Top 1200 Independent Filmmaking Quotes & Sayings

My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.

You can't print everything and that's not good for filmmaking, because you wanna have as many options as possible and print as much as you can, but if you're going to shoot a film - an independent movie on film, the only way to really do it is to print your selects.

Our ambition is to be the center of independent animation filmmaking; to be the bravest animation studio in the world.

I'm not interested in being famous or anything, but I'm definitely interested in expressing emotions, and acting and filmmaking can be great outlets for that. Filmmaking is an incredible art.

I should say that being independent in the modern model means independent in a very interdependent world. An independent Scotland is not apart from the rest of the United Kingdom.

As the world of independent feature filmmaking became increasingly commercialized by the mid-1990s, there was also a parallel, much more positive development: a resurgence in documentary filmmaking, thanks in part to the advent of the cheaper, lighter digital format that helped to offset the daunting costs of pursuing political aims through film.

Independent films, for the most part, to me, are not so independent. They often feel like people auditioning for a big commercial career. They often do not have independent spirit to them.

There is a great tradition of independent filmmaking in the U.S. that I absolutely respect. There's some wonderful stuff that comes out in this country against all the odds.

I love filmmaking when fate is a part of the process and you are dependent on the laws of physics and the elements to get a single moment that transports or in some way creates an illusion even for a moment. I think that is tremendous fun and what I think filmmaking is, catching lightning in a bottle.

What I always tell people is... Unless you are so passionate about filmmaking that you would rather live out of your car than not do it, find something else to do as a career and do filmmaking as a hobby. This industry is one of the hardest to break into and be successful. It takes a lot of passion and dedication for it to get anywhere.

I started with digital filmmaking. I've pretty much only done digital filmmaking.

I got picked for very unique and independent filmmaking experiences with auteurs. And I'm so lucky.

There's something I really love about independent filmmaking. Everyone is a little bit more close-knit, and you rely on people a little bit more. The bigger the budget gets, the more everyone toes the line in their department.

A big part of filmmaking, and a big part of the power of filmmaking, is creating characters that people fall in love with. So, those things, like the bloopers, create more reality and dimension, and the sense that these are not drawings or shadows, but they are living, breathing, thinking characters. That's the illusion.

Narrative, fiction filmmaking is the culmination of several art forms: theater, art history, architecture. Whereas doc filmmaking is more pure cinema, like cinema verité is film in its purest form. You're taking random images and creating meaning out of random images, telling a story, getting meaning, capturing something that's real, that's really happening, and render this celluloid sculpture of this real thing. That's what really separates the power of doc filmmaking from fiction.

Filmmaking is about moments. In real life, things might take six months, a year, but [in filmmaking] you have to create the moment where it happened.

I love the new technology in terms of giving access to doing more independent work. When I first started out, any film had to rent from Panavision and the expenses were humongous. Now, given the advances in technology, you can put out extraordinary quality filmmaking at nothing like the price it used to be.

I think that narrative, fiction filmmaking is the culmination of several art forms: theater, art history, architecture. Whereas doc filmmaking is more pure cinema, like cinema verite is film in its purest form.

When I was in New York I heard many people saying that the independent film industry was in big trouble. I was reflecting on this when I came home. Realizing that ever since I started filmmaking, people have being saying that. But somehow it keeps going. Filmmakers keep going. We need stories to make sense of the world and some people like me are driven to tell them. I have faith this will always be possible.

The crazy thing about independent filmmaking is that you're so judged on your first film. It almost needs to be one of those groundbreaking 'I've-never-seen-that-before'-type movies.

A novelty in Polish filmmaking was that it was possible to find funds for a big production. However, at the same time, the state budget committed less and less money to filmmaking.

I have an independent streak. You know, it's kind of hard to tell a independent woman what to do.

I feel 100% sure that I have the career that I have today because of independent filmmaking.

That's what independent filmmaking does: it gives the underdog a voice, a shot.

Independent filmmaking burns off a lot of storytelling fat.

I'm very influenced by documentary filmmaking and independent filmmaking, by a lot of noir and films from the '40s. Those are my favorite. And then, filmmaking from the '70s is a big influence for me.

You know, when people talk about filmmaking and the techniques of filmmaking, we use them all the time in network television news in order to make our stories simpler, tighter and more understandable to the general public.

An independent judiciary does not mean judges independent of the Constitution from which they derive their power or independent of the laws that they are sworn to uphold.

You have independent films and independent music, but you don't have independent theme parks - I think, in a way, Burning Man is as close, probably, as you get.

I think it reaffirmed something that I believed in and conceptually always had faith in which was that you're most effective when you work as a team. I love that about filmmaking. I stopped playing team sports at 15-16 because of acting. I think I find a kind of new team sport in filmmaking in a way.

