Filmmaking Advice for 30 Minutes Straight…

a lot of people ask me you know what's the best advice to someone who wants to be a director and the answer I give is very simple be a director 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 the first requirement of anybody to do this job is inordinate stamina you ain't got stamina don't do it you gotta drive

the bus you have to lead the way that's the term director and that's what it's about you have to be persistent first of all because that's a very hard thing to get into and it's very hard to to make it it's the odds are against you so you have to be very you have to really love it kids will get into it because they think they're going to make a lot of money or they've become famous or uh tell a lot of people what to do all the time with probably best to get into a

different business because they'll never make it but if you're obsessed with film and you love to tell stories you love working in that Medium that'll give you the strength to be persistent to make it happen what I kind of learned early on is that your voice is as important as anyone else is now you may not always be right and you shouldn't be cocky about it but that there's a kind of I felt like I needed to learn that the ideas that I had were as good as anyone else's ideas it's one of those things

I think that that it's it's good to be reminded or if you don't know it all be told that that thing that you feel if you really feel it other people do too and the one thing I always remember thinking initialized trying to make films and he always felt like you got nervous that somebody else was right who was talking for you know who maybe was in a position of power I like that their opinion somehow was was right or better than yours and so I mean he didn't could never stop to think like no

it's just different you just think differently than I do and that's okay you know but I'm not wrong when you're starting out particularly you have to play to your strength you have to do something that really excites you and whatever's different about that in the case of following the non-linear structure was a a somewhat unusual choice but it's those things that are the strength of the project it's the things that you can bring to what you're doing or bring to the filmmaking craft that maybe not everybody else is doing maybe not everybody else can do

or is thought to do that's what's going to distinguish the thing for me I think the answer was definitely to try to play to my strengths and the things that I personally was passionate about and what I've learned is that the stuff that I got in trouble for the casting for The Godfather or the flag scene and pen was the stuff that was remembered and was considered really the good work the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most virtually probably because it's new or because they had never seen

an opening of a movie like that or uh seen a gangster movie done in the style so so so you have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas because otherwise you'll just you know knuckle under and change it and then things that might have been memorable will be lost when you make a film in a sense you're forced to confront one of the fundamental truths of filmmaking that filmmaking is not about the film that you would make in the abstract it's about the film that you can make in practice you know filmmaking

is an activity defined by the creative mission blended with what's possible you know so you might want to do film X but you might only have money why and time Zed that makes sense and somehow out of that Matrix of conflicting factors what it is you want to do versus the resources that you've got versus the time available playing the conflict between those three factors that that the actual film is made and so the more that you can expose yourself to that process the more you'll develop the creative muscles that you need to pursue a

career as a filmmaker if you want to be a filmmaker the best thing you can bring to the world is your own story and there's something that's very personal to you and something that you have your own singular connection to that if it really is important to you there are people all over the planet that will relate to it so the mistakes happen when you try to figure out what Everyone likes because the only thing you can be sure of is what you like and the reality is what you like ends up being what a

lot of people like because we're all going through a very similar journey and that's the magic of film if you dislike the movies that are being made make your own show the world what you want to do what you think this medium should be and and I find that much more creative than simply putting it down and complaining about it is a more active fascinating role to date so the advice is if you want to direct direct and even easier if you want to write write the thing that deeply moves me about Cinema is to

see 200 people in the mud under the rain trying to create probably three together I loved to surround myself by people that are there because they love Cinema not because they love themselves you know if you want to do it with me unfortunately the only way I can do it is my way for me everything I did to do the camera to do with editing was a useful experience and stuff that paid off when I came to actually you know make features and really everything you do you you learn from in terms of any time

you're shooting something short film it's a good short film when you try to write the script for a short film it's very difficult to write a short film I think in some ways it's harder than for a feature to have a complete idea in just a few minutes and have a beginning a middle at an end I'll have an appropriate conclusion so you learn a lot about narrative structure doing shorter films but really every job I did including uh you know corporate videos and Industrial training films and things we're gonna have to go to a

