"We are all engaged in the biggest mystery of all, which is.. just living through time.” - Christopher Nolan.
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Monday, November 03, 2014
Herzog on Creativity etc
Werner Herzog on Creativity, Self-Reliance, Making a Living of What You Love, and How to Turn Your Ideas Into Reality
by Maria Popova
“If your project has real substance, ultimately the
money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail
between its legs.”
Werner Herzog
is celebrated as one of the most influential and innovative filmmakers
of our time, but his ascent to acclaim was far from a straight
trajectory from privilege to power. Abandoned by his father at an early
age, Herzog survived a WWII bombing that demolished the house next door
to his childhood home and was raised by a single mother in near-poverty.
He found his calling in filmmaking after reading an encyclopedia entry
on the subject as a teenager and took a job as a welder in a steel
factory in his late teens to fund his first films. These building blocks
of his character — tenacity, self-reliance, imaginative curiosity —
shine with blinding brilliance in the richest and most revealing of
Herzog’s interviews. Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed (public library) — not to be confused with E.F. Schumacher’s excellent 1978 philosophy book of the same title
— presents the director’s extensive, wide-ranging conversation with
writer and filmmaker Paul Cronin. His answers are unfiltered and
to-the-point, often poignant but always unsentimental, not rude but
refusing to infest the garden of honest human communication with the
Victorian-seeded, American-sprouted weed of pointless politeness.
Herzog’s insights coalesce into a kind of manifesto for following one’s particular calling, a form of intelligent, irreverent self-help for the modern creative spirit — indeed, even though Herzog is a humanist fully detached from religion, there is a strong spiritual undertone to his wisdom, rooted in what Cronin calls “unadulterated intuition” and spanning everything from what it really means to find your purpose and do what you love to the psychology and practicalities of worrying less about money to the art of living with presence with an age of productivity. As Cronin points out in the introduction, Herzog’s thoughts collected in the book are “a decades-long outpouring, a response to the clarion call, to the fervent requests for guidance.”
And yet in many ways, A Guide for the Perplexed could well have been titled A Guide to the Perplexed, for Herzog is as much a product of his “cumulative humiliations and defeats,” as he himself phrases it, as of his own “chronic perplexity,” to borrow E.B. White’s unforgettable term — Herzog possesses that rare, paradoxical combination of absolute clarity of conviction and wholehearted willingness to inhabit his own inner contradictions, to pursue life’s open-endedness with equal parts focus of vision and nimbleness of navigation.
A certain self-reliance that permeates his films and his mind, a refusal to let the fear of failure inhibit trying — a sensibility the voiceover in the final scene of Herzog’s The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz captures perfectly: “Even a defeat is better than nothing at all.” He tells Cronin:
There is nothing wrong with hardships and obstacles, but everything wrong with not trying.
The bad films have taught me most about filmmaking. Seek out the negative definition. Sit in front of a film and ask yourself, “Given the chance, is this how I would do it?” It’s a never-ending educational experience, a way of discovering in which direction you need to take your own work and ideas.He takes this notion of self-reliance — as he does most things he believes — to an almost religious degree:
I did as much as possible myself; it was an article of faith, a matter of simple human decency to do the dirty work as long as I could… Three things — a phone, computer and car — are all you need to produce films. Even today I still do most things myself. Although at times it would be good if I had more support, I would rather put the money up on the screen instead of adding people to the payroll.Indeed, having grown up without money and earned every penny himself, Herzog considers this self-reliance closely intertwined with the question of financial struggle — a circumstance he always refused to mistake for a fatal roadblock to the creative drive. His wisdom on the subject extends beyond film and applies just as perceptively to almost any field of endeavor in today’s creative landscape:
The best advice I can offer to those heading into the world of film is not to wait for the system to finance your projects and for others to decide your fate. If you can’t afford to make a million-dollar film, raise $10,000 and produce it yourself. That’s all you need to make a feature film these days. Beware of useless, bottom-rung secretarial jobs in film-production companies. Instead, so long as you are able-bodied, head out to where the real world is. Roll up your sleeves and work as a bouncer in a sex club or a warden in a lunatic asylum or a machine operator in a slaughterhouse. Drive a taxi for six months and you’ll have enough money to make a film. Walk on foot, learn languages and a craft or trade that has nothing to do with cinema. Filmmaking — like great literature — must have experience of life at its foundation. Read Conrad or Hemingway and you can tell how much real life is in those books. A lot of what you see in my films isn’t invention; it’s very much life itself, my own life. If you have an image in your head, hold on to it because — as remote as it might seem — at some point you might be able to use it in a film. I have always sought to transform my own experiences and fantasies into cinema.He later revisits the subject even more pointedly:
