In this article we’ve put together a list of our favorite filmmaking style quotes from master filmmakers. These inspirational quotes cover finding your visual style, taking risks and patience.
I always tell young film-makers, ‘Find the song that only you can sing.’ It doesn’t just come to you. It’s trial and error and disappointment before you find, slowly but surely, the confidence to express your film-making identity.
Paul Greengrass
Create your own visual style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable to others.
Orson Welles
Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.
George Lucas
I don’t make films for other people; I make films for me.
Ridley Scott
Don’t look at all at what other people are doing. Think of what you’re doing as completely fresh because if you imitate you’re dead.
Robert Rodriguez
The most important thing as a filmmaker, the hardest journey you’ll have, is to find your point of view.
Paul Greengrass
My advice to young film-makers is this: don’t follow trends, start them!
Frank Capra
Taking Risks
I’ve always believed that if you want to really try and make a great film, not a good film, but a great film, you have to take a lot of risks.
Christopher Nolan
I have this theory that your first film is always your best film in some way. I always try to get back to that moment when you’re not relying on things you’ve done before.
Danny Boyle
If we didn’t want to upset anyone, we would make films about sewing, but even that could be dangerous. But I think finally, in a film, it is how the balance is and the feelings are. But I think there has to be those contrasts and strong things within a film for the total experience.
David Lynch
The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
Orson Welles
People say I am stuck in childhood, but it’s not that. I remember seeing a Matisse retrospective, and you could see he started out one way, and then he tried something different, and then he seemed to spend his whole life trying to get back to the first thing.
Tim Burton
If you’re going to be an R already, you may as well be ‘The Hangover,’ and you may as well be as shocking as possible, because that’s what delivers the most return.
Jon Favreau
What the studios want now is “risk-free” films but with any sort of art you have to take risks. Not taking risks in art is like not having sex and then expecting there to be children.
Francis Ford Coppola
I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.
Michelangelo Antonioni
Patience and Perseverance
I don’t think there’s any artist of any value who doesn’t doubt what they’re doing.
Francis Ford Coppola
I would travel down to hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.
Werner Herzog
It is not the most brilliant that excel in film, but the most patient!
Martin Scorsese
I’ve always been blessed with confidence. I am a glass-half-full person. My first movie, ‘Private Benjamin,’ got turned down by every studio until the very last one, but I just kept thinking, ‘Why are you people not seeing that this is a hit movie? What is wrong with you?’
Nancy Meyers
Whenever I finish a movie, I usually go through a period where I think I’ll never have another idea. And then, somehow, you get another idea.
Sofia Coppola
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
Billy Wilder
My three Ps: passion, patience, perseverance. You have to do this if you’ve got to be a filmmaker.
Robert Wise
Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?
Tim Burton
Pain is temporary, film is forever!
John Milius
You have to remain strong. That’s the kind of filmmaker I want to encourage. Orson Welles was the one who said, you know, you can learn anything you need to know about filmmaking- that’s camera, sound, celluloid, video at this point- in four hours. It has nothing to do with anything. It has nothing to do with it… It has to do with what you want to say. If you feel you have something to say, you’ll find that way to get it said, on film, and not let anyone or anything chip away at that or tarnish it, because it’s something special and precious.
Martin Scorsese
The secret is not to give up hope. It’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.
George Lucas
What’s Your Favorite Film Style Quote?
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