company and throw up some lights shoot interviews you know with Executives and things like that you're always learning about your craft yours learning about uh you know how to balance the pragmatic requirements Race Against Time using the equipment you've got in a short space of time to sort of get something that you can you can use it's all useful experience work wherever you can doesn't matter what a documentary a commercial Wherever You can get near a camera wherever you can especially if you're a director you're not going to be a director and get you continue

to put your eye behind into that finder and uh it doesn't matter what there's no such thing as good work or bad workers only work at the beginning until you've got enough under your belt technically and have your legs unto you until you've learned to walk you you need all of it what matters most for successfully making a good movie what would you say I think Century Lions everybody is complaining are the industries so stupid I do not get the money together and so I say roll up your sleeves you earn 10 20 000 and

you can make a feature film today there's no excuse any work learning to make films is very easy learning what to make films about is very hard and what you really got to do is focus on learning as much about life and about various aspects of it first and then learn just the techniques of making a movie because that's stuff you can pick up pretty quickly action we don't do anything without an idea so they're beautiful gifts and I always say you Desiring an idea is like a bait on a hook can pull them in

and if you catch an idea that you love that's a beautiful beautiful day and you write that idea down so you won't forget it and that idea that you caught might just be a fragment of the whole whatever it is you're working on but now you have even more bait thinking about that small fragment that little fish will bring in more and they'll come in and they'll hook on and more and more come in and pretty soon you might have a script what's nice about doing my own stuff one I'm usually happy with my stuff

all right and it's also very personal whatever is going on with me at the time will find its way into the piece it has to or the piece isn't worth making all of my writing techniques I never took any writing classes or seminars or anything like that read any pamphlets everything I learned as an actor of setting acting for six years I've basically applied to writing I have to bring that experience on with me or what am I doing up there alright that is obviously going on with me at that time and that needs to

be that needs to be on the stage I'm not there unless I bring that on with me and make that work instead of the material if I'm not then you could just send a robot out there that's just good acting that's what you have to do you can deny anything all right well the same thing with me as a writer if I was writing The Guns of the Navarone all right and then right in the right at the beginning of writing it or in the middle of writing it I I break up with my girlfriend

who I'm like madly in love with and then my hardest is is shattered all right that's got to work into it now now the story is still about a bunch of Commandos going to blow up a couple of cannons alright but that pain that I'm feeling has got to find its way into this story or else what am I doing I mean that's why when people say well you're just making movies about other movies like well that's bull I mean to me all my movies are I mean I'm you I'm working in a genre no

doubt about it to me all the movies are very personal alright when I look at them and I don't mean like I'm some crook all right but the thing about it though is like you know this group of friends will look at it and be like Oh Quinn I can't believe they talked about that you should be semi-embarrassed about certain people seeing your movie I think when you're finished if you're working on a personal level first rule is you can't do it all yourself even though you may know how to do many of these different

tasks you physically can't do it and you need you need a team and you need the respect and the trust of that team so that was that was a lesson that took me a while to figure out because at first I just wanted to do it all myself I was like ah you're doing it wrong and that doesn't that doesn't work that doesn't ultimately achieve the the vision whatever the vision is whether it's you know someone else's Vision or when you you know in my case when I started directing was my vision I couldn't I

couldn't push people out of the way I had to I had to learn to inspire people to give me their best work and I also had to learn to accept what they brought even if it was either a not as good or B good but just different from what I had imagined and say that the end result of our Collective efforts will be exactly that it'll be um all of our efforts together it won't it won't ever be exactly the way I imagined it and that that's I think an important lesson as well is that

in any group Enterprise it's going to be the sum total of the of the group so choose your group well the biggest part of my job as a director particularly if you're a writer director is you give that character to that person when they are cast you give them the little candle that's that person's soul and you say now it's yours I don't know more than you you are the keeper of that person and you really can't um you really can't interfere with that process and it's like I'll give direction and I'll obviously have you

