A Quote by David Fincher

You can’t take everything on. That’s why when people ask how does this film fit into my oeuvre. I say 'I don’t know. I don’t think in those terms’. If I did, I might become incapacitated by fear . . . How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.
How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.
When you're working with a script and you have three pages for that day, you have to shoot that. It can become sort of like a prison, because by the time you've shot what you need to shoot, you don't really have time to think or shoot anything else.
The bigger budget films only shoot about a page or two a day, so there's very specific amount of time spent on detail and getting each tidbit exactly how they want it. In a movie or TV show, you shoot eight or ten pages and you aren't afforded as much time to do each scene.
I think some people feel that if you are going to have 3D, then you have to shoot in 3D, but they shoot 3D, so of course they're going to say 'my way of doing a film is better.' I'm not telling anyone how they should do their film, so why should anyone tell me how I should do mine?
I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.
If you know how to shoot a scene, then you know how to shoot an action scene. If you've seen an action movie, and you watched it, and you paid attention to how scenes are constructed and where the camera is and how the camera moves, then you know how to do it.
In terms of digital photography, I continue to print and use film for the most part. I still shoot with film, 21/4 film specifically, and I love it. I love it because I know what it does, how it really responds to light.
When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.
How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?
You do need to edit yourself as you shoot because you have fewer options in a smaller movie. In other words, when I'm shooting a big movie, and I got an 85 day shooting schedule or more, then I'm saying I have enough time to shoot option A and B and C and D for every scene.
There used to be a period of time when you'd shoot big studio movies where you would shoot a couple of pages a day. For a TV show, you've gotta shoot seven to nine. The schedules are much more compressed.
If you know how to shoot, and are quite ready to shoot, the chances are that you won't have to shoot.
I don't think anything can prepare you for a crew to come in and actually film you as yourself. It's kind of frightening to think that all of a sudden people are going to know how you are, and how you act on a day-to-day basis.
I learned from my community how to shoot a gun, how to shoot it well. I learned how to make a damn good biscuit recipe. The trick, by the way, is frozen butter, not warm butter. But I didn't learn how to get ahead.
My biggest role as director on the film is keeping a sense of the overview - how to cast the movie and shoot it in such a way that it will cut together. And how to design the style and tone.
I generally go into a movie with a very strong vision, with how I want to make the film, how I want to shoot the film, how I want to edit the movie, what I want the sound to sound like. So I have a very concrete idea even if I don't storyboard it, I know exactly what I want to do once I get into the sequence. Now having said that, I try not to let that slave me to the process. So if I do storyboard a sequence I don't necessarily stick to it if I discover more exciting things on set.
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