A natural component of filmmaking is the struggle to find money. It has been an uphill battle my entire working life… If you want to make a film, go make it. I can’t tell you the number of times I have started shooting a film knowing I didn’t have the money to finish it. I meet people everywhere who complain about money; it’s the ingrained nature of too many filmmakers. But it should be clear to everyone that money has always had certain explicit qualities: it’s stupid and cowardly, slow and unimaginative. The circumstances of funding never just appear; you have to create them yourself, then manipulate them for your own ends. This is the very nature and daily toil of filmmaking. If your project has real substance, ultimately the money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail between its legs. There is a German proverb: “Der Teufel scheisst immer auf den grössten Haufen” [“The Devil always shits on the biggest heap”]. So start heaping and have faith. Every time you make a film you should be prepared to descend into Hell and wrestle it from the claws of the Devil himself. Prepare yourself: there is never a day without a sucker punch. At the same time, be pragmatic and learn how to develop an understanding of when to abandon an idea. Follow your dreams no matter what, but reconsider if they can’t be realized in certain situations. A project can become a cul-de-sac and your life might slip through your fingers in pursuit of something that can never be realized. Know when to walk away.
Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work. The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating.Ultimately, this notion of doing what you love is rooted in defining your own success, which often requires the bravery of not buying into the cultural template. Herzog captures this elegantly:
Although for many years I lived hand to mouth — sometimes in semi-poverty — I have lived like a rich man ever since I started making films. Throughout my life I have been able to do what I truly love, which is more valuable than any cash you could throw at me. At a time when friends were establishing themselves by getting university degrees, going into business, building careers and buying houses, I was making films, investing everything back into my work. Money lost, film gained.
Even if I went broke, I wouldn’t be able to sell anything to the highest bidder. What makes me rich is that I am welcomed almost everywhere. I can show up with my films and am offered hospitality, something you could never achieve with money alone… For years I have struggled harder than you can imagine for true liberty, and today am privileged in the way the boss of a huge corporation never will be.
I find the notion of happiness rather strange… It has never been a goal of mine; I just don’t think in those terms.(This calls to mind a line Susan Sontag wrote in her diary in March of 1979: “There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.”)
[...]
I try to give meaning to my existence through my work. That’s a simplified answer, but whether I’m happy or not really doesn’t count for much. I have always enjoyed my work. Maybe “enjoy” isn’t the right word; I love making films, and it means a lot to me that I can work in this profession. I am well aware of the many aspiring filmmakers out there with good ideas who never find a foothold. At the age of fourteen, once I realized filmmaking was an uninvited duty for me, I had no choice but to push on with my projects. Cinema has given me everything, but has also taken everything from me.
Herzog describes his ideation process in almost violent terms, framing the creative act as an inherently ambivalent one, oscillating between creation, destruction, and purging:
The problem isn’t coming up with ideas, it is how to contain the invasion. My ideas are like uninvited guests. They don’t knock on the door; they climb in through the windows like burglars who show up in the middle of the night and make a racket in the kitchen as they raid the fridge. I don’t sit and ponder which one I should deal with first. The one to be wrestled to the floor before all others is the one coming at me with the most vehemence. I have, over the years, developed methods to deal with the invaders as quickly and efficiently as possible, though the burglars never stop coming. You invite a handful of friends for dinner, but the door bursts open and a hundred people are pushing in. You might manage to get rid of them, but from around the corner another fifty appear almost immediately… Finishing a film is like having a great weight lifted from my shoulders. It’s relief, not necessarily happiness. But you relish dealing with these “burglars.” I am glad to be rid of them after making a film or writing a book. The ideas are uninvited guests, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t welcome.