know work with the actors and get the scenes to where I think that they're good and you know I I'm involved but I know I don't hold the key to the character and I almost have a very literal conversations with my actors about that because if it's personal and if you wrote it and you're directing it there's a tendency I think for actors to feel like they don't wanna they don't want to take over too much or they're worried that you'll keep interfering and so I very much say it's not mine anymore it belongs to

them and I think you know in so many ways filmmaking is a collaborative art I mean it's the most collaborative art so the entire process after you have the script is about giving it to each person and saying you are the Storyteller of this movie for from for what your job is so whether that's sorceronin being ladybird or whether that's a gaffer shaping the light they're the Storyteller of the light in the movie and I feel like they need to feel that that's their corner of the film they're responsible for when you set out to

make a movie it doesn't happen exactly the way you have it in your head there is this exploration there is this Evolution there's this unfolding or or revealing of the material depending on what you need from them what side of the room you're on what you're looking at you need everybody to peek at the same time boom operator has to be dollar grip has to Peak camera operator has to Peak actors have to Peak you're trying to get everybody to be on the same page everybody be in the same movie everybody to be in the

same moment and that's a lot of work that's what you're doing you're sculpting Behavior over time and you're given a very very finite amount of patience that the audience has for you to get those ideas across one of the hardest things is also your instinct to when you have to push your family right and so whether it's you need that one extra hour or you know the actress or actor is in so much pain because they don't want to have to keep doing this or this person is this or or you're going to have to

push your crew and you know they'd love to say come on just let us go home early or not even the length but even just the the way you have to push them to say this is not going to be easy we're going to have to do this and they're not going to like it and I think when I first started I was a little bit more aware of not wanting to UPS I wanted everybody to feel like this is the greatest experience and the greatest days of our life right and then I realized you

know what at the end of the day there can be days that they don't like me because I'd rather them not like me and not have wasted five months of their life because I want them to be proud of the end result I know that real leadership is is pushing people to do something and then at the end of the day they're happy they did and they're proud of and they're happy to be a team and work as a team not to try to you're not there to make friends you're out there to make friends

and that's a very hard thing that was that's a but they're all trying to give people yeah service of ownership like so that it's not my film it's our thing and that even you know the the Caterers have a sense of ownership absent about what they're they're engaged in yeah I see then managed to create that sense of ownership then they're willing to go they want to work harder yeah then they help you Harvey was you know really took me under his wing on Reservoir Dogs and one of the things that he taught me uh

in auditions and I've kept it to this day is um actors would come in and they would just say Quentin don't help them out in that very first reading don't give them any guidance don't tell them how you want the scene don't tell them what you're looking for they've had the material themselves and they've come up with their own yeah you will never ever see what there was in their head the very first time and unless you let them do it an adjustment is the easiest thing in the world to give and you're the director

they'll do whatever you say but let them do their first shot at it what they came up with and I've held on to that yeah one years I guess stop rehearsing because when you rehearse inevitably the actor will do it and you think damn they just did it so I would then say right stop we're not going to ask we're just going to walk through for focus and marks then I'm gonna on the first hit gonna shoot we're gonna film the actor Will is locked and loaded and they will deliver mostly all of what you

want within the first or second take everything after that is a revolution of what you thought you had when you weren't turning to me when I'm saying listen I don't want you to waste what you've got Juiced up I want to be turning when you come out from that curtain which I'm seeing action so they said that makes sense that I know so let's do it so when you do that plus I always work with a minimum four to six cameras a scene that's scheduled to shoot by the end of the day let's say I'm

done by 11 o'clock if I'm shooting you right now I'm okay and I'm the actor on this camera here I'm shooting your close-up right now then they go right we got that let's do the Y shot or vice versa see you've already the guy off camera me I'm getting worn out listening to you do your scene if I match it and get it and I get close up and while it's too short from here and here I've just saved you all your effort and all your like telling the joke 19 000 times the door doesn't

