AND SPEAKING

Exercise 8. Look through the helpful hints given by prominent filmmakers to beginners. Which of them correspond exactly to what you feel? Comment on them, give your own arguments.

1. “A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.” Stanley Kubrick.

2. “Most people don’t know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, it’s very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to… As an artist, I feel that we must try many things – but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad – to be willing to risk everything to really express it all.” John Cassavetes.

3. “Cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.” Francis Ford Coppola.

4. “Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out”. Martin Scorsese.

5. “People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.” Steven Spielberg.

6. “The film industry is about saying “no” to people, and inherently you cannot take “no” for an answer .” James Cameron.

7. “Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. Everything after that you’re just negotiating your budget and your fee.” James Cameron.

8. “In the future, everybody is going to be a director. Somebody’s got to live a real life so we have something to make a movie about.” Cameron Crowe.

9. “I steal from every movie ever made.” Quentin Tarantino.

10. “The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is, the harder it is to get it financed. That’s why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.” David Cronenberg.

11. “A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.” Orson Welles.

12. “A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provided they come close together.” Federico Fellini.

13. “ Learn from your own mistakes. Always complete your project – never leave it before you have edited it – even projects that seem like a disaster may have something you can learn from. Take all advice with a pinch of salt. Take what works for you, chuck out what doesn’t and trust your instincts.” Martin Smith.

14. “If you want to make films, just get out there and do it. Learn how to operate a simple camera, how to frame a shot, and how to assemble it in an edit. Even if it’s on an iPhone and in Windows Movie Maker.” Ben Franklin.

15. “ Just do it. Stop deliberating. Stop second-guessing yourself and your material. It’s better to try and fail than not try at all”. Jeffrey P Nesker

16. “Get yourself a good education from college to undergraduate to post graduate level, it does all help, I benefitted greatly from years of on the job experience, but also by attending Screen Academy Scotland, a place where you learn invaluable industrial training from those with real world experience”. Graham Fitzpatrick.

17. “Experiment a lot and watch a massive variety of films. Make short films before jumping head first into a feature then make sure your first feature has the potential to really stand out. Andy Mark Simpson.

18. “ Steve Jobs told the students: there to “Stay hungry, stay foolish”. I think that applies wonderfully to first time filmmakers. Be hungry, love the medium, push it as far as you can with experimentation and don’t be scared to be goofy and make mistakes whilst learning your craft. Be inventive with your stories, and even more inventive with your camera”. Stuart Condy.

19. Film festivals have been my film school. You will learn more from watching your work with an audience than you will from any books by “gurus” or their expensive courses. Learning to listen is important, but not as important as learning when not to. Simon Ellis.

20. “My advice to young film-makers is this: Don’t follow trends. Start them!” Frank Capra.