My films come to me very much alive, like dreams, without explanation. I never think about what it all means. I think only about telling a story, and however illogical the images, I let them invade me. An idea comes to me, and then, over a period of time — perhaps while driving or walking — this blurred vision becomes clearer in my mind, pulling itself into focus.In that creative act, Herzog argues, lies the artist’s broader cultural responsibility to continually reinvent the established forms:
[...]
When I write, I sit in front of the computer and pound the keys. I start at the beginning and write fast, leaving out anything that isn’t necessary, aiming at all times for the hard core of the narrative. I can’t write without that urgency. Something is wrong if it takes more than five days to finish a screenplay. A story created this way will always be full of life.
We need images in accordance with our civilization and innermost conditioning, which is why I appreciate any film that searches for novelty, no matter in what direction it moves or what story it tells… The struggle to find unprocessed imagery is never-ending, but it’s our duty to dig like archaeologists and search our violated landscapes. We live in an era when established values are no longer valid, when prodigious discoveries are being made every year, when catastrophes of unbelievable proportions occur weekly. In ancient Greek the word “chaos” means “gaping void” or “yawning emptiness.” The most effective response to the chaos in our lives is the creation of new forms of literature, music, poetry, art and cinema.And yet being preoccupied with form can be limiting — it should emerge from the story organically rather than seek to shape it:
I don’t consciously reflect on aesthetics before making a film because, for me, the story always dictates such things. Of course, aesthetics do sometimes enter unconsciously through the back door, because whether we like it or not our preferences always somehow influence the decisions we make. If I were to think about my handwriting while writing an important letter, the words would become meaningless. When you write a passionate love letter and focus on making sure your longhand is as beautiful as possible, it isn’t going to be much of a love letter. But if you concentrate on the words and emotions, your particular style of longhand – which has nothing to do with the letter per se — will somehow seep in of its own accord. Aesthetics, if they even exist, are to be discovered only once a film has been completed.Herzog doesn’t shy away from touching on the existential:
We can never know what truth really is. The best we can do is approximate… Truth can never be definitively captured or described, though the quest to find answers is what gives meaning to our existence.In one of his most endearingly characteristic proclamations, Herzog tells Cronin why he has never taken vacation:
It would never occur to me… I work steadily and methodically, with great focus. There is never anything frantic about how I do my job; I’m no workaholic. A holiday is a necessity for someone whose work is an unchanged daily routine, but for me everything is constantly fresh and always new. I love what I do, and my life feels like one long vacation.Above all, however, Herzog reveals himself as a rare master of prioritizing presence over productivity:
I work best under pressure, knee-deep in the mud. It helps me concentrate. The truth is I have never been guided by the kind of strict discipline I see in some people, those who get up at five in the morning and jog for an hour. My priorities are elsewhere. I will rearrange my entire day to have a solid meal with friends.Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss captures Herzog’s singular spirit in the afterword:
The Werner Herzog I have come to know is not the wild man of his press clippings. He is a caring, thoughtful, playful and essentially gentle human being. Possessing a restless mind, with a fertile and creative imagination, he is a man interested in all aspects of the human experience. Self-taught, he is widely read and deeply knowledgeable. I like to think that one of the reasons we enjoy each other’s company is that we both share a deep excitement in the human experience.Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed is a spectacular read in its hefty 600-page totality, offering a rare glimpse of one of the most ravenously imaginative minds of our time. Complement it with other spectacular interviews with David Foster Wallace, Jeanette Winterson, Leonard Cohen, Seth Godin, Dani Shapiro, William Faulkner, Bob Dylan, Adam Phillips, Pablo Picasso, Malcolm Gladwell, and Susan Sontag.
a Singular Experience.
German photographers capture the fading charm of Indian single-screen theatres
Going to the movies in South India is still a grand experience.
Photo Credit: Stefanie Zoche and Sabine Haubitz
Indian single-screen theatres with plush carpeted halls and art deco exteriors are being threatened with extinction as they are increasingly being converted into multiplexes with attached food courts. Over the past five years, the number of single-screen theatres has dwindled from 13,000 to 10,167, said a report submitted by KPMG, citing figures obtained from the Film Federation of India.