The excitement about independent filmmaking is that they're a little more open to taking chances. The studios are a little more careful, as far as who they choose for their film and what they're known for and staying in the genre because they know what works.

With filmmaking in general, I have never absorbed the traditional knowledge of film history or filmmaking. It has always been just pick up the camera and go figure it out.

For me, filmmaking is not exactly a career. I was never in it for Hollywood or anything. My films are markers of where I am in life, where I am in my head. So that's what I'm working on, and I try to keep things in proportion - life and filmmaking. One feeds into the other.

Filmmaking is really connected to life and all of the expressions that different arts found to allow access to life. Filmmaking touches on all of it.

The 1960s and 1970s were the real years for independent film, because they were really independent. Plus, there were hundreds of distributors. There were all these companies that basically did exploitation, but they were independent. Now, there are very few independent distributors.

I love the life I live. The Lord blessed me to be independent. I am independent.

There are sayings and mantras that sometimes occur in filmmaking discussions, and one of them is that sometimes filmmaking is an olive branch or a reason or an excuse to be able to reach out and create an encounter with someone.

The difficulty with the present state of affairs is that there is no legislation on the sources of funding for the Polish film industry. There is no legislation concerning filmmaking. And, there is no legislation on television that would be beneficial to filmmaking.

Having been an actor, I always want to leave room for the actors to find their comfort zone, so I don't like to be too rigid in how I plan my shots. It's different if you have weeks to rehearse and you can rehearse on your sets or in your locations and you can plan that out with your actors, but in modern independent filmmaking, you don't really have that time. You have to have a certain level of improvisation.

Nobody really truly supporting independent filmmakers anymore. It's just dire. There's a lot of bad filmmaking, and there's a lot of people worshipping some terrible filmmakers. It's a waste of all of our time, if you don't feel anything. We are an age of YouTube kids. We don't care so much anymore. It's all about marketing.

What's important in the filmmaking process has stayed the same. Keep it small, keep it personal, keep it authentic, work with people you like and trust. That process is much longer than the filmmaking process. The development process is a long one, so try and say something of importance.

My view of journalism is that it needs to be independent but it's not independent when someone is paying the bills for you.

The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.

I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.

In the world of independent filmmaking, you're never quite sure what's happening when and where.

I've learned a great deal about a certain type of filmmaking. But I have ambitions toward another type of filmmaking that I haven't been allowed to engage in yet.

The documentaries were something that I could do for a small amount of money, and then I felt like as long as I found the truth in the stories I was telling as a doc, I could teach myself filmmaking through doc filmmaking.

I directed a short series for Hulu called 'Paloma,' and being in an editing room, I learned a lot about acting. It gave me a new bolt of energy in terms of my interest in filmmaking because it made me realize how collaborative filmmaking can be and also that you're not just limited to one job.

Documentary filmmaking has all the challenges and hardships of narrative filmmaking without any of the infrastructure or support. That's both a blessing and a curse.

Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film.

My focus as part of the leadership is to keep talking about the independent voters, independent voters - how do we get the independent voters back?

I love the intimacy and the passion and the danger that go into independent filmmaking. Because it comes out of a creative necessity. It comes from people who really want to make a movie and want to make a difference and want to grab an audience by the gullet and show them something different.

I don't think the audience goes and thinks of the movie as a piece of art - there are some independent people who may go and have a higher appreciation for filmmaking. It is a great art form, but I don't think you look at a painting and a movie with the same eye.

Filmmaking in general is about feeling and not about theory. You need to know a lot of rules about filmmaking: character development, grammar, and all these thing, but then you use it instinctively. I ask myself this question all the time. I have no solid theory, I just do what I feel is right.

Sometimes it's hard for me to tell the difference between independent filmmaking and studio filmmaking because all the studios have these little independent satellites. It's interesting.

There is a straight-forward definition for 'Independent Filmmaking'. The term references a group of films that are financed by money that comes from outside the studio system. In a literal sense that is what it means.

I'm British; I live here, and I've always made my films here. And we're on a journey in British filmmaking right now. We're attracting big films again. 'Star Wars' filming here will employ thousands of people. We're world-class in so many of the craft elements, and the vibrancy of our filmmaking is strong.

You make a film for a million dollars and then it costs $10 million to sell it. That's the problem at the moment with independent filmmaking: You can make it cheap and then there's no money to market it.

I am always in self-doubt... every moment of my filmmaking. I am supremely confident when the story is being written and everything is in our head. But the moment we get into the filmmaking, I start doubting myself - from the camera angle to the re-recording to getting the actors to do their shots.