One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.
We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects. You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.
With the work that I do as a director, I've got dialogue, camera movement, and character blocking to help create a tone to the piece. In photography, those elements are somewhat void so that tone becomes a bit more subtle but still equally important.
What you can do with visual effects is enhance the look of the character, but the actual integrity of the emotional performance and the way the character's facial expressions work, that is what is going to be created on the day with other actors and ...
I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
I don't know what it is, exactly, but there's a negative drag on film sets after the second week or so, a mutinous vibe because the infinite capacities of the directors and everybody else become quite finite and everybody's under the gun and it becom...
As a director, your work is finished only when it's on the screen. But I will always be an actor who occasionally directs. And no, I have no interest in directing myself. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on both jobs at once.
I give everything to my work, and I like complex roles, characters that aren't obvious. I've been very lucky so far, and I'm dreaming of working with directors like Jane Campion, Susanne Bier and the Dardennes. But the gods will decide.
I don't really care where I work, actually, because you know making a movie is like living in movie world. There's such a secluded world, and the director is the king ruling the country, and everybody's building this little town to speak in symbolism...
A lot of directors keep writers away because the writers know the script better than anybody, obviously they do, and they have certain intents. But a lot of people would be surprised to know that writers are pretty flexible when it comes to their wor...
The writer must be a participant in the scene... like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.
I watched a couple of really bad directors work, and I saw how they completely botched it up and missed the visual opportunities of the scene when we had put things in front of them as opportunities. Set pieces, props and so on.
My junior year, I was in a play at school and five days before opening night, I still didn't know my lines. Opening night was a disaster. I was so embarrassed. The director made me work backstage for the rest of the performance.
A New York casting director, who shall remain nameless, once said to me, 'Marcia, you have what I call the flaring-nostril look, and until you get something done about it, you will never, ever work.'
I had some things I had to fix. It took me 14 years to do it. But it was never really fun back in the day to work with directors who were a lot older and were like authoritarian and talking to you like that.
I don't want to know movie directors. I don't want to be close to them. I don't want to interfere with their work. I don't want them to interfere with mine.
I've acted with all types, I've directed all types. What you want to understand, as a director, is what actors have to offer. They'll get at it however they get at it. If you can understand that, you can get your work done.
When I work, I work very hard. So I look to work with people who have that level of dedication. And I depend on that from everyone. From the director to my crews that I work with.
I mean, there are many other directors who are probably both more skilled and excited to adapt novels or work within certain genre conventions. I'd like to do that kind of work someday, but for better or worse I'm too drawn by my own material.
I think women are in much the same place in the Irish theater as they are everywhere else. Certainly, we have wonderful Irish writers, and we have quite a number of Irish women directors. But there could be more, and there should be more.
No one wants to hear from the producer. He's the guy by the pool with a cigar in his mouth and a couple of lovelies on his arm. But when you're a director, they want to hear what you have to say about everything - the war, the world.