Many of the holdouts, it turns out, are south of the Vindhyas. That's what German photographers Stefanie Zoche and Sabine Haubitz noticed when they travelled through the country in 2010. “We were intrigued by their unusual architectural style that displayed a mixture of western and Indian influences,” said Zoche. “The facades often seem like mock-ups affixed to the building, thus emphasising the architecture’s distinctly theatrical, stage-like character.”
Between 2010 and 2013, Zoche and Haubitz travelled through Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, and noticed many single screen theatres adorned with larger than life cutouts of garlanded movie stars and statues of deities. They compiled their photographs in an exhibition of works titled Hybrid Modernism. Movie Theatres in South India, in Munich.
Here are some of the photographs that will be on display.
Meenakshi, Thirumangalam
Nataraj, Bangalore
New Theatres, Trivandrum
Shanti, Hyderabad
Triveni, Bangalore
Anna Mallai, Madurai
Bharat, Chennai
Sri Bala, Trivandrum
The exhibition is being held in Nusser & Baumgart, Munich, from October 9 to November 15.
We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Character Story Emotion and Brand Association
Beats by Dre Presents: LeBron James in RE-ESTABL…: http://youtu.be/YCOgaWSfxxs
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Sunday, August 31, 2014
3 camera lessons every new photographer should learn (free cheat sheet)
If you’ve just bought your first camera, you’re
probably finding a bit of a learning curve in getting up to speed with
all of its bells and whistles. There are a number of great beginner photography tutorials out there that can help you get to grips with all that functionality.
Before you get you get started, though, there are three fundamental concepts you need to understand: how your camera’s shutter speed scale works; how focal length affects your composition; and how your aperture controls what’s sharp.
We’ve explained each of these concepts below, and we’ve also compiled everything into a handy photography cheat sheet for you to download and save!
But when you’re shooting fast-moving objects, the shutter speed takes on a whole new role. The longer the shutter is open, the further your subject will move during the exposure.
To freeze your subject, you can simply use a fast shutter speed. What many sports photographers do, though, is set a slower shutter and ‘pan’ the shot, following the subject in the viewfinder as they press the shutter. This keeps the subject sharp but blurs the background, conveying motion.
The shorter the focal length, the wider the angle of view – hence the term ‘wide-angle lenses’.
When you shoot with a wide-angle lens (such as a 10-18mm), you get more in the frame but objects look smaller.
The longer the focal length (such as 100-200mm), the narrower the angle of view. You get less in the frame, but subjects are magnified. This is what is meant by ‘telephoto’ lens.
Most lenses these days are zooms, which is convenient because they cover a range of focal lengths.
The 18-55mm lens that comes with many new cameras, for example, has a focal range of 18‑55mm, for wide-angle shots at one end of the range and modest telephoto ones at the other.
These kit lenses are a good all-rounder, but sooner or later you’ll want to expand your shooting options with extra lenses.
The size of the lens aperture also affects the depth of field in the picture. Shallow depth of field is where only your main subject is sharp, and any objects in the background or nearer to the camera are out of focus. You get this from using wide lens apertures, eg f/4.
However, you can also increase the depth of field by using a narrower lens aperture (eg f/22), which makes objects at different distances look sharper.
It’s important to understand how your camera’s autofocus system works so you can ensure it’s focusing on the right part of your scene.
But it’s also important to take aperture and depth of field into account if you want to blur backgrounds or make your shots look perfectly sharp, from the foreground into the distance.
Depth of field explained
The aperture is the main factor in dictating how much of the scene appears pin-sharp. The narrower the aperture (larger f/number) the more of the image will be in focus; the wider the aperture, the less of the image will be in focus.
Before you get you get started, though, there are three fundamental concepts you need to understand: how your camera’s shutter speed scale works; how focal length affects your composition; and how your aperture controls what’s sharp.
We’ve explained each of these concepts below, and we’ve also compiled everything into a handy photography cheat sheet for you to download and save!
Click on the infographic to see the larger version, or drag and drop to your desktop to save.
Camera Lesson No. 1: Get to know the shutter speed scale
Your shutter speed is one of the two ways of controlling the exposure (the other is the lens aperture). In normal, everyday photography, you might not have to worry too much about the shutter speed, as long as it’s fast enough to avoid camera-shake.But when you’re shooting fast-moving objects, the shutter speed takes on a whole new role. The longer the shutter is open, the further your subject will move during the exposure.
