Ridley Scott
I'm fundamentally a positive person. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing some of the insane movies that I do.Collection: Positive
For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.Collection: Space
A hit for me is if I enjoy the movie, if I personally enjoy the movie.Collection: Movies
One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven't done one for many, many years, is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar, and the planets are similar.Collection: Movies
In science fiction, we're always searching for new frontiers. We're drawn to the unknown.Collection: Science
Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?Collection: Life
If you ever have a kid who doesn't know what to do, stick him in art school. It's amazing what evolves.Collection: Amazing
The word 'religion' is only a label. What lies behind that, the most important thing of all, is the word 'faith'. You either have faith, or you don't have faith, or you have degrees of faith - and if you have degrees of faith, then you become agnostic. You're kind of in-between, or you're on the fence.Collection: Religion
Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict.Collection: Politics
I was always amazed about how much I could finally squeeze into a thirty second commercial.Collection: Amazing
The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.Collection: Movies
I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there's got to be a captain.
Far from being dead, physical media has years of life left and must be preserved because there is no better alternative.
How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant?
In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.
I'm used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo.
The great film editor is not a cutter, he's a storyteller, right?
Everyone is tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshiping the same god.
Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.
From time to time, there are people in the film industry who appear on the horizon with a unique vision. South African director Neill Blomkamp is one of those rare people.
Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.
When you're in the editing room, the dangerous thing is that it becomes like telling a joke again and again and again. Eventually, the joke starts to not be funny. So you have to be careful that you're not throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Stanley Kubrick's '2001' was the door that opened up the possibility of science fiction for me. Everything else up to then was fine, but didn't quite work for me.
Because I was a kid from north of England, the only films I had access to was not alternative cinema, which in those days would be foreign cinema; I would be looking at all the Hollywood movies that arrived at my High Street.
The U.K. has to keep investing in new technology, skills, and infrastructure to keep pace with international competition.
You just don't know when you get all the paint across the canvas how it will turn out. When you step back after you've finished, you say, 'This one is not so good. This one is good.'
People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at.
That's part of the policy: To keep switching gears.
I like Wadi Rum - it's the best view I've ever seen of what could be Mars.
In film, it's very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
They say, 'TV is not a captive audience,' but it definitely is. You can easily switch off the bloody television.
When you think about it, 'Avatar' is almost completely an animated movie.
If you go back and look, a completely underrated film is 'Quest for Fire.' That was one of the most genius, simplistic but incredibly sophisticated notion of what it was. The evolution of that was just fantastic.
History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.
Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape.
The 3D world allows you to engage even more with a film because you're somehow drawn into the landscape or the universe of that scene. Even when it's two people talking at a table, you feel like you're a third party.
I would make a film with a political point of view if I agreed with it, and even, perhaps, if I didn't.
I always shoot my movies with score as certainly part of the dialogue. Music is dialogue. People don't think about it that way, but music is actually dialogue. And sometimes music is the final, finished, additional dialogue. Music can be one of the final characters in the film.
Good FBI officers are not noticeable. You would never look at them.
I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It's a great movie.
I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.
Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.
MPC, Moving Picture Company, they're really excellent, they did the majority of the effects.
I do a pretty good job at casting actually.
If I have to, I'll go and direct theater and talk till the cows come home.
And anyway, it's only movies. to stop me I think they'll ahve to shoot me in the head.
And I maintain good relationships with all the studios so I've never been bullied into any cut, frankly.
What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be.
Digital is a different world because you are sitting at home and a hi tech piece of equipment today is within reach of most people, so they are watching a pretty hi tech version of whatever you've done.
But Gladiator is one of my favourite adventures because I really loved going into the world. I loved creating the world to the degree where you could almost smell it.