get funny after four tapes if you're doing 30 40 50 takes you're doing what you're doing but you merge yourself in the material you open yourself up to what will come because you don't always will come you might find a book you might write a script but you're not in the location once you're in the location with the actors there's things sort of tend to sort of um you know find its place somehow it's a lot of trust I feel what one has to have as a for me at least as a director you have

to open yourself up rather than sort of bring your stencil what I try to do is just get to the essential image and the essential dialogue and then try to do as much as possible without the dialogue and I found that once I was able to get to those locations the landscape was talking to me rather than my own Vision sometimes over hectic kind of cutting I pull back take us to another time and place and let's think and the shots became simpler now and we poured a lot into the frame taking advantage of what

the ocean gave us the Rocks the Mist by the way that's not CGI for example the samurai coming in the village I had it planned for a long time that Rodriguez in group I looked down and they see a horse a ride on this horse go to the village and kick up all the dust and everything enforcement and the people are looking and then the samurai come is what a great Oklahoma Vision I wanted I've had it for years in my head if a horse is going to go so we tried it first of all

there was no dust was all mud and we're up on a hill and the horse is going you know and I said isn't as dramatic I imagine this like Kurosawa type horse and aha oh man I look at the two monitors and it's white they're both white I said what happened to the camera he said it's the missed payment because I told Rodrigo I said shoot he said we're just gonna rehearse it shoot don't tell him and that's what you see in the film and so we went back and re-shot the first book I remember

when I was doing Saving Private Ryan there was a scene between a couple other guys and Spielberg moved on and we were he was marching off to the next kind of little uh place he was going to shoot and I said Stephen you know don't you think we should have done a couple more takes of that thing you know because it what hadn't been great he turned on a dime and he said I could spend another hour on that scene and perhaps make it 10 better or I can go do another great shot I'm gonna

do the shot the cinema must not depend on the director people always answer that by saying yes what's important is the story the script they are absolutely wrong the story in the script is the third most important thing the most important thing in a movie is the actor and everything which is in front of the camera because the job of the director is to discover in the actor something more than he knew he had one of my favorite quotes you gave me on directly was sometimes being a good director is just being a good audience

you know what what piece of advice would you give a filmmaker on how to work with actors when don't be intimidated by your actors don't be scared you're there to find it together but I actually think one of the best things that a a film director today can do for an actor is not be stuck in video Village not be watching it on a monitor and not be watching it on a TV set sitting in your chair oftentimes in a whole other room but but then where the scenes taking place I mean that's a fairly

new phenomenon and it's completely taken over and I mean so much so that I really wouldn't want to be starting all over again as an actor with the directors watching my work from another room hey do this you know what camera look could you tell him to don't do a camera right right I think you should be sitting right by the camera if you watch the acting right next to the camp right in front of the actors it's as if they are acting just and solely and utterly only for you my whole love for this

media comes from paying attention to the past and respecting all the movies that have been made over all of these these years and that's why I say to film students you need to look at the old films you know I used to have to pay my kids ten dollars to watch a black and white movie I actually brought them and if you watch this movie and and they were and ten dollars a lot of money when they're 12 years old if you watch Red River with me I'll give you ten dollars and I had a

couple of my kids start the movie and 20 minutes later give me my ten dollars back and leave the room oh that music together but if I continue to learn not just from the from the from the films I've seen today I learned from the films that were made 70 80 years ago I learned about movies which I really didn't know anything about in terms of the history of movies watching really great movies and I had a production class introduction to animation where eventually they gave me one minute film and they said here run the

camera you know follow these instructions move it to the right move it to the left move it up move it down and so I took that little assignment with my one minute of film I made a one minute movie out of it I took a lot of still photographs and created a collage and a whole different way of doing animation and put a soundtrack to it my professor was unbelievably impressed with it and it blew everybody away in the film department and they sent it out to festivals and it won like 47 festivals and I