To freeze your subject, you can simply use a fast shutter speed. What many sports photographers do, though, is set a slower shutter and ‘pan’ the shot, following the subject in the viewfinder as they press the shutter. This keeps the subject sharp but blurs the background, conveying motion.
Camera Lesson No. 2: How focal length affects a scene
Lenses are categorised according to their ‘focal length’. This is another way of describing their angle of view.The shorter the focal length, the wider the angle of view – hence the term ‘wide-angle lenses’.
When you shoot with a wide-angle lens (such as a 10-18mm), you get more in the frame but objects look smaller.
The longer the focal length (such as 100-200mm), the narrower the angle of view. You get less in the frame, but subjects are magnified. This is what is meant by ‘telephoto’ lens.
Most lenses these days are zooms, which is convenient because they cover a range of focal lengths.
The 18-55mm lens that comes with many new cameras, for example, has a focal range of 18‑55mm, for wide-angle shots at one end of the range and modest telephoto ones at the other.
These kit lenses are a good all-rounder, but sooner or later you’ll want to expand your shooting options with extra lenses.
Camera Lesson No. 3: The relationship between focusing and aperture
The lens aperture is just one of the controls used to get the exposure right. It controls the amount of light hitting the sensor, while the shutter speed controls the length of the exposure.The size of the lens aperture also affects the depth of field in the picture. Shallow depth of field is where only your main subject is sharp, and any objects in the background or nearer to the camera are out of focus. You get this from using wide lens apertures, eg f/4.
However, you can also increase the depth of field by using a narrower lens aperture (eg f/22), which makes objects at different distances look sharper.
It’s important to understand how your camera’s autofocus system works so you can ensure it’s focusing on the right part of your scene.
But it’s also important to take aperture and depth of field into account if you want to blur backgrounds or make your shots look perfectly sharp, from the foreground into the distance.
Depth of field explained
The aperture is the main factor in dictating how much of the scene appears pin-sharp. The narrower the aperture (larger f/number) the more of the image will be in focus; the wider the aperture, the less of the image will be in focus.
RIP Bapugaru
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"Baapu manaku ledu... Maatalu ravatledu. Kantlo Neeru aagatledu. Telugu bommaki telugu raathaki telugu Cinemaki vennu virigipoindi."
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Thursday, August 07, 2014
It's Thursday, August 7th 2014. The temperature outside is 30°c, partly sunny.
Have a great day.
— Anish Kuruvilla (@anishkuruvilla) August 7, 2014
Monday, July 21, 2014
the perfect quote
The Perfect Quote to Help Cope with Life’s Fallbacks.
“As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being redirected to something better.” ~ Steve Maraboli
This is the quote of the year.Read it. Read it again.
Let it sink in.
We are never rejected. There are no mistakes. No could haves. No should haves.
Everything that happens comes along because it simply needs to.
Fallbacks are crucial parts of the puzzle.
Not getting what we want can be a huge step towards reaching a bigger dream.
So relax. Release control. Let’s learn from our mistakes and see the bigger picture.
We’re not rejected. We’re redirected.
Redirected to something better and bigger.Something marvelous.
Accepting rejection is part of embracing the uncertainty of life.
Uncertainty keeps us on our toes.
It keeps us alert and awake.
Not knowing is beautiful.
Appreciate it!
Why spend time worrying, judging, fighting, regretting?
All we have to do is believe.
~
Saturday, July 19, 2014
A reply
Dear Anish @anishkuruvilla Thank you so much for your kind words. Everyday I find I connect to others differently when we speak of grief.
— Asra Q. Nomani (@AsraNomani) July 18, 2014
Friday, July 18, 2014
Grief.
“What is grief?” I recently asked psychologist Steven Stosny,
posing the obvious question I’d avoided for so long.
“It’s an expression of love,” he told me. “When you grieve, you allow yourself to love again.”
“How do you grieve?” I asked him.
“You celebrate a person’s life by living your life fully.”
excerpt from@AsraNomani essay from
“It’s an expression of love,” he told me. “When you grieve, you allow yourself to love again.”
“How do you grieve?” I asked him.
