Lynne Ramsay
We Need To Talk About Kevin,' as an adaptation, was pretty major. It's a long book, and it's in letters, so it was a real editing experience to boil that down and make it cinematic. I learned a lot doing that film.Collection: Experience
Getting finance together can take a while.Collection: Finance
To me, most filmmaking is a kind of visualization of how people are. The dark, the light, the absurdity of life, all the crazy things, you know? So all of the characters that I've made have been really close to my heart. I guess what I'm interested in is just visualizing a really three-dimensional picture of a person.
There's something called toxic stress, which is repeated exposure to trauma. I was fascinated by how it affects the brain and the development of a person.
I was at film school when I made 'Small Debts' and I was a cinematographer, so I didn't actually study to be a director.
Cinema is a great medium for creating a dream world and entering into it.
Films I've really liked are when you've walked out and you're still in that movie for a while. That's virtual reality for me, to go into a theatre, especially with the use of sound - a subconscious thing that's underestimated. I remember seeing 'Blue Velvet' when I was 15, and half the audience walking out, but I thought my life had changed.
Kevin' is a psychological horror film. It uses genre elements, so hopefully it's exciting to watch.
Morvern Callar's' a really weird film, in a sense, where I was trying to experiment with taking things in a different direction, and it kind of half works and it half doesn't. And I kind of felt with that film that perhaps I should have pushed it more into the realms of black comedy slightly.
Ultimately, you're happiest in yourself when you make your best work.
They thought I was deaf when I was a kid because I was always totally off in my own little world.
I remember with 'Ratcatcher,' in the script it was beautiful blue skies and sunny every day, but it rained constantly. You have to go with what the film is going to be.
Gasman' was something I wrote on a beer mat in a pub.
There's something fascinating about record collector minds, hoards of quotes shared and dealt like cards, lines traded, images bought.
Whatever we take from a film - personal, public, private, subconscious - a list can only contain moments that are often a key to the recognition of something more complex.
I find it difficult to write with reference to the most memorable moments in film, when for me the best moments in films are truly irreducible.
When I walk into a cinema, I want to leave with an experience unrepeatable, unquotable and indescribable.
It interests me when I hear people quoting great thinkers, because it's like, OK, but does that make you any brighter?
I'd get people asking me about my terrible, poor childhood which, in fact, was very normal, and I'd think, would you be as interested in me if I'd grown up in Surrey? And it surprised me how much I resented that.
To be honest, I was on the verge of thinking I didn't even want to be a film-maker, just because making 'Ratcatcher' had been so tough. Afterwards, I was just ill. Knackered.
I can't lose sleep over people who need every last thing spelled out for them.
I think you can say so much about a character in lots of subtle ways.
At the time I left film school there wasn't a lot of hope for young film-makers. It was a calling card of film school to be quite slick and commercial, which might lead to getting some stuff on telly.
I've found that film-making's not just a job, it becomes part of your whole life.
I was at the National Film School and was a cinematographer there. I got quite a lot of experience on documentary film-making and with directors who were interesting - maybe they weren't using scripts or were using non-actors.
I love to see great dialogue in the cinema but I hate to see 'Film TV.'
When I go to the cinema, I want to have a cinematic experience. Some people ignore the sound and you end up seeing something you might see on television and it doesn't explore the form.
With dialogue, people say a lot of things they don't mean. I like dialogue when it's used in a way when the body language says the complete opposite. But I love great dialogue... I think expositional dialogue is quite crass and not like real life.
I don't want to become a director for hire.
I think 'Ratcatcher' broke even as a film, but it got a good critical response. I think that people knew that it wasn't going to be a conventional piece of work, but they were still willing to invest in it. With this material you have to be quite courageous.
Quite often you get a lot of films with lots of story but no characterisation.
I don't make films for everybody; if I did that it would be blandness beyond belief.
I don't need to own one but I like to look at Diane Arbus's pictures and anything by Jackson Pollock.
I don't really watch TV; YouTube is far more entertaining. But I have tuned in to 'X Factor' - I like trash and nature programmes.
My mother told me to stay away from boys, but that didn't work out.
It's funny - sometimes when you approach people they get freaked out but occasionally you'll find a gem who's unselfconscious in front of the camera.
My brother gave my mother a lot of trouble.
I have twins and luckily when I first looked at them I felt, I am really into you. I am going to find it easy to love you. But there are mothers out there who do not make that connection. It is a taboo subject but it is not exotic. It is a nightmare.
You have to keep going or this industry will roll over you and leave you for dead.
If you feel you have made a great piece of work, which the script for 'The Lovely Bones' was, and that it suddenly means nothing, it's like being in the land of the lost. You don't know what's good or bad and what anything means.
Well, the film industry is completely sexist and completely class-biased. It's not something I get on the ground level, it's more from financiers and producers and distributors. It's a way of dealing with you that is essentially patronising: I know better than you.
On a film shoot, a crew will know instantly when they are dealing with someone who knows the technical stuff and they respond accordingly. It's often about getting their respect from the off.
Where I find things tough is when things are hidden, and people don't say what they mean.
It was quite a macho world I grew up in, but it was always cheeky and funny, and the women were the ones in the background that were really in control.
You know, I grew up in a place where people appreciate it when you're very direct.
Straight talking and going on your instincts was important when I grew up. And being funny.
Every director has a labour-of-love project.
Writing's so hard.
You know when people ask sometimes what are you doing, and you say just something to them.
I'm attracted to challenging subject matter.