Top 1200 Directing Quotes & Sayings - Page 20

I get inspired when I look at Tom Lennon, who did 'Reno 911!' for six seasons while writing huge movies and directing and also doing other pilots; he did that FX pilot, the 'Star Trek' thing.

To be clear, we the Department of Education want curriculum to be driven by the local level. We are by law prohibited from directing curriculum. We don't have a curriculum department.

I love that I live a creative life. It is in the work that I do - acting, writing, and directing. It's also in the mindfulness of every part of my life, from a meal that I prepare for family and friends to putting my imagination to work in a garden.

I was never interested in becoming an actor. I was directing videos. I was never into acting. I was into shooting music videos. I've only ever been behind the camera. Never in front of it.

It's a lot of work that goes into producing and directing and all those kinds of things. It doesn't just happen. It's a lotta work. It's a lot more work than acting.

Here's the thing about standup directing: not that hard. As I said on Twitter one day, or maybe it was Instagram - sorry, I want to keep my platforms straight - it's essentially the same five shots over and over again. Seven if you're ambitious.

You're not directing an actor toward a thing they can't achieve. Because direction is elusive. When directors hold respect for the various craftsmen and -women who are telling the story, it's the greatest result. I think people do their bravest work when given an elusive canvas.

I'm not a preacher and I'm not a pastor. But I really feel my career was leading me to make this. The Holy Ghost was working through me on this film, and I was just directing traffic. I hope the film has the power to evangelize.

I don't want to direct. I have no directing ambition whatsoever. And as long as I meet filmmakers like Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears, and others who allow that collaboration, I can't see why I would ever want to direct.

As a director, when you embrace a project, you try to understand as much as you can about its world, and you do that by embracing and engaging with people who are in that world. Then it's down to your best instincts, which is what most directing is about anyway.

There's something wrong - the performance, the weather, the set design, the lighting. Something is not working. And so you say, "Give me 10 minutes." When you're first directing, you're terrified. But when you've been in that situation enough times, you know that under pressure, it will come to you.

From an outsider's perspective, it's amazing what [Clint Eastwood] does. If he's not directing a film, he's acting in it, or rather he's composing the music for that film. His commitment to what he does is astounding for all of us to witness. It's inspiring, actually.

A lot of critics sometimes get into analyzing the way actors direct versus non-actors directing. And they really always miss it. It's one of those things where, by not being practitioners, they just came up with something that made sense to them.

I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.

Luckily, I went to school at CalArts, and then ended up here at Disney, starting in the Animation Building and working my way up. I started as an animator, and then did character designing and storyboarding, and eventually, directing.

I have always added dance to my productions. When I was directing theatre, I added dance sequences where they didn't exist in the play. I think dance is the ultimate form of expression.

I did go to a film school in Sarajevo. I studied film and theatre directing. There was a war raging in the country while I was studying, and we did not have neither electricity nor cinemas for three and a half years.

When I realised, on 'The Straits,' that physical work in the theatre takes much longer than directing scenes, it was like a eureka moment. If you want to work physically, you have to accommodate it, and it takes a disproportionate amount of time.

I think like an actor when I'm acting, and I think like a director when I'm directing.

The principle I adhere to when directing, is that I make good use of everything my staff creates. Even if they make foregrounds that don't quite fit with my backgrounds, I never waste it and try to find the best use for it.

I get inspired when I look at Tom Lennon, who did Reno 911! for six seasons while writing huge movies and directing, and also doing other pilots; he did that FX pilot, the Star Trek thing.

My days are filled with work I love - reading poems, writing poems, talking with people about poems, teaching, directing a writing program, hosting readings, etc.

Directing is mystifying. It's a long, long, skid on an icy road, and you do the best you can trying to stay on the road... If you're still here when you come out of the spin, it's a relief. But you've got to have the terror if you're going to do anything worthwhile.

You know what's it's changed is my appreciate for the art form of making cinema. I don't want to act as much as I want to tell stories. I want to be a part of the whole collective and pull all of the pieces together. That's what I love about directing.

Directing is a terrible, anxious process. It's all collaboration, and if you have a dream, it's diluted very quickly by the slightest ineptness in any of your collaborators. They're supposed to help you, but too often they help you into your grave.

Shonda and 'Grey's' have given me the opportunity to become a director, and that's something that I hadn't really envisioned for myself, other than directing for theater. Now I've got this resume of television credits that I can carry forward into the next opportunity.

Developing projects of my own and producing and writing and directing is something that's very interesting to me, but you know, one step at a time and you've got to establish yourself on one side before you really have the power to do something else. That's always the immediate goal.

Anger is a fuel. You need fuel to launch a rocket. But if all you have is fuel without any complex internal mechanism directing it, you don't have a rocket. You have a bomb

The cool thing about directing is, whatever cool thing works in the scene, it's still making the episode be a great story, and everyone's working toward that goal, so it doesn't much matter where it's coming from.

