A Quote by Ava DuVernay

I always go into a blocking rehearsal with an anchor, with a blocking plan. And sometimes they'll step into the room and they'll be in costume and you're like, "That sucks, that's not going to work. Let's think of something new."
Whatever's asked of me, I'm just going to go out there and perform my routes and how I've been coached all week, perform in the running game, pass blocking, run blocking, whatever it is.
Rehearsing is more about blocking in the case of movies, I think, and blocking, of course, is very important to the beauty of a scene.
Your run blocking looks pretty similar to what the pass blocking looks like when you're going with the play-action pass. So you really do have an opportunity to get really good at it quickly.
You can plan for things, work towards them for years, and yet they never materialize. Or you can just happen to be in the right place at the right moment, and everything falls into place. If you want to believe in something like Fate, she's a capricious character. Sometimes she stand there blocking the doorway you were born to pass through, and sometimes she takes you by the hand and leads you through the minute you poke your nose out. And the stars gaze down and keep their counsel.
Obviously, ["Fences"] is a character-driven piece in every sense of the word, and Denzel [Washington] knows the actor. He gave us two weeks of rehearsal. He is a truth teller, and he is a truth seer. So he knows when something is not going in the right direction, and he will call you on it. But, he knows the word to use to unlock whatever is blocking you. So I think he's fabulous and he's a teacher.
I think, sometimes, that I'm going nuts, and that perhaps there is something good about blocking clean water for those who have none, making sure that illiterate children remain so, and preventing the resuscitation of the public health sector in the country most in need of it. Lunacy is what it is.
I need to improve on a lot of different areas. I need to improve on my timing on my shot-blocking, when to go, and when not to go. And there's definitely always room for improvement on my shooting.
I can be a guy the guys can rely on, an anchor in the paint, whether it's blocking shots or being on that help side.
I kind of like to think I can do everything decently well. It's just putting me in position to be a playmaker, blocking, special teams, no matter what it may be. Whenever I go out there, I'm going to do my best.
We've always had the sensibility that you work on the set, and you structure it, much like a play, where once you've got the lines down and blocking right, you freeze it, and then you go out and do what you're doing night after night. You want to structure something that has form and that builds the right dynamic from start to finish.
Sometimes it's just rejecting stereotypes, sometimes it's creating work. Sometimes it's just blocking out the noise.
Sandy was particularly destructive because it was prevented from moving back out to sea by a "blocking pattern" associated with the jet stream. There's debate about this, but one recent study suggested that melting sea ice in the Arctic may lead to such blocking.
I always had a hard time with fiction. It does feel like driving a car in a clown suit. You're going somewhere, but you're in costume, and you're not really fooling anybody. You're the guy in costume, and everybody's supposed to forget that and go along with you. Obviously, it can work, it works all the time - well, it doesn't always work. Still, no matter what, I'm always looking at the form and addressing it, not ignoring it.
I always think that the writer is doing the vast majority of the director's work, in a sense. If you're a writer who is also going to direct, you're doing all your preparation: You're already visualizing everything, you're imagining how the lines are going to be read, you see the blocking in your head, and you know the rhythm and the pacing.
I made multiple leaps where there were no guarantees that I was going to be successful. By the way, I was not always successful. But I think if you go into something new with an open mind, and you let people around you know what you don't know, for the most part they're going to link arms with you. So you can't plan a career so closely that you never make a move unless you know that it's going to work. There's always going to be risk involved in change.
For me, rehearsal is only about blocking and pacing; it's not about performance.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!