“You celebrate a person’s life by living your life fully.”
excerpt from
This is Danny Pearl’s Final Story
http://www.washingtonian.com/projects/KSM/Wednesday, July 09, 2014
Saturday, June 14, 2014
22 Tips on Storytelling from Pixar
- You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
- You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
- Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
- Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
- Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
- What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
- Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
- Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
- When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
- Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
- Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
- Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
- Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
- Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
- If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
- What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
- No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
- You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
- Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
- Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
- You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
- What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Monday, June 09, 2014
Thursday, June 05, 2014
25 Incredible Akira Kurosawa Quotes About Filmmaking
25 Incredible Akira Kurosawa Quotes About Filmmaking
One of the most revered filmmakers in the history of cinema,
and one who helped bring international attention to Japanese filmmaking,
the distinguished Akira Kurosawa continues to influence moviemaking the world over. The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo
director would have celebrated a birthday today, and to honor his
memory, we’re revisiting some of his most compelling quotes about
filmmaking. Through Kurosawa’s words, many of which come from the
insightful Something Like An Autobiography, we get a feel for his complexity, incredible technique, passion, the poetry of his process, and profound philosophy.
“Being an artist means not having to avert one’s eyes.”
“I like unformed characters. This may be because, no matter how old I get, I am still unformed myself.”
“The characters in my films try to live honestly and make the most of the lives they’ve been given. I believe you must live honestly and develop your abilities to the full. People who do this are the real heroes.”
“Human beings share the same common problems. A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly.”
“For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.”
“There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.”
“There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work. When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film. I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.”
“With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. That is what makes a real movie. The script must be something that has the power to do this.”
“In order to write scripts, you must first study the great novels and dramas of the world. You must consider why they are great. Where does the emotion come from that you feel as you read them? What degree of passion did the author have to have, what level of meticulousness did he have to command, in order to portray the characters and events as he did? You must read thoroughly, to the point where you can grasp all these things. You must also see the great films. You must read the great screenplays and study the film theories of the great directors. If your goal is to become a film director, you must master screenwriting.”
“I‘ve forgotten who it was that said creation is memory. My own experiences and the various things I have read remain in my memory and become the basis upon which I create something new. I couldn’t do it out of nothing. For this reason, since the time I was a young man I have always kept a notebook handy when I read a book. I write down my reactions and what particularly moves me. I have stacks and stacks of these college notebooks, and when I go off to write a script, these are what I read. Somewhere they always provide me with a point of breakthrough. Even for single lines of dialogue I have taken hints from these notebooks. So what I want to say is, don’t read books while lying down in bed.”
“I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?”
“It is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.”
“Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied. That’s why they keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think, ‘Next time, I’ll make something good.’”
“A truly good movie is enjoyable too. There’s nothing complicated about it.”
“What is Cinema? The answer to this question is no easy matter. Long ago the Japanese novelist Shiga Naoya presented an essay written by his grandchild as one of the most remarkable prose pieces of his time. He had it published in a literary magazine. It was entitled ‘My Dog,’ and ran as follows: ‘My dog resembles a bear; he also resembles a badger; he also resembles a fox. . . .’ It proceeded to enumerate the dog’s special characteristics, comparing each one to yet another animal, developing into a full list of the animal kingdom. However, the essay closed with, ‘But since he’s a dog, he most resembles a dog.’ I remember bursting out laughing when I read this essay, but it makes a serious point. Cinema resembles so many other arts. If cinema has very literary characteristics, it also has theatrical qualities, a philosophical side, attributes of painting and sculpture and musical elements. But cinema is, in the final analysis, cinema.”
“A good structure for a screenplay is that of the symphony, with its three or four movements and differing tempos. Or one can use the Nob play with its three-part structure: jo (introduction), ha (destruction) and kya (haste). If you devote yourself fully to Noh and gain something good from this, it will emerge naturally in your films. The Noh is a truly unique art form that exists nowhere else in the world. I think the Kabuki, which imitates it, is a sterile flower. But in a screenplay, I think the symphonic structure is the easiest for people of today to understand.”
“I began writing scripts with two other people around 1940. Up until then I wrote alone, and found that I had no difficulties. But in writing alone there is a danger that your interpretation of another human being will suffer from one-sidedness. If you write with two other people about that human being, you get at least three different viewpoints on him, and you can discuss the points on which you disagree. Also, the director has a natural tendency to nudge the hero and the plot along into a pattern that is the easiest one for him to direct. By writing with about two other people, you can avoid this danger also.”
