A small collection of helpful words by creators.
"As my careeer has gone on, I've gotten more and more aggressive about keeping my plate full. I've got so many things I want to do, so many ideas that I'd like to pursue, that's it hard to find time to do all of them. I'm mystified by director who say, 'I can't find anything I want to do.' I look around and I want to do everything. There are so many stories everywhere.For those aspiring to a career in the film business, I offer this equation:
Talent + Perserverance = Luck. Be ready when it hapens."
-Steven Soderbergh
(From a production diary kept while making "π" )
"I made a speech from my heart. I thanked all and offered everyone a chance to take risks, a chance to make π their own, a chance at meaningful collaboration. I almost cried. My mom did. (She's doing craft services.) Now we shoot-no more excuses."
-Darren Aronofsky
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
-Orson Welles
"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."
-Walt Disney
"Take advantage of your disadvantages, feature the few assets you may have, and work harder than anyone else around you. When given the opportunity, deliver excellence and never quit."
-Robert Rodríguez
[on how to properly build suspense] Four people are sitting around a table talking about baseball or whatever you like. Five minutes of it. Very dull. Suddenly, a bomb goes off. Blows the people to smithereens. What does the audience have? Ten seconds of shock. Now take the same scene and tell the audience there is a bomb under that table and will go off in five minutes. The whole emotion of the audience is totally different because you've given them that information. In five minutes time that bomb will go off. Now the conversation about baseball becomes very vital. Because they're saying to you, "Don't be ridiculous. Stop talking about baseball. There's a bomb under there." You've got the audience working.
-Alfred Hitchcock
"Filmmakers are like blenders. We take different ideas, which are like different fruits-bananas, cherries, strawberries-and stick them in a blender to make a big smoothie that's our own creation. The ingredients in the smoothie are all out there in the world; it's simply the filmmakers choice as to which ones to use."
-Darren Aronofsky
"When people ask me for advice on writing or directing, or almost any project, "finish what you start" is the first thing I tell them. As a young man I'd start a novel or a script or a film and it would all be going amazingly well, and then I'd hit a snag... something that stopped me. Maybe I was judging the project, or I lost my passionate fuel, or I became distracted by a newer, shiner project. And so I just stopped and moved on. I didn't think the problem was me; I thought it was the projects I was choosing. I thought I would eventually find the right project that would fix everything for me, that would be THE project that would propel me to success.I was in my twenties and becoming discouraged. I was seeing people around me, who I thought were less talented than me, getting film deals and TV deals. It wasn't because I was lazy - I was often writing for fifteen or sixteen hours a day. Why wasn't I doing as well as others?And one day it came to me in a burst of inspiration: Perhaps the missing ingredient was incredibly simple - I just needed to finish whatever I started. There was nothing wrong with the projects I had been choosing. The problem was me: I just hadn't followed them through. Any of them could have been "the one."Fear was what most often kept me from completing something. What if it wasn't good enough? What if I put my heart into something and put it out there and I looked stupid? I realized I had to act despite my fear if I wanted any of the benefits of artistic achievement (which include artistic achievement itself).So I started finishing whatever I started. It became the primary goal of my writing. And it was only a matter of months before everything in my life changed dramatically, both in terms of how I felt about myself, and in terms of how the world treated me in regards to my career. Finishing what you start - plowing ahead, no matter what - is what separates amateurs from professionals. It's what transformed me from a wannabe, kinda writer into an actual writer.Obviously, not everyone who finishes what they start in every endeavor will be successful - natural ability and experience and personality make up a huge part of success. But I do think it is the most important aspect of being successful. (And, contrary to popular belief, "having connections" is NOT an important aspect of being successful - of all my successful friends in the film industry, maybe two were born with connections.) As writers and directors we have to be self-starters, because no one will hire us with nothing to show for it. And, if you're a beginner, finishing what you start is the quickest way to improve. You learn a lot more about writing from completing a screenplay than you do from writing the first thirty pages of ten screenplays.Finally, if you're an open-minded and honest person, finishing what you start is a way to learn if you want to pursue a career in whatever field you're considering. Maybe you aren't that great at the job you're considering - but you'll never know that unless you try."
-James Gunn
“I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you’re young because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you...because of it I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse.”
-Walt Disney
"I try to make what I want to make or what I would want to see."
-Sofia Coppola
"The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist that they react in a particular way"
-Werner Herzog
"There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness."
-Frank Capra
"If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion you can't help but make a good movie. You don't have to go to school. You don't have to know a lens -- you know, a 40 and a 50 and a -- fuck all that shit about crossing the line -- none of that shit's important. If you just truly love cinema with enough passion -- and you really love it, then you can't help but make a good movie."
-Quentin Tarantino
"I didn't grew up in Hollywood, I grew up in a tiny little town in South Jersey. I could not have been further from the Hollywood dream but I had always wanted to make that happen. If you follow your dreams and you never give up, you will get what you want. It might not be how you expected it and it might not be in the time frame you expected but you will get what you want."
-Steven S. DeKnight
To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script.
-Alfred Hitchcock
"We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies."
-Walt Disney
"The biggest misconception is people see someone's first film and they think that's what they did on their first day as a filmmaker...I've been at this years and years at this point. There's no overnight success. There's no idiot savant filmmakers. It's not gonna work like that. It's a lot of work, and people don't want to hear that. They want to think, Oh, he just did it! Wow!"
-Richard Linklater
"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."
-Thomas Edison
“Most people never ask (for help). And that’s what separates the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. "
-Steve Jobs
“Everyone I know who is having success in this industry right now is there because of persistence. "
-Jay Duplas