Quotes About Film

To me, a revolutionary film is not a film about a revolution. It has a lot more to do with the art form. It's a film that is revolting against the old established language of cinema that had been brainwashing the people for decades. It is a film that is trying to find ways to use sound and image differently.

On another level this film talks about that. We had tremendous freedom while making this film. We never thought about marketing. It wasn't a film made to sell merchandise or products or to reach millions of people around the world. It was a film made to say what I really felt.

I want to write a score for a film. It can be a proper film, maybe for a film kind of like... I saw that movie 'Drive', or a bit of a 'Blade Runner' vibe. A little bit sci-fi, but I don't know. I've just always wanted to write a score for a film.

We have a conservative government that only thinks in terms of efficiency. They are spending a lot of money on military expenses and less and less on culture. My position is that culture can actually be economically viable. When I make a film, the film costs $3 million. Now, in Quebec, it grossed $3.5 million, which is a small film. It's not a comedy. There are no stars in it. And, it still grosses $3.5 million. That's just in Quebec.

See, a painting is much cheaper than making a film. And photography is, you know, way cheap. So if I get an idea for a film, there are many ways to get it together and go realise that film. There's really nothing to be afraid of.

But in film you always watch situations or stories that you really have no relation to. A lot of times just because there's no personal connection doesn't mean you can't connect with the film or the characters in the film.

I really discovered [Dr.Strange] through hearing about this film and first meeting Scott [Derrickson] and getting into it and just opening up and saying, "Okay, this is, like all comics, very much of its era," and my first question was, 'How do you make this film? Why do you make this film now?' and the answers were so enticing that I was like, "I'm in."

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.

The challenge in writing the songs for The Aristocats truly fell on the animators & director of the film. Robert & I wrote the initial songs for the film, just prior to leaving full-time employment at the Walt Disney Studios. Therefore, some of the songs we wrote for The Aristocats were never used. I believe, therefore, the challenge fell upon the makers of the film to select what songs made the final cut.

I love Brooke Shields. She's developed into a wonderful actress and a wonderful person. We were all babies then in Brenda Starr. That's why when people say, "What did you think of that film?" I can't do what people do and say, "I hated it." I can't speak ill of a film, because it's so hard to make a film. Everybody thinks we're sitting by a pool peeling grapes, and this is not the case. It's hard. It's hard to do this stuff - and getting harder!

Film is a narrative format. Some fashion films try to retain some of the poetic mystery, but most of the time they only end up looking like some crappy, pretentious film-school thing. So I think the interest in film is really about the fashion world finding another form of expression.

Some things definitely work better on film than in books. Introspection is great in books but it doesn't work on film. Anything with high intensity, whether it's a love scene, a car chase, a fight scene - those things work so well on film and oftentimes they can tell a much broader part of the story.

I know when I watch a film at this point, if I completely lose myself in the characters and the story and the world of the film I know that it's at least in my opinion, that was great. Otherwise I'm thinking: "Oh I know they were just doing A, B and C, right before they walked into the scene, then the camera was there, then they probably took the shot from this reverse close-up and moved it into this." When all of that drops away then I'm like: "Okay this was phenomenal, this was fantastic." I mean, any film or TV performance in general is probably good.

It's a film made in a very radical creative manner. It was possible because we didn't have to pander to capitalism. I think the film is also a humanistic cry for help for animation. It's a film [Boy and the World] with sensitivities completely opposite to what the market wants to sell.

As an actor, my attitude towards using of film versus digital is, if you have film, filmmakers have to cut eventually so you don't have to learn all that dialogue. With digital, they can just go on forever and it's a nightmare. So, I like film - nice short takes.

I think one of the London Film Festival strengths is that it's set in London but it's not about London. It's about the diversity of this city and it's about world cinema. And that's what London is - London is a place where its identity is always in a state of flux. So, this festival celebrates the way in which it is always changing. That's why London is a fascinating place and that's why the film festival is a fascinating film festival.

Whether youre making a million dollar film or a $100 million film there is never enough money, theres never enough time.

I will say that comic books are not the easiest things to translate to film, number one. Even the most well meaning of filmmakers find what's acceptable on the printed page is very difficult to bring to film.

I make films that are very personal, and I always have. It's kind of the only thing that I think I have to offer as a filmmaker: the intimacy I've had with experience in a particular world, so the film comes from things I've seen and things I've felt. It gets transformed by the process. I don't think I'd ever start making a film until I had both the intimacy with the subject and the distance to make it live in a certain way.

Well, I think every film student goes into film school thinking they want to write and direct their own movies, and they don't realize how much goes into it, and what a process it is.

