A Quote by Thelma Schoonmaker

When you're in a movie with an audience, you can feel where a film is dragging. People start to move. They fidget. You need that perspective. To give it a cold eye. — © Thelma Schoonmaker
When you're in a movie with an audience, you can feel where a film is dragging. People start to move. They fidget. You need that perspective. To give it a cold eye.
What most paintings do is give you a path for your eye to move around. The painting actually tells your eye, go here, now go here, now go here, go here. So all you have to do is look at it, give it a few seconds, and your eye will start to move through the painting.
Just the life of doing what I do, being in the public eye, it's a stressful environment... You feel strange, self-aware, very foolish. Your third eye clicks on, just to try to maintain a healthy sense of perspective, and you think, 'What am I doing here? I'm just making a movie, and people want all these things from me.'
I feel the horror audience is a great audience, and I would ideally make a movie that would give them as much energy as they're willing to give to the picture.
Why would you create a movie for black people if you don't understand the history and perspective of the people you are doing it for? You need historical perspective to make sound decisions.
The camera is not your eye, and it's not the eye of the audience. I don't think it's my eye, either. It belongs to the film.
You give your film away to the audience once it's done. I never look at my films after the premier. The film needs to start its own history.
Genres give a vocabulary. They give a frame of reference for the audience to enter into a movie. Then, once they have their footing, that's when you can start doing things that they don't expect.
The idea of watching an entire film basically from one person's perspective - and not even really from their perspective, but [it's] probably the most intimately shot film that's in any of these categories. If you're not familiar with Son of Saul, basically it's a film about a Jewish guy who's in concentration camp, but he helps dispose of the bodies after they leave the gas chamber. So, you watch the entire movie looking at Saul's face and looking at his interactions with people.
Sometimes I know a film might not pull the audience to the theatres and have a great collection at the box office. But I need to do these films for creative satisfaction and give something different to the audience.
'Miracle at St. Anna.' I was challenged by Spike Lee. When he offered me the film, he looked me square in the eye and said, 'You start this film off and you end this film. I don't want a dry eye in the theatre. Can you pull that off?' He was dead serious.
Miracle at St. Anna.' I was challenged by Spike Lee. When he offered me the film, he looked me square in the eye and said, 'You start this film off and you end this film. I don't want a dry eye in the theatre. Can you pull that off?' He was dead serious.
People should quit their jobs, move to Oklahoma, move in with 34 people, pay $100 a month in rent and start a band or start painting. That way you'll feel like you have a purpose if you lose your mind, and you'll have some fun on the way.
If you're making a film, you've got to have one eye to the audience and one eye to what excites you about it, and sometimes it's not the same thing.
Listen to your conscience regarding something that you simply know you should do, then start small on it - make a promise and keep it. Then move forward and make a little larger promise and keep it. Eventually you'll discover that your sense of honor will become greater than your moods, and that will give you a level of confidence and excitement that you can move to other areas where you feel you need to make improvements or give service.
The first thing I say when people ask what's the difference [between doing TV and film], is that film has an ending and TV doesn't. When I write a film, all I think about is where the thing ends and how to get the audience there. And in television, it can't end. You need the audience to return the next week. It kind of shifts the drive of the story. But I find that more as a writer than as a director.
It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience want. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artist. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!