“Something that you should take particular notice of is the fact that the best scripts have very few explanatory passages. Adding explanation to the descriptive passages of a screenplay is the most dangerous trap you can fall into. It’s easy to explain the psychological state of a character at a particular moment, but it’s very difficult to describe it through the delicate nuances of action and dialogue. Yet it is not impossible. A great deal about this can be learned from the study of the great plays, and I believe the ‘hard-boiled’ detective novels can also be very instructive.”
“During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set. While the cameras are rolling, I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else. By doing this I sense instantly when something isn’t right. Watching something does not mean fixing your gaze on it, but being aware of it in a natural way. I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’”
“I am often accused of being too exacting with sets and properties, of having things made, just for the sake of authenticity, that will never appear on camera. Even if I don’t request this, my crew does it for me anyway. The first Japanese director to demand authentic sets and props was Mizoguchi Kenji, and the sets in his films are truly superb. I learned a great deal about filmmaking from him, and the making of sets is among the most important. The quality of the set influences the quality of the actors’ performances. If the plan of a house and the design of the rooms are done properly, the actors can move about in them naturally. If I have to tell an actor, ‘Don’t think about where this room is in relation to the rest of the house,’ that natural ease cannot be achieved. For this reason, I have the sets made exactly like the real thing. It restricts the shooting, but encourages that feeling of authenticity.”
“When I begin to consider a film project, I always have in mind a number of ideas that feel as if they would be the sort of thing I’d like to film. From among these one will suddenly germinate and begin to sprout; this will be the one I grasp and develop. I have never taken on a project offered to me by a producer or a production company. My films emerge from my own desire to say a particular thing at a particular time. The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something. What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.”
“The films an audience really enjoys are the ones that were enjoyable in the making. Yet pleasure in the work can’t be achieved unless you know you have put all of your strength into it and have done your best to make it come alive. A film made in this spirit reveals the hearts of the crew.”
“Japan does not understand very well that one of its proudest cultural achievements is in film.”
“I don’t really like talking about my films. Everything I want to say is in the film itself; for me to say anything more is, as the proverb goes, like ‘drawing legs on a picture of a snake.’ But from time to time an idea I thought I had conveyed in the film does not seem to have been generally understood. On these occasions I do feel an urge to talk about my work. Nevertheless, I try not to. If what I have said in my film is true, someone will understand.”
“I am a maker of films; films are my true medium. I think that to learn what became of me after Rashomon the most reasonable procedure would be to look for me in the characters in the films I made after Rashomon. Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did.”
“Being an artist means not having to avert one’s eyes.”
“I like unformed characters. This may be because, no matter how old I get, I am still unformed myself.”
“The characters in my films try to live honestly and make the most of the lives they’ve been given. I believe you must live honestly and develop your abilities to the full. People who do this are the real heroes.”
“Human beings share the same common problems. A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly.”
“For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.”
“There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.”
“There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work. When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film. I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.”
“With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. That is what makes a real movie. The script must be something that has the power to do this.”
“In order to write scripts, you must first study the great novels and dramas of the world. You must consider why they are great. Where does the emotion come from that you feel as you read them? What degree of passion did the author have to have, what level of meticulousness did he have to command, in order to portray the characters and events as he did? You must read thoroughly, to the point where you can grasp all these things. You must also see the great films. You must read the great screenplays and study the film theories of the great directors. If your goal is to become a film director, you must master screenwriting.”
“I‘ve forgotten who it was that said creation is memory. My own experiences and the various things I have read remain in my memory and become the basis upon which I create something new. I couldn’t do it out of nothing. For this reason, since the time I was a young man I have always kept a notebook handy when I read a book. I write down my reactions and what particularly moves me. I have stacks and stacks of these college notebooks, and when I go off to write a script, these are what I read. Somewhere they always provide me with a point of breakthrough. Even for single lines of dialogue I have taken hints from these notebooks. So what I want to say is, don’t read books while lying down in bed.”
“I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?”
“It is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.”
“Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied. That’s why they keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think, ‘Next time, I’ll make something good.’”
“A truly good movie is enjoyable too. There’s nothing complicated about it.”
