Karyn Kusama
The Tip :
Use personal experience as fuel
“I didn’t
make films right out of school. I wasn’t so sure I could really do it at that
point, and I
felt like for me to understand making features, for me to try to make personal movies took more time of mine in the world, so for me it was a little more interesting to be making a living and figuring out how to just pay the rent and be engaged in the real world before trying to make a movie. . . The most interesting movies are fueled by a sense of personal experience and a sense that movies aren’t the only passion, but that in fact there’s a lot else in the life of that filmmaker or the life of that imagination.”
felt like for me to understand making features, for me to try to make personal movies took more time of mine in the world, so for me it was a little more interesting to be making a living and figuring out how to just pay the rent and be engaged in the real world before trying to make a movie. . . The most interesting movies are fueled by a sense of personal experience and a sense that movies aren’t the only passion, but that in fact there’s a lot else in the life of that filmmaker or the life of that imagination.”
The Coen
Brothers
The Tip :
Your first cut will probably make you want to kill yourself
“I can
almost set my watch by how I’m going to feel at different stages of the
process. It’s always identical, whether the movie ends up working or not. I
think when you watch the dailies, the film that you shoot every day, you’re
very excited by it and very optimistic about how it’s going to work. And when
you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when
you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go
away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that
spot you were at before.”
Steven Spielberg
The Tip : The Right Kind of Collaboration is Key
The Tip : The Right Kind of Collaboration is Key
“When I was
a kid, there was no collaboration, it’s you with a camera bossing your friends around.
But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people
you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these
films by yourself.”
Movies are
a team sport.
Quentin Tarantino
The Tip : Good Artists Borrow, But Great Artists? “I steal from every movie ever made.”
The Tip : Good Artists Borrow, But Great Artists? “I steal from every movie ever made.”
This may be
a key deconstructive criticism for his work, but it might also be that he’s
simply more honest than everyone else. If we can’t help but pick bits of
inspiration from everything, why not be direct? Why not blend them all together
to make something new that looks familiar? Who says a director can’t be more
like a DJ?
Billy Wilder
The Tip : Think Outside the Door
The Tip : Think Outside the Door
“An actor
entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through the
window, you’ve got a situation.”
It might
sound simple, but sometimes tweaking a normal situation is all that’s needed to
make it pop. When someone climbs in through a window, it demands an
explanation.
Lee Daniels
The Tip:
Commit commercial suicide
“I fired my
manager over this movie. I show him the movie, and he’s like ‘Huh,’ I said
‘Uh-uh! Gimme my shit, I’m out’ He was like ‘Who’s gonna… ?’ He saw the
finished movie right before we went to Sundance. And you know, I’m nervous as
it is. I don’t think anyone likes anything of mine. At the end of the day, I
love it, but just because I love it… You know, I happen to love broccoli, not a
lot of people like broccoli. I always question if somebody else is going to
love my films. I think that’s what art is about—it’s so individual. Once you
get over that, you’re okay with it, but I did not think that many people would.
Christopher Nolan
The Tip : Understand
Every Job on Set
“I’m
interested in every different bit of filmmaking because I had to do every bit
of it myself—from sound recording and ADR to editing and music. I feel very
lucky to be a member of probably the last generation who cut film on a
Steenbeck flatbed, physically taping it together and dropping out shots. It
gave me a really good grounding in knowing overall what has to go into a film
technically that was very valuable.
And it
meant that absolutely everything I did was simply because I was passionate and
wanted to try stuff. You’re never going to learn something as profoundly as
when it’s purely out of curiosity.”
Anurag Kashyup
Tip 1 - Actors Need Motivations, Not Just Marks
Instead of
telling the actor how to do a scene, tell them why. That is the best way to
make the actor understand the character. The more the actor trusts you, better
his performance.
Tip 2 - Let go of your ego
Tip 2 - Let go of your ego
You have to
let go of your ego. If you sit there and begrudge the world, that nobody understands
your art and nobody is going to give you the money to do it, you'll keep
grudging the world and you'll end up being somebody who is very bitter and
hopeless.
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