I was so used to documentary filming, where it's one take. You can't really say, 'Make that elephant charge again!' And you talk to the camera. With movie filming, you're talking to someone else.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I stumbled into this business, I didn't train for it. I yelled 'Action!' on my first two movies before the camera was turned on.
Filming is a witnessing process. You don't try to control it, even though sometimes you wish you could because it can go really, really wrong for you.
I've done all sorts of different kinds of action. We did a thing in 'Blood Diamond,' the attack on Freetown, where I carefully staged the action but did not show the camera operators what we were going to film - so it has the feel of documentary, trying to capture something, and that gave it a whole different feel.
Within the process of filming, unexpected situations occur.
If you acknowledge that filming is an occasion where people express things they might not otherwise express, that offers a much more insightful analysis of why documentaries - even of the fly-on-the-wall variety - are powerful.
There's something scary about acting always, because basically you do all this work in a vacuum, and then suddenly there's a lot of money spent making a film, and there's suddenly a camera here, going, 'Right? What are you gonna do?'
Filming is repetition and many takes.
A lot of filmmaking is an endurance contest between you and the people you're filming. Every time that you relax, I promise you, something interesting will happen.
I kind of always think my work is unfilmable, and when I meet people who are interested in filming it, I'm always stunned.
There are times when you're working with film people when you have to say, 'If the camera were on you, what you're doing would be perfect'.