A Quote by Michael Ondaatje

There always should be something hanging unfinished before a scene ends so that there's a reason for going to the next scene. — © Michael Ondaatje
There always should be something hanging unfinished before a scene ends so that there's a reason for going to the next scene.
What is a scene? a) A scene starts and ends in one place at one time (the Aristotelian unities of time and place-this stuff goes waaaayyyy back). b) A scene starts in one place emotionally and ends in another place emotionally. Starts angry, ends embarrassed. Starts lovestruck, ends disgusted. c) Something happens in a scene, whereby the character cannot go back to the way things were before. Make sure to finish a scene before you go on to the next. Make something happen.
...a story should be like a roller coaster. That is to say before writing a really cruel scene, I have to lift the people's spirits, for example, with a fun scene... Before writing a scene of pure despair, we must go through scenes of hope. And indeed, when I write, all of this amuses me very much.
When you're doing a play and you're afraid of a scene, that's the scene you should embrace, because that's the scene that will tell you something about the play.
I'm a firm believer that if you're nervous before you go into a scene, it means the scene is going to be good, and it means you're invested in making something special.
I never cared about making one coherent masterpiece with a conventional narrative. I always wanted my movies to have images falling from all directions in a vaudevillian way. If you didn't like what was happening in one scene, you could just snooze through it until the next scene. That was the thing about vaudeville: You didn't have to worry about the beginning and ends of these things.
If I'm preparing for something and I've got a huge day the next day, I have to get into character the night before to assess the scene. I can't assess a scene unless I'm in character, if that makes sense.
I really like the Chris-R scene and of course the "you are tearing me apart Lisa" scene. The reason I love the Chris-R scene is because we worked really hard to finish it. It's not just that though, it brings people together. Everyone is one the roof together by the end of the scene. You see the perspectives of the different characters. I feel like with all the connections in this scene that the room connects the entire world
I feel like if you shoot one scene all day long or you take two days to do a scene, that scene is going to be stale.
With moviemaking, the audience always has to keep asking, 'What happens next?' If you have the wrong piece of music over a scene, people aren't going to get the scene. If you have the wrong camera angle, people aren't going to pay attention. That's as much a part of the process as getting people to talk to you.
[While voicing] you have to create a feeling for what happened before a scene, what's going to happen after a scene, and what you are doing in a scene. You need to use your imagination even more and once your emotions are up, then your voice and expressions will go accordingly.
I love actors and I understand what has to happen within a scene. Any scene is an acting scene and actors never act alone, so there has to be an interchange. If it's a dialog scene, if it's a love scene, it doesn't matter because you need to establish a situation.
That's one thing I never had to do on a Mike Bay set is sit around and pontificate about the next scene; there's no time for it. You're already in the next scene.
have a much harder time writing stories than novels. I need the expansiveness of a novel and the propulsive energy it provides. When I think about scene - and when I teach scene writing - I'm thinking about questions. What questions are raised by a scene? What questions are answered? What questions persist from scene to scene to scene?
What I don't like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don't want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.
When some people get parts, they feel they can now relax, but for me it was always the opposite. Sometimes before I do a movie or before I act out a scene, I may not sleep well the night before. If I don't know what the scene is about, I might get all worked up.
I don't think that any scene [in Pineapple Express] is word for word how you'd find it in the script. Some of it was much more loose than others. The last scene with me, Danny [McBride] and James [Franko] in the diner - there was never even a script for that scene. Usually we write something, but for that scene we literally wrote nothing.
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