85+ Best Filmmaking Quotes About Film Production From Famous Directors
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A director’s role is to guide the actors and other crew members to bring out the intended idea. There are several movies which people couldn’t have imagined, for example, ‘The Life of Pi’ or ‘Harry Potter.’
Becoming a filmmaker is challenging, though film or theater schools help a lot. The key is to just start making films, whatever resources you have.
Walt Disney, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Katherine Howe, David Fincher, Guillermo Del Toro, Stanley Kubrick, John Cassavetes, Wim Wenders, Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese are some of the most popular filmmakers in this present era.
The film industry is a dream come true to many aspiring actors, directors, photographers, designers, makeup artists, editors, costume designers, set designers, writers, screenplay writers, and many other artists. Filmmaking is indeed tedious and requires a massive budget concerning the concept.
The process takes months to years for it to be completed. Here are 100 best filmmaking quotes about filmmaking from famous directors.
If you like this article, check out these Steven Spielberg quotes and Alfred Hitchcock quotes.
Quotes About Filmmaking By Famous Filmmakers
A filmmaker has the responsibility of the entire crew and is almost like the lion of a jungle. Read on for some of the most famous filmmaking quotes that you will surely enjoy on your journey.
1. “Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.”
- Robert Altman.
2. “The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself.”
- Peter Jackson.
3. “I love editing. It’s one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.”
- Steven Spielberg.
4. “Basically, I’m afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking.”
- Lars Von Trier.
5. “If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.”
- Woody Allen.
6. “Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read...if you don’t read, you will never be a filmmaker.”
- Werner Herzog.
7. “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”
- Walt Disney.
8. “When given an opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit.”
- Robert Rodriguez.
9. “If you have to have a job in this world, a high-priced movie star is a pretty good gig.”
- Tom Hanks.
10. “To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.”
- Akira Kurosawa.
11. “I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time.”
― Akira Kurosawa.
12. “The filmmaking process taught me that I need to be authentic—in my scripts and in real life.”
- John Grooters.
13. “I would travel down to hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.”
- Werner Herzog.
14. “When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, ‘no, I went to films.”
15. “Filmmaking can give you everything, but at the same time, it can take everything from you.”
- Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
16. “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”
- Orson Welles.
17.“Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a good writer.”
- George Lucas.
18. “One hopeful sign that the filmmakers can learn and grow is that the sequel does not contain a single pie, if you know what I mean.”
- Roger Ebert.
19. “Self-plagiarism style.”
- Alfred Hitchcock.
20. “Everything about filmmaking tries to distract you from that first fine rapturous vision you have of the film.”
- Ted Kotcheff.
21. “Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. Everything after that you’re just negotiating your budget and your fee.”
- James Cameron.
22. “Let me just pause a minute and drink in this moment. And if you film it, I’ll be able to get free refills for life.”
- Jarod Kintz.
23. “There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness.”
- Frank Capra.
24. “A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end…but not necessarily in that order.”
- Jean-Luc Godard.
25. “The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
- Stanley Kubrick.
Famous Directors Quotes On Filmmaking And Films
The process of making feature films is like reading a book. This involves various steps done by different departments of people, while the film director is at the helm of affairs. Here is a list of inspiring filmmaking quotes along with popular Steven Spielberg quotes about filmmaking that must feature in your life book of inspiring quotes.
26. “Every time I go to a movie, its magic, no matter what the movie’s about.”
- Steven Spielberg.
27. “People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.”
- Steven Spielberg.
28. “But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences – is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.”
- George Lucas.
29. “All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that’s why it takes too long.”
- Steven Spielberg.
30. “It amazes me that filmmakers will still film, and audiences will still watch, relationships so bankrupt of human feeling that the characters could be reading dialogue written by a computer.”
- Roger Ebert.
31. “My filmmaking really began with technology. It began through technology, not through telling stories, because my 8mm movie camera was the way into whatever I decided to do.”
- Steven Spielberg.
32. “A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.”
- Samuel Goldwyn.
33. “As far as the filmmaking process is concerned, stars are essentially worthless -- and absolutely essential.”
- William Goldman.
34. “I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.”
- Francis Ford Coppola.
35. “If you can’t believe a little in what you see on the screen, it’s not worth wasting your time on cinema.”
- Serge Daney.
36. “A film is a petrified fountain of thought.”
- Jean Cocteau.
37. “I made some mistakes in drama. I thought the drama was when the actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.”
- Frank Capra.
38. “Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.”
- Martin Scorsese.
39. “Films can only be made by by-passing the will of those who appear in them, using not what they do, but what they are.”
- Robert Bresson.
40. “A film is -- or should be -- more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings.”
- Stanley Kubrick.
41. “Before you say ‘cut,’ wait five more seconds.”
- Wim Wenders.
42. “It’s better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you’ll be too afraid to let things keep happening.”
- David Lynch.
43. “My distinguishing talent is the ability to put people under the microscope, perhaps to go one or two layers farther down than some other directors.”
- David Lean.
44. “I put my ideas into practice. That may be the reason people hate me.”
- Emir Kusturica.
45. “All you need for is movie is: a gun and a girl.”
- Jean-Luc Godard.
