A Quote by Nia Long

Collaboration is necessary for making great art. Everybody has a perspective on what they think or feel the material should ultimately look like when it hits the screen. — © Nia Long
Collaboration is necessary for making great art. Everybody has a perspective on what they think or feel the material should ultimately look like when it hits the screen.
We ultimately have to find truth in the material, and I think that transfers onto the screen. Obviously there's varying degrees of it, and we don't get it right all the time [laughs], but I think when it feels grounded, it's because we recognize the truth in the material.
Every once and a while somebody writes a script, but even regardless of what age you are, most of the actors would all agree that it's all based upon material and the material has got to spark with you. It may be great material but you think it's great material for somebody else. Or it's great material and I'm perfect for it. So, you just have to make that judgment and if you feel in the mood to do it.
I've worked with actors before where I was like, this is not working, and then I've seen their work on the screen and I've been like, Wow, that was a really great performance. Because there are a lot of elements with film. It's not like stage. It's not a kind of performance art anymore; it's a highly tuned kind of collaboration - a symphony.
If you go into a studio without a set effectively, you've got a blue screen. As a DP you have to light it of what you think it should look like. You don't have any reference of what the background looks like. You might have some concepts, but effectively you're lighting it as what you think it should look like.
I have to say that whatever decisions I make, I really do think that movie making is a director's medium. They are the people that ultimately shape the film, and a director can take great material and turn it into garbage if they are not capable of making a good movie.
I'm very much into collaboration. I think that collaboration is the road to making something great. I respect artists that are more autocrats and are in control of their own projects, but it's not really my style. I've always had that partnership.
Everybody used to be busy writing songs - great songs - that became hits. Now everybody's writing hits. Everybody's desperately writing a hit because they know they can't survive if they don't have a hit. Where in the past, we were writing a song like 'More Than Words' on a porch, not really believing it was gonna be a hit.
I've never understood the notion that actors and actresses should look great on-screen just because they're on-screen. That doesn't make sense to me.
I like that the pitcher hits. I think that my feeling is that everybody should play a position. In order to hit, you have to play a position. That's just my view of it. I feel that's more baseball, and the games are managed different. I enjoy the National League, how it's played.
There are those who say that poets should use her and his art to change the world. I'd agree with that, but I think everybody should do that. I think the chef and the baker and the candlestick maker - I think everybody should be hoping to make it a better world.
I think that a lot of artists have succeeded in making what I might call "curator's art." Everybody's being accepted, and I always want to say, "Really? That's what you've come for? To make art that looks a lot like somebody else's art?" If I am thinking of somebody else's art in front of your art, that's a problem.
I just continue to look for different material, great material, as good as I can find, and try to go in there and do as good a job as I can do in making it a record. That's all you can expect. That's all that you can do.
Inequality may linger in the world of material things, but great music, great literature, great art and the wonders of science are, and should be, open to all.
Like I said, everybody has got something they have to deal with health-wise, and everybody's human. I should look after myself better, but so should everybody, right?
I've made a few hits where I'll look up at the screen and be like, 'Oh my God.' Like it wasn't even me, like I just watched another guy kill this guy, and I don't even think that was me that made that hit.
Some people don't have to be on the screen all day and they could be making interest on so many different things and making money. I look at people like that. Those are the kind of entrepreneurs I look at.
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