I started directing chamber orchestras, then adding bigger pieces, adding winds, adding small symphonies. I've always loved chamber music, and I've done a lot.

I am not the leader; I am a representative of the leader. The leader is the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, whom we believe is very much alive, and is directing me from where he is.

I look for the ability to work. Directing is hard work. They don't teach you that in film school. Critics are not aware of it, but it is hard, physical work.

I've always had a flare for the dramatic. I thought about being an actor and I thought about directing, but writing truly became something I needed to do, just to stay sane. It's my over-pressure valve.

When you're shooting a low-budget movie you're never just the director: you're also in the catering department, and hair and make-up and a part-time grip. I can't even imagine the luxury of not having to keep an eye on every aspect of production while directing.

You can sit around and complain that Hollywood doesn't make any good movies. But you can generate your own material. So I read books. I come up with ideas. I was the producer on 'The Woodsman' to help get that off the ground. Sometimes that extends itself to directing.

I love writing. I think writing and directing go hand in hand.

I am very interested in architecture. I've been asked if I'd ever direct, but me, I'd rather build. It's very similar to directing, because you get to walk among this piece of art, to live in it, be surrounded by it, which is just thrilling.

I got my SAG card quite unexpectedly. I was here in Los Angeles doing a play called 'Vanities' - it was 1976, I believe - and I got invited by Dustin Hoffman, whom I'd met in New York, to come audition for a movie he was directing.

I remember my first agent telling me - because they found me as an actor, but I was probably more interested in writing and maybe directing - they were like, 'Well, you can't do both things.' And I was like, 'I'm gonna show you.'

Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret about writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please?

Directing is genderless. The only thing... I love men. I'm not being mean to them, but they can't hear you. I don't have a husband, and so I'm not really attuned to it, but I didn't know that they could not really hear you. Like, I'm talking, and they just walk away.

You know, episodic TV directing is a very long and arduous job. You have very short schedules, short short shooting days, and you have to get lot of pages done.

Producers don't like the director who ignores their opinion - but I always try not to be the nicest person when making a movie. It's easy to do that. Just say 'Yes sir', "Alright', 'Okay' - but they're not seeing the movie because if they can, they should be directing the movie.

What happens on 'Mad Men' in terms of the acting and the writing and the directing, it's superior. And yes, it has tremendous cache and buzz because it's become iconic, but it also deserves all the kudos and the awards as well, because it's a beautiful show to look at.

After the Oscar for 'Shampoo,' I had a sense, even as I was walking up to get it, that this was the height of where I was going to go as an actress. And I felt that now was the time, if I wanted a longer life in the arts, that I had to jump from acting to directing.

Whenever I finish a film, I feel that this is the worst film that I have made. This is bound to happen because while writing, directing and editing a film, I would have lived it 5000 times. Naturally, one tends to loose objectivity.

I was on 'The O.C.' and had a small part, which wasn't very challenging. I was a bit bored, so I started shadowing directors and they finally gave me a shot. From there, it led to directing other television shows. I am trying to direct a feature film, so we'll see what happens.

My first job in L.A. was actually playing an employee in a Best Buy commercial, but I played a bad employee at another store. I also worked at a commercial casting company running cameras and session directing.

There's a tendency, when you're directing yourself, not to give the performance as much care, because you feel like there's too much focus on yourself, or that all these people are just standing around setting everything up, waiting for you.

When you're directing, you see your ideas. You see them created right in front of you on the monitor and the sound stage. You get that experience all over again when you get into the editing room and you start playing with it.

Definitely, as I get older and my taste buds change, I want to do different things. I'm not ready for directing yet, you know, maybe when I get my big boy voice; I don't have that yet, but right now definitely producing for sure.

Directing is a lot of fun, but you have to be on your toes every minute. If you zone out for even a second, you'll miss something and things will get screwed up. And here's a little secret that I'm going to let out of the bag: That is not the case with acting.

I was never nervous directing. Not once. I'm more nervous acting. I'm far more nervous on set, before I say my lines, than I ever have been, as a director.

I worked initially in very low-budget independent films that I often wrote. My early work was all written by myself, and then I adapted 'Tsotsi,' so I was used to the writing process being, in a way, integral to my directing. I felt it really prepared me.

I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave [Mamet]. His sets, everyone who's ever been involved with one of them will tell you of the funnest, funniest sets you can be on.

Nothing's harder than writing. There's no comparison. With directing, you can bounce a lot of ideas around. There's tremendous support - you've got editors and sound mixers. With writing, it's all you, and it's just crippling when people tear up your pages.

The film [Close Up] made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn't directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film.

My background are acting, film production, directing, and I studied them for many years. Keep in mind that you need many other skills when you are starting any film project related to real life.

When you get to say something in a song you're not directing it necessarily at one person. When it's in a song it's easier to get it out. I don't really worry so much about it when I'm writing a song.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, 'If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.'