visualizing scenes Quotes

Still I should paint my own places best; painting is with me but another word for feeling, and I associate "my careless boyhood" with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter, and I am grateful; that is, I had often thought of pictures of them before ever I touched a pencil, and your picture ['The White Horse'] is one of the strongest instance I can recollect of it.

When I start to write, I see my stories as a kind of movie. For instance, I ask myself, "What kind of opening do I want for this book?"

I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.

I find reading screenplays difficult, as they're only a roadmap for what a movie might end up being.

I think one of the things you have to be aware of as an actor is that if you come on the set and see the director standing there mouthing all the words while a scene is going on, that's usually a very bad sign because it means the director has already shot the scene in his head. He knows exactly the rhythm and the nuances that he wants delivered in the line and you're not going to dissuade him.

I would recommend that any writer get off their ass at least once and just try it. Directing is a completely different set of muscles. It also affects your writing because, once you start directing, you tend to write your scripts with directing in mind.

Directing is kind of like acting through other people. You see moments and you see things and if you don't see the actors hit it, you paint in those little spaces and tell them what direction to go in.

Writing a novel is a lot like directing a movie because you are creating a world and a tone, you are creating a large canvas and all the details.

In the case of a film like The Exorcist or To Live and Die in L.A., I saw the whole movie in my head before I went to shoot it. I never did storyboards, or anything like that. I had the film in my head.