A Quote by Michael Arndt

In live-action, writing, production and editing happen in discrete stages. In animation, they overlap - happening simultaneously. This allows a real dialogue to occur between the writer, the director, the actors and the editor, and it makes the writing process a lot more collaborative and a lot less lonely.

Michael Arndt

Quote Topics

Action Actors Animation Between Collaborative Dialogue Director Discrete Editing Editor Happen Happening Less Live Lonely Lot Makes More Occur Overlap Process Production Real Simultaneously Stages Writer Writing Writing Process

Quote Author

Michael Arndt
American - Writer

In live-action, writing, production, and editing happen in discrete stages. In animation, they overlap - happening simultaneously. This allows a real dialogue to occur between the writer, the director, the actors, and the editor, and it makes the writing process a lot more collaborative and a lot less lonely.

Michael Arndt

You can give the greatest performance possible, but if you don't have a director who's pointing the camera in the right direction and an editor who's editing it properly, it doesn't matter what you do. The director and the editor are the most important people. Not the actors. Sometimes the writer is important. But if you don't have a good director, you can't have a good production.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers

One of the good things is the relationship between director and editor used to be more contentious. Studios used to leave directors alone more during the post production process and now they're clamoring to get in. So, the director and the editor end up teaming up sort of against the studio to fight what they're doing and you lose the creative tension that you used to have between an editor and a director.

Michael Sucsy

A good director creates a playground for actors, and lets them go. The trick for a good director is in casting properly, and creating the playroom, and then they'll get stuff that they don't expect, and can't even direct. All the audience wants to believe is that whatever is happening, it is happening for the first time. They want to see the people within the work exchanging dialogue and action in that moment. There are not a lot of actors that can do that.

Martin Landau

As to the differences between game work and novel writing, well, obviously the former is a lot less lonely - you're in and out of meetings all the time, bouncing stuff back and forth with the level designers, the art department, the animation team, so forth.

Richard K. Morgan

Purely the idea of writing a lot of books doesn't make you a great writer, but it might be that the process of doing a lot of writing will make you a much better writer.

Walter Mosley

I'd like to drill in a little more detail into one aspect of cutting which is particularly close to me and that's dialogue editing. It is a vital part of editing especially in animated film, but in the end it is usually completely transparent to the audience. The vocal performances are reported for over several years and the actors are very rarely in recording studios together. That's why the editor has got to all these different performances and edit them together to create the illusion of spontaneity and real action.

Lee Unkrich

One, we [with Alison McGhee] laugh a lot - that was great. Two, I enjoy writing, but it's a lonely undertaking. To have someone in the room with me is an absolute delight and makes it seem less impossible. It became a kind of comforting, joyful process.

Kate DiCamillo

The process of writing fiction is totally unconscious. It comes from what you are learning, as you live, from within. For me, all writing is a process of discovery. We are looking for the meaning of life. No matter where you are, there are conflicts and dramas everywhere. It is the process of what it means to be a human being; how you react and are reacted upon, these inward and outer pressures. If you are writing with a direct cause in mind, you are writing propaganda. It's fatal for a fiction writer.

Nadine Gordimer

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.

Alice Englert

Even when I'm writing animation, I think of them as real people. I think of them as completely three-dimensional beings, even if it's a talking teapot. I don't think of them as one-dimensional drawn characters running around. Maybe that's why, to me, there's really no difference in writing the two - animation versus live action.

Linda Woolverton

I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn’t have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen.

Jennifer Egan

I don't think that writing, real writing, has much to do with affirming belief--if anything it causes rifts and gaps in belief which make belief more complex and more textured, more real. Good writing unsettles, destroys both the author and the reader. From my perspective, there always has to be a tension between the writer and the monolithic elements of the culture, such as religion.

Brian Evenson

I'm surrounded by a lot of live-action movie professionals, and I'm just taking their lead, as far as what to schedule to do next. I'm guessing the challenge is going to be not having two characters together, and shooting the live-action without having the animation. In animation, you get to get in between every frame and you work it all out together.

Chris Wedge

I do have more directorial control over animation, because it's like trial and error: If something doesn't work, you can always go back and change certain things. Whereas in live action, every day is a challenge, and you have to make decisions on an hourly basis. So in live action I have more freedom as a director, but in animation, I have more control over the final product.