It starts with the writer-it's a familiar dictum, but somehow it keeps getting forgotten along the way. No film-maker, irrespective of his electronic bag of tricks, can ever afford to forget his commitment to the written word.
Interpretation
The essence of filmmaking is rooted in the strength of the script.
Steven Spielberg emphasizes the fundamental importance of the written word in filmmaking. Regardless of technological advancements and visual effects, a successful film must prioritize its narrative and storytelling, as they are crucial elements that can elevate the overall cinematic experience.
In practice
In a discussion on the importance of screenwriting, one could quote this to emphasize the foundational role of writing.
When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.
I just had a crazy, wild imagination all my life, and science fiction is the greatest outlet for me.
From a very young age, my parents taught me the most important lesson of my whole life: They taught me how to listen. They taught me how to listen to everybody before I made up my own mind. When you listen, you learn. You absorb like a sponge - and your life becomes so much better than when you are just trying to be listened to all the time.
I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. I wanted to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.
There are so many rumours about so many of us in the public eye. Sometimes it's too hard to deny what is not true.
I love my kids as individuals, not as a herd, and I do have a herd of children: I have seven kids.
Writing, for me, was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.
Actors in any capacity, artists of any stripe, are inspired by their curiosity, by their desire to explore all quarters of life, in light and in dark, and reflect what they find in their work. Artists instinctively want to reflect humanity, their own and each other's, in all its intermittent virtue and vitality, frailty and fallibility.
I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all people, all times.
Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.
That isn't writing at all, it's typing.
When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.
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