46. “If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.”
- Stanley Kubrick.
47. “I only produce things that have so much in common with what I like. I wanna understand what I’m doing, I wanna understand the instincts that are going to inform the story.”
- Guillermo Del Toro.
48. “I think other filmmakers are inherently more brilliant than me, but I know I can work harder than they can.”
- James Cameron.
49. “I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.”
- Nicholas Meyer.
50. “A filmmaker’s most important tool is humanity. You want to able to capture humanity in your stories and bring out humanity in your characters.”
- Ryan Coogler.
Quotes About Movies And Their Power
The filmmaking team is the soul of the film. In order for the film to be completed there should be complete team work among the crew members. The director is someone who wields the power to control all the crew members. Here is a list of some of the best filmmaker quotes along with film director quotes.
51. “The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself.”
- Peter Jackson.
52. “Hollywood is still the mecca for good or bad, but it isn’t the beginning or end for filmmaking.”
- Robert Duvall.
53. “Filmmaking is to me very similar to being in a café somewhere in Paris and looking at the people walking by.”
- Claire Denis.
54. “Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and Steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about.
It’s not just about getting a performance. It’s also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.”
- David Fincher.
55. “Filmmaking is incredibly introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways.”
- Drew Goddard.
56. “Nobody will ever notice that. Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It’s about the big picture.”
- Ed Wood.
57. “I think there are advantages to different scales of filmmaking. You wouldn’t want to do just one thing.”
- Christopher Nolan.
58. “The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.”
- Alfred Hitchcock.
59. “I think of filmmaking as a form of communication. Maybe it’s also an art, but that’s for somebody else to decide.”
- Roger Deakins.
60. “Filmmaking is about moments. In real life, things might take six months, a year, but [in filmmaking] you have to create the moment where it happened.”
- Morten Tyldum.
61. “Filmmaking is the ultimate team sport.”
- Michael Keaton.
62. “I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there’s got to be a captain.”
- Ridley Scott.
63. “Filmmaking is a miracle of collaboration.”
- James McAvoy.
64. “Filmmaking is teamwork.”
- Rajkummar Rao.
65. “I think the most satisfying part about filmmaking is seeing a production in full bloom. When I write, I write in isolation.”
- Jeff Kinney.
66. “Film is, to me, just unimportant. But people are very important.”
- John Cassavetes.
67. “Making a movie is like building a watch because a watch is so small and you only can fit so many things inside it that all the pieces really do need to work together.”
- William Eubank.
68. “An average director directs. A good director leads and follows at the same time.”
- Kensington Gore.
69. “ A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the filmmakers.”
- David Fincher.
70. “Film is a battleground.”
- Sam Fuller.
71. “If a million people see my movie, I hope they see a million different movies.”
- Quentin Tarantino.
72. “Pain is temporary, film is forever!”
- John Milius.
73. “I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.”
- J.J. Abrams.
74. “Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.”
- Cecille B. DeMille.
75. “I would travel down to hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.”
- Warner Herzog.
Fantastic Filmmaker Quotes
A film director or filmmaker has a lot of responsibility to carry. This is why they must have some power over the team and crew. Read on for some of the best filmmaker quotes to give you some power on your journey in life.
76. “People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.”
- David Lynch.
- Alfred Hitchcock.
77. “Movies are like an expensive form of therapy for me.”
- Tim Burton.
78. “I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.”
- Stanley Kubrick.
79. “I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me.”
- David Lynch.
80. “I think people who have faults are a lot more interesting than people who are perfect.”
- Spike Lee.
81. “The only safe thing is to take a chance.”
- Mike Nichols.
82. “That’s my advice with dealing with writer’s block: follow the fun. If you aren’t having fun, you are doing it wrong.”
- Jordan Peele.
83. “To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script and the script.”
- Alfred Hitchcock.
84. "Casting is 65 percent of directing."
- John Frankenheimer.
85. “Writer is a film director of letters.”
- Rajesh Nanoo, ‘The Cave Of Wisdom: Finest Of Esoteric & Semitic Philosophy.’
86. “The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know.”
- Brian De Palma.
87. “That’s my advice with dealing with writer’s block: follow the fun. If you aren’t having fun, you are doing it wrong.”
- Jordan Peele.
88. “To recognize yourself in a character onscreen, and to connect with them, you gotta recognize their flaws; they gotta feel like a real person.”
- Ryan Coogler.
89. “I never studied directing and I never really thought about doing it, and then I just found myself in that situation and tried it.”
- Sofia Coppola.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for filmmaking quotes, then why not take a look at '80s movie quotes, or George Lucas quotes.
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Bachelor of Commerce, Master of Business Administration specializing in Marketing
Supriya JainBachelor of Commerce, Master of Business Administration specializing in Marketing
As a skilled member of the Kidadl team, Shruti brings extensive experience and expertise in professional content writing. With a Bachelor's degree in Commerce from Punjab University and an MBA in Business Administration from IMT Nagpur, Shruti has worked in diverse roles such as sales intern, content writer, executive trainee, and business development consultant. Her exceptional writing skills cover a wide range of areas, including SOP, SEO, B2B/B2C, and academic content.
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