Short Film Production Quotes

I think it's a mistake for young filmmakers to just buy digital equipment and shoot a feature. Make short films first, make your mistakes and learn from them.

I was inspired to become an actor from theater I'd seen, so I assumed I'd do a lot of theater. But when I left Guidhall, the first thing I did was a short film - I played the main character. And I loved it. I love working on camera. I love the smallness of it and the detail and the routine of it.

I don't just act to pay my rent. I really like doing it, so I get frustrated when I don't get to do it all the time, so short films are a really great way to be doing it and working with your friends, working on smaller, more specific things without limiting yourself in other ways.

I did short film with Damian Lewis from Homeland, that was a really incredible experience. He's one of the best actors I've ever worked with. Even though that's a short film for Jaguar that's really, in essence, a commercial, it didn't feel like it, at all.

The music rights at the time cost me $12,000 in 1964 money, which is about double now or whatever. But I cleared everything. I had a lawyer in New York. And it was cleared for use in a short subject, not a feature.

Since I was 20, I wanted to make a short film and send it to international short film festivals. It never happened. I became too big a star to indulge in those things.

When you make documentaries or short films, you have to have eyes and ears in the back of your head and on the sides and all around you. I like that in my films.

On the world stage, Australians are very good short filmmakers.

Even before 'Moon,' I did a short film called 'Whistle,' and it had a lot of the things that I thought I would need to be able to do on a feature film: I shot on location, there was special FX work, there was stunt work, we used squibs, I shot on 35 mm film.

Television and cable have become the new independent films, in a sense, for writers and actors to gravitate towards. That's why I like short films, too; I love doing readings, audio books, working with young filmmakers; anything that keeps you from getting blase about yourself or in a rut.

I believe short films are more organic. It's almost like doing theatre. It just takes few takes.

In fact, sometimes when a short film is done well, you wish that it could be slightly longer.

My roommate in college in Austin, Texas, was Wes Anderson. Wes always wanted to be a director. I was an English major in college, and he got us to work on a screenplay together. And then, in working on the screenplay, he wanted my brother, Luke, and me to act in this thing. We did a short film that was kind of a first act of what became Bottle Rocket.

In India, we always look at feature films as a progression over short films. But, abroad, people make a living making short films. The revenue might not be as much as in feature films, but the return on investment is good.

Go out and make something that reflects your interests, your taste, and your ideas. No one will pay you to make something until you have a few things you can show that you've directed. I got my start by making short films on my own.

You can do a short film in three to four days, and then you can show it. Look at the careers you seen go either through Tropfest or outside of Tropfest. You can make a short film in a couple of days, and if it's great, it can go in the Internet or go to a film festival like this one or another.

Right before 'American Dreams,' I started to pursue these avenues, like short films and getting into a couple night courses to really study photography and cinematography, and the language of visual storytelling.

'Sara' was the first film project I worked on as an actress; it's a short film.

Rajkumar was the winner of 'Naalaya Iyakkunar Season 2,' and I was impressed with his short film. He joined me as an assistant when I started the pre-production work for 'Vada Chennai.'

My first job was a commercial for a Swiss insurance company. It was an eight-minute short with a proper story arc, and it ended up getting a spot at Cannes Lions; I was lucky to avoid the commercials where you're their puppet.

It's funny: I put money into short films, and I put really good actors in it, and I write some stuff that's really funny, and I'll get, like, a million views. But to the right of me, there will be a video of a kitten that falls into a toilet bowl, and it's three seconds long, and it will get 25 million views.

With the Ford Foundation grant all of a sudden instead of being an artist that had made a couple of short films, I became a filmmaker who dabbled in the arts.

There are fewer established rules in the way you tell a story for commercials than in features. It's a great little short story you get to play with.

I was shocked. They were going to give me money to make this really odd show? Well, I still had little thought of it going to series, but I thought it was great that my next short film was going to be paid for.

My father has been a part of a few short films I made; he played a small but significant role in 'Jigarthanda.'