There Is No Right Or Wrong

There Is No Right Or Wrong

There are no right or wrong ways to create films. Nothing is a safe bet and nothing is too absurd. Creating a film is like designing a complex machine. Directors have their own ways to write, to direct and to communicate both with their crew and their audiences. 

“Look at the studios, who invest so much time, money, and energy getting their scripts rewritten over and over again… what do they get in the end? Perfect scripts that turn into terrible movies. Because filmmaking doesn’t work that way. It works in a magic way. For instance, when I read the script of Pulp Fiction, I thought it would never work, that it was too talky and incredibly self-indulgent. But then I saw the way Quentin Tarantino did it, and the actors he chose to do it, and it became totally different.”

Oliver Stone

Some directors plan every single step they will take before a shooting day:

“I need to have my shots decided in advance, even if it’s all theoretical. At the very least, I need to know every evening what the first shot of the next day is going to be.”

Martin Scorsese

Others like to be spontaneous:

“But the more films I make, the more I realize that spontaneity is really the best approach, because… you do not know anything until you actually get on the set. You can rehearse all you want, you can storyboard each shot if it reassures you, but once you get on the actual location, none of that means very much.”

Tim Burton

Some think the script is everything: 

“Experience has shown me that if you have a good script, you can do a miserable job directing and still get a pretty good movie, whereas if you have a bad script, you can do a brilliant job of directing and it will hardly make a difference.” 

Woody Allen

For others it’s all about the director’s interpretation

“The script is the most important thing. But don’t become a slave to the script, either, because if the script is everything, you just photograph the script. The script is not everything. It’s the interpretation that is everything..”

Martin Scorsese

Some cherish outside vision

“I don’t work alone because I need another person’s vision. I need to discuss things that are confused and contradictory within me.”

Claude Sautet

Some like to shut themselves down, away from outside influence:

“When we work on our films, however, we really try to shut out outside points of view. And we don’t test much, we don’t show work in progress, because we find that you can get really conflicting information from that process.”

Ethan Coen

Filmmaking is truly a magical process, some parts you can predict and prepare but others you just have to adapt as you create, challenge the status quo and sometimes just let go. It is really about finding your own voice amidst all chaos. So just grab a camera,go outside and create, budgets are overrated.