With a film you go with the script that's already written. And I've never thought of a project, a film that would come from my own desire. I don't think I can do it. I need someone else's desire to be able to do something. With a record, it is completely different, it's a collaboration with another artist, but I'm willing to go into intimate places with no masks on.

The film [Sightseers] is really the story of the journey of a relationship, so the killings are almost a metaphor for the trials they go through. We wanted people to identify with the experience of going on holiday and having a quarrel with your wife, boyfriend, whatever. We knew if we didn't crack that it would not be watchable as a film.

I regard photography and film simply as new technical means which painters must absolutely make use of, just as from time out of mind they have made use of brush, charcoal and color. It is certain, however, that photography and film must become as evocative for the sensibility as pencil, charcoal and brush. (1927)

It is said that anyone who does commercial cinema is not acting, and anyone who does an art film is acting. I don't believe it. I feel whenever you are doing a film, you are acting. So you need to be applauded for that. I won't do art house cinemas. I want to make commercial films. I want my films to make money.

In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting human beings. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, relaxation, the sense of stepping into the world and pulling back, expansion, contraction, changing, softening, tenderness of heart. The first is a form of theater and the latter is a form of poetry.

I'll need every ounce that I have to drive it through. Film and TV require that energy. Sometimes fight scenes can be pretty intense. When I was shooting "Heaven" it was truly guerrilla film-making.

When you make a documentary film, after many years the only thing you remember is what you put into the film, not what you took out.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.

The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive.

I'm terrified by young people who are doing what they think is film making. What they're really doing is taking that convulsed, fast rhythm of commercials. It's not film making.

We all know the power of film; we all know there's almost nothing more powerful than to see people on film that look and talk like you, like we do.

I had the idea that the film would be much better served by a Branch Rickey lookalike than a Harrison Ford lookalike. I didn't want the audience to go into the film thinking that they knew me from some previous experience in a movie.

You know, this is such a rich time that we've just been involved in, and there's really a job now for historians. Film is still very young. This is the first hundred years of filmmaking. So I think it's important that we have some sense of history and continuity. Especially in film.

They say now in America that final cut doesn't mean anything. As Harvey Weinstein said to some film-maker, 'You can have final cut. I'll open your film in Arkansas.'

It gave me a lot of pleasure and pride that 90 percent of the crew for 'Monsoon Wedding,' and most of my film, are women. We get the work done, you know, much lesser play of ego... And I really believe in harmony, I believe in working in a spirit of egolessness and that the film is bigger than all of us.

The dream was to not only make a good-looking film that engaged, but also had the DNA of the show so the fans would love it and also as important had the opportunity to cross over out of the fans because of the price-point. You make a film that's 60 million dollars you can't just appeal to musical theater fans.

I'm not much interested in sport just as sport. I wouldn't be interested in making a golf film or baseball or fishing film.

If you make a film normally it's all right, the distributors are helpful and cooperative. But if you make a film that's a little stange, a little bizarre, then all the time it's a struggle with them.

I love theatre - it's where I started - and I've directed a play myself. I'm not sure if I want to direct a film, but certainly, as an actress, I'm always thinking, 'Surely this must be my last film.'

My protest against digital has been me saying, "What's going to happen to film?" The result is that Kodak is out of business. That's a national tragedy. We've got to keep making film.

What happens in Israel, it's not so divided between being a film actor, or a TV actor - usually, we just do everything. I do theater, film, and television, and the theater is mostly financed by the government.

If you need to strap a camera to you or get in a small space, then it makes sense to use digital.I do think it is possible to use a digital camera artistically, but it can only be good if you are using film technique. Film has grain, and digital has pixels, and there is not that much of a difference, but digital does not replace the need to create a scene and light it properly and spend time considering the shot.

[Warren's Beatty] first film being with this very important director [Elia Kazan], I think we related on that in a big way. And I just was genuinely curious about his experiences in film, and about the people he knew.

Our point isn't to make an examination of popular film but to illustrate that the yearning for a heroic adventure lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness; film, television, literature, sports, and travel are in a sense vicarious adventures.

The action movie, the thriller and the drama all have safety nets under them. But not the horror film. The horror film can sink to an abyss far darker than the imagination can ever reach.

Every single one of us who has been a Woman in Film for more than five minutes is sick of the phrase Women in Film.

I like the saying: "The world is as you are." And I think films are as you are. That's why, although the frames of a film are always the same - the same number, in the same sequence, with the same sounds - every screening is different. The difference is sometimes subtle but it's there. It depends on the audience. There is a circle that goes from the audience to the film and back. Each person is looking and thinking and feeling and coming up with his or her own sense of things. And it's probably different from what I fell in love with.

I studied music all the way through college, but as soon as I graduated from university, I got straight into London and got straight into film music. So really my experiences have been being around the orchestras in London and being around the people who work in film music.