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" I love being around great artists, and I've been around a few of them. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Love
Great
Few
Related Quotes:
" Ballet dancers really know how to enter a room. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
How
Room
Know
" Scorsese has very defined ideas about how to shoot a scene, and he's an editor himself - we cut together. It means he's constantly thinking about my problems while he's filming. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Together
Problems
Ideas
" I started in documentaries, and that was a great help to me with improvisation, because with documentaries, you're handed a big lump of footage, and you have to shape it and make it into a story - which I love doing. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Great
You
Story
" It's wonderful to work on footage by someone who understands how to get it to cut right, which a lot of directors don't. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Someone
Who
Right
" When you're in a movie with an audience, you can feel where a film is dragging. People start to move. They fidget. You need that perspective. To give it a cold eye. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Perspective
Start
You
" In 'Silence,' there was no improvisation at all; really, you're dealing with a script and a 17th century way of speaking. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Really
Improvisation
Silence
" That's the great thing about filmmaking: Things happen you don't know are going to happen at the end. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
End
Know
Great
" My family goes way back in New York. So I am a New Yorker; I feel like a New Yorker. It's in my bones. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
New York
Way
Family
" You have to have a great director to make a great movie. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
You
Make
Director
" I knew nothing about editing when I met Mr. Scorsese... Through a series of weird events, I ended up at New York University, and there was Martin Scorsese, and he had some troubles with a film I was able to fix. That's the only reason I became a filmmaker. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
New York
Weird
Reason
" Editing is really like plumbing a good deal of the time. You put two things together, and a current runs through it. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Time
Editing
Good
" It's hard for people to understand editing, I think. It's absolutely like sculpture. You get a big lump of clay, and you have to form it - this raw, unedited, very long footage. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
You
Understand
Long
" From the moment I met Martin Scorsese in 1962, he educated me about the films that had taught him so much about filmmaking. He had been deeply affected, even as a child, by great films that stretched his mind and struck into his heart, and he was eager to share them with friends and people who worked with him or with actors who were in his films. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Heart
Me
Moment
" Film, if properly cared for, will last almost 100 years, but digital will not. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Digital
Almost
Film
" I hope films will be somehow preserved and seen by as many people as possible in the future. There are endless treasures for audiences to discover, if only we can keep them from disappearing. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Possible
Will
Future
" In certain fight scenes in 'Raging Bull' - for example, the shorter ones - I literally just took the head and tail of the shot and put it together, and it all worked beautifully. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Head
Bull
Example
" If I hadn't met Scorsese, I would never have become a filmmaker. He has taught me everything I know about editing and has given me the best job in the world. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Me
Know
Best
" Whenever I can, I like to go to Cotswolds, in England, where my husband had a cottage. I spend my time reading his diaries, which I would like to publish. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Reading
Go
Husband
" With digital editing, I now can make many, many versions of a scene. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Make
Scene
Now
" The difference between a film that ends up three hours and a film that is envisioned as three hours is that it's written that way. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Film
Hours
Three
" I don't think you can be a great director without knowing a lot about editing. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Great
Knowing
Lot
" Throwing things out is one of the most difficult and important things you ever have to do. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Difficult
Most
Things
" In the very beginning, women were editors because they were the people in the lab rolling the film before there was editing. Then when people like D. W. Griffith began editing, they needed the women from the lab to come and splice the film together. Cecil B. DeMille's editor was a woman. Then, when it became a more lucrative job, men moved into it. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Woman
Job
Men
" One day, I read an extremely vague ad looking for someone interested in working in film. Seeing as I loved watching films, I replied, and I found myself working for this guy who did his own personal editing of scenes from Antonioni and Fellini films. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Myself
Looking
Loved
" We do documentaries on the history of cinema in between our feature films. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Documentaries
History
Our
" I just happened to see an ad saying 'Willing to train an assistant editor,' and I learned enough from that to go to NYU for just one summer course. That's all that I could afford. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Summer
Enough
Go
" We don't worry about continuity because when we're doing so many improvs, it's better to get the laugh. It's better to get the great lines even if they're in the wrong part of the room. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Laugh
Doing
Better
" There's a great deal of mystery in film editing, and that's because you're not supposed to see a lot of it. You're supposed to feel that a film has pace and rhythm and drama, but you're not necessarily supposed to be worried about how that was accomplished. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
See
You
Mystery
" Even though my parents are American, I spent my whole childhood and adolescence abroad. "
Thelma Schoonmaker
American
Abroad
Parents
" I know a lot of editors who are very bitter about the directors they work with. They feel they could have done a better job, and I say to them, 'Oh really? Why don't you go try - it's not easy.' "
Thelma Schoonmaker
Know
You
Better