“What is Cinema? The answer to this question is no easy matter. Long ago the Japanese novelist Shiga Naoya presented an essay written by his grandchild as one of the most remarkable prose pieces of his time. He had it published in a literary magazine. It was entitled ‘My Dog,’ and ran as follows: ‘My dog resembles a bear; he also resembles a badger; he also resembles a fox. . . .’ It proceeded to enumerate the dog’s special characteristics, comparing each one to yet another animal, developing into a full list of the animal kingdom. However, the essay closed with, ‘But since he’s a dog, he most resembles a dog.’ I remember bursting out laughing when I read this essay, but it makes a serious point. Cinema resembles so many other arts. If cinema has very literary characteristics, it also has theatrical qualities, a philosophical side, attributes of painting and sculpture and musical elements. But cinema is, in the final analysis, cinema.”
“A good structure for a screenplay is that of the symphony, with its three or four movements and differing tempos. Or one can use the Nob play with its three-part structure: jo (introduction), ha (destruction) and kya (haste). If you devote yourself fully to Noh and gain something good from this, it will emerge naturally in your films. The Noh is a truly unique art form that exists nowhere else in the world. I think the Kabuki, which imitates it, is a sterile flower. But in a screenplay, I think the symphonic structure is the easiest for people of today to understand.”
“I began writing scripts with two other people around 1940. Up until then I wrote alone, and found that I had no difficulties. But in writing alone there is a danger that your interpretation of another human being will suffer from one-sidedness. If you write with two other people about that human being, you get at least three different viewpoints on him, and you can discuss the points on which you disagree. Also, the director has a natural tendency to nudge the hero and the plot along into a pattern that is the easiest one for him to direct. By writing with about two other people, you can avoid this danger also.”
“Something that you should take particular notice of is the fact that the best scripts have very few explanatory passages. Adding explanation to the descriptive passages of a screenplay is the most dangerous trap you can fall into. It’s easy to explain the psychological state of a character at a particular moment, but it’s very difficult to describe it through the delicate nuances of action and dialogue. Yet it is not impossible. A great deal about this can be learned from the study of the great plays, and I believe the ‘hard-boiled’ detective novels can also be very instructive.”
“During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set. While the cameras are rolling, I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else. By doing this I sense instantly when something isn’t right. Watching something does not mean fixing your gaze on it, but being aware of it in a natural way. I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’”
“I am often accused of being too exacting with sets and properties, of having things made, just for the sake of authenticity, that will never appear on camera. Even if I don’t request this, my crew does it for me anyway. The first Japanese director to demand authentic sets and props was Mizoguchi Kenji, and the sets in his films are truly superb. I learned a great deal about filmmaking from him, and the making of sets is among the most important. The quality of the set influences the quality of the actors’ performances. If the plan of a house and the design of the rooms are done properly, the actors can move about in them naturally. If I have to tell an actor, ‘Don’t think about where this room is in relation to the rest of the house,’ that natural ease cannot be achieved. For this reason, I have the sets made exactly like the real thing. It restricts the shooting, but encourages that feeling of authenticity.”
“When I begin to consider a film project, I always have in mind a number of ideas that feel as if they would be the sort of thing I’d like to film. From among these one will suddenly germinate and begin to sprout; this will be the one I grasp and develop. I have never taken on a project offered to me by a producer or a production company. My films emerge from my own desire to say a particular thing at a particular time. The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something. What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.”
“The films an audience really enjoys are the ones that were enjoyable in the making. Yet pleasure in the work can’t be achieved unless you know you have put all of your strength into it and have done your best to make it come alive. A film made in this spirit reveals the hearts of the crew.”
“Japan does not understand very well that one of its proudest cultural achievements is in film.”
“I don’t really like talking about my films. Everything I want to say is in the film itself; for me to say anything more is, as the proverb goes, like ‘drawing legs on a picture of a snake.’ But from time to time an idea I thought I had conveyed in the film does not seem to have been generally understood. On these occasions I do feel an urge to talk about my work. Nevertheless, I try not to. If what I have said in my film is true, someone will understand.”
“I am a maker of films; films are my true medium. I think that to learn what became of me after Rashomon the most reasonable procedure would be to look for me in the characters in the films I made after Rashomon. Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did.”
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