The slightest thing can ruin a scene, but you must be willing to take chances.
William WylerRead
I'm here to make good pictures. If I don't see it, I won't touch it. I may not make a good picture, but I still gotta believe in it!
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of vision and belief in one's work, regardless of the outcome.
William Wyler highlights the artist's commitment to their craft by stating that true creativity stems from a vision. He suggests that even if the final product may not meet expectations, one must have faith in their artistic instinct and the process of creation, reflecting a deep respect for the art form.
In practice
In a presentation about the creative process in filmmaking, I might quote Wyler to express the importance of belief in one's vision.
The slightest thing can ruin a scene, but you must be willing to take chances.
A director must push his actors to the utmost limit to get everything possible out of each scene - without being corny or sentimental or going overboard.
Everything a director does must help the story and the performances. Otherwise, it is useless.
Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn't miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.
The important thing is not the camera but the eye.
Sometimes I feel as if I am read before I write. When I write a poem about my mother, Palestinians think my mother is a symbol for Palestine. But I write as a poet, and my mother is my mother. She's not a symbol.
Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste.
I am not of the vein of actors - and I will not pretend to be one - that takes my character home with me. I don't.
If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.
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