When is lunch?" That's just not part of our sets. It's complete immersion. He has a 'no cell phone' rule. Nobody checks their cell phone. Nobody reads on set. It's like, "If you're there, you're there. If you're not on board with that, don't work on this movie."