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" I'll always see myself as a British filmmaker, powerfully so. "
Paul Greengrass
British
See
Myself
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" It's a circus life, the movies. It's a lot of travelling, a lot of antisocial hours; there's a lot of it that's about escaping from life. "
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" All directors make films in individual ways. But the classical kind of view of filmmaking is that you have a script, and it's very linear. There's a script, then you're going to shoot the script ,and then you cut that, and then that's the end of the film. And that's never really been how I've seen it. "
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" One of the things that makes the Bourne movies so exciting, I think, is you do get to go on a journey. Generally, through the franchise, that journey is in Europe. "
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" I am interested in seeing if you can create on film pieces that feel contemporary and urgent. "
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" It's no good in a scene to have one actor lie down because the scene says it's the other actor's moment. Each actor has to believe that with extra will, the outcome of a scene can be different. An actor can win the scene if he exerts the most powerful will in that moment. "
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Lie
Moment
Powerful
" Very few people do bad things because they're bad. They generally do bad things because they think they're the right thing to do, but they're misplaced. "
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The Right Thing
Think
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" With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist's observational eye. "
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Canvas
Dramatic
" To make a film is eighteen months of your life. It's seven days a week. It's twenty hours a day. "
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Life
Day
Days
" I prize something that feels authentic. It's an undefinable thing, but I know it when I see it, and I think audiences do, too. One of the reasons why 'Bloody Sunday' and 'United 93' work is because they felt real, felt truthful. "
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Why
Think
Sunday
" My films express me, my sense of rhythm, my sense of impact, my sense of kinetic energy. I like films to move, but I like also clear storytelling and characters, and most of all, I like authentic emotion. "
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Energy
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" I spent my 20s making film after film, often in very adverse conditions. You'd fly back from somewhere - Beirut, the Falklands, South Africa - on Saturday, and you'd have 24 hours to cut your film, and it would go out on Monday night. "
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Back
Fly
Monday
" This new global economy, it's all based on the sea routes. "
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Sea
Based
New
" Studio people are bright. Empowering. They don't want to have to interfere creatively. That's their horror story, too. "
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Too
Bright
Horror
" I don't want to feel what I'm creating on film has an outcome that is preordained. I don't think of the world as a place with a divinity that shapes our end. What you try to do with film is create, as far as you possibly can, an unfolding present - a theatre in which an outcome happens and is tested. "
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Place
End
Theatre
" I don't storyboard like some. I mean, all directors are different. I plan meticulously - really meticulously. "
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Some
Mean
Different
" Tom Hanks has built his career playing ordinary men. "
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Built
Ordinary
Career
" Finding where to put the camera is probably the most important thing you have to learn when you're a young director, and it's something that's a mixture of instinct and technique. "
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Learn
You
Camera
" Whatever your style or subject matter, in the end, film-making is about searching for authenticity - that is what the audience will divine. "
Paul Greengrass
Searching
Matter
Style
" Deep down, all directors feel like frauds - because it's built into the nature of the job. You're the jack of all trades and the master of none. The cameraman knows the camera, the sound man knows the sound equipment - and you? You can't do anything: You can't do the acting, you can't dress the set, you don't record the sound or shoot the images. "
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Camera
Nature
Deep
" Acting is many things. Acting is playing lines, of course, but it's much more profound than that. Acting is truth-telling and trying to find the truth in a human situation, which will be sketched out by a screenwriter with all the skill that a screenwriter can do; but in the end, that's just the map of the journey. "
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Journey
Acting
End
" In my little imperfect way, what I'm trying to do is understand the world. As a filmmaker, you realize as you get older that each film is part of a dialogue you're having with yourself. That started when I was working in documentaries. And in a way, I've never deviated from it. "
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Trying
Understand
World
" Directing is all tied up with childhood loneliness. It's such an odd thing to end up doing. "
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Childhood
Up
" Making a film, every film, is a big gamble, large or small. The more that you do it, the more you're aware of that. "
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Gamble
More
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" Remembering is painful, it's difficult, but it can be inspiring and it can give wisdom. "
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Remembering
Wisdom
Difficult
" Some filmmakers are more eclectic than others. I'm not one of those! I'm interested in what I'm interested in, which is films about the world, about what's going on. I started in TV documentaries with 'World in Action,' and those interests feed into the films I make now. "
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More
Going
Action
" I think there's something about a character facing the huge problems and challenges of the contemporary world and meeting them with - head on with courage, allowing for darkness and mistake, but ultimately always moral. That's incredibly, incredibly inspiring, and that's honestly what I think. "
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Darkness
Mistake
Courage
" In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real. "
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Drama
Feel
Create
" Action is only really compelling when it reveals character - character revealed through action, and not action for its own sake. "
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Action
Through
Own
" I always tell young film-makers, 'Find the song that only you can sing.' It doesn't just come to you. It's trial and error and disappointment before you find, slowly but surely, the confidence to express your film-making identity. "
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Confidence
Identity
Disappointment
" What attracts me to Bourne's world is that is a real world, and I think I'm most comfortable there. But I come to a Bourne movie to have fun as a filmmaker, to strut my stuff, and that's part of the fun of franchise filmmaking. "
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Think
World
Fun