said wow I know how to do this I'm actually pretty good matter of fact I'm better than anybody here uh I love this you know this I want to do this the rest of my life and so I was lucky enough to find my path my passion before that I had passions you know I wanted to be an artist I wanted to build cars I wanted to create things eventually it led me to my huge passion my real passion which was making movies which combined all of those things had I done what my father had

wished me to do which is to go into these office equipment business with him which I knew I wasn't what did I do I knew I hated that my life would have been unpleasant and um so I think it's very important not to do what your peers think you should do not do what your parents think you should do or your teachers but to do what you inside or even your culture thinks but do what's inside you we saved up enough money by doing this corporate documentary to make our first feature felt we spent sixty

five thousand dollars on this movie and it was a steaming pile of dog diarrhea and we almost gave up making movies and I remember looking at him he was depressed and I was just slightly less depressed enough to say you should get up we should make the movie like we did when we were kids but all we had was our parents video camera and I said I'm going to get a tape you come up with me the idea and like we're shooting as soon as I come back and that three dollar movie was our first

movie that got into Sundance and it played Itself by Southwest here 12 years ago and it changed really everything for us because we realized that um it really doesn't matter what your movie looks like if you have a voice if you have something interesting to say um they will like you and they will program you an agent is going to sign you and say I love your movie I want to pitch you to direct the movie The cavalry's coming it's coming cavalry's probably not coming I'm just going to be honest with you you're going to

write this script based upon what I call the available materials School of filmmaking which is not it takes place in a spaceship because you can't do that on a thousand dollars but what you can do is take a meeting with everyone who loves you and everyone wants to support you and say what do you have that you can lend to me at my disposal to make a film go make this movie on your own the Cavalry is not coming someone's going to buy it from you let them put it out on VOD and a place

like Netflix or HBO and you will probably make anywhere from fifty to five hundred thousand dollars on this movie by the very presence of Randy Hercules and that the movie doesn't suck you've definitely got your age of beating down your door now saying okay remember last time when I said the Cavalry was coming I I was wrong that time but this time the Cavalry is really [ __ ] coming I can take you out and get you directing jobs I can get you rewrite jobs you just gotta go take a bunch of General meetings and

if you do that you will take meetings for a year and nothing will happen because every single project I have made I've had to self-generate and it's getting [ __ ] exhausting and I kind of want the Cavalry to come and just offer me some jobs and it would be really amazing not to work that hard and this is the really really hard truth and the truth is still when you're at this place when I am at this place I am at the Cavalry is not coming how is it possible that the Cavalry is not

coming anymore I've done so much and the good news of this is who gives a [ __ ] about the cavalry because now you are the cavalry Tony Robinson for a second you are the cavalry and you do not need them get a camera go do it there's no excuse organize free buddies this weekend God make a goddamn movie you've got to get your butt in gear and do it and don't take no for an answer figure out a way to get it done made a movie dark agent movies is my advice to anybody just

make it right and then Sean gotta make another keep working there's no other way to do it if I could do it you could do every day of filming is an opportunity we wanted to be able to look ourselves in the mirror at the end of the day and felt we'd maximize that opportunity when you have a dream and the dream isn't something you dream and then it happens the dream is something you never knew was going to come into your life the dreams always come from behind you not not right between your eyes it

sneaks up on you but when you have a dream it doesn't often come at you screaming in your face this is who you are this is what you must be for the rest of your life sometimes a dream almost Whispers and I've always said to my kids the hardest thing to listen to your instincts your human personal intuition always Whispers it never shouts very hard to hear so you have to every day of your lives be ready to hear what Whispers In Your Ear it very rarely shouts and if you can listen to the whisper

and if it tickles your heart into something you think you want to do for the rest of your life then that is going to be what you do for the rest of your life and we will benefit from everything you do you don't have to know how to make a movie if you truly love Cinema with all your heart and with enough passion you can't help but make a good movie