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This is the thing I have with awards: If awards would make your movie more pretty, I would really get super excited about it. But your movie's done. You get awards, you don't get awards... They don't make your movie more ugly or pretty.
Historically, there is a fight between the sound designer and the composer. You see them in the mixing room and they're always fighting because the composer wants the music to be heard and the sound designer wants the sound to be heard.
A lot of the films I like are more than fantasies - they're movies fascinated by the technology of space exploration, and they try to honor the laws of physics. I watched the Gregory Peck movie 'Marooned' over and over when I was a kid.
When you're doing a film, narrative is your most important tool, but it's a tool to create a cinematographic experience, to create those moments that are beyond narrative, that are almost an abstraction of that moment that hits your psyche.
My mom, she was, she studied chemistry. And later on she changed and majored, she changed later in her career, in her life and studied philosophy and then she did a perfect clash, connection between chemistry and philosophy and she became a witch.
I think it is something that is so important, to be very aware of the direction in which the 21st century is going with all this blind faith in democracy. And by the way, I am not against democracy - I am against the blind faith that is being put in democracy.
It's a cliche, but Americans are puritanical. In their movies, they are scared of sex, but they overindulge in violence. I could have cut a G-rated version of 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' that would have pleased the American ratings board, but it would have been five minutes long.
The most important thematics in humanity I think that are completely universal and completely relatable from one person to the other. As long as, one more time going to back to the thematic, as long as you're truthful to that thematic, you can trust that that is going to transcend.
When you strip hope from people, it leaves a void, and that void needs to be filled. And very likely, that void is going to be filled by an ideology... Hope and faith are so connected. Now, when ideology connects with faith, the ideology becomes an item of faith, not a point of discussion.
You can write a whole fiction, and you're talking to people who have gone through that, in real life. But the truth of it is that when you're talking to those people, you don't care about your movie anymore. You just want to hear about what they have gone through. You want all of the details. It's amazing.
It's seldom that you find great moments in television. Usually you remember - in 'Breaking Bad' or any of these other great shows - you remember situations or characters. Not moments. But I have to say, I can make the same argument for mainstream movies, which have bad narratives and also no memorable moments.
Most people just half-watch TV. They watch TV while they are doing many other things in the environment of their home. So, what they are doing goes through their ears as much as through their eyes. In television, the narrative and characters are in the foreground of everything, because you are watching TV as you do other stuff.
In 'Gravity,' nearly everything is a metaphor for the main character. The way I tend to approach a film is that character and background are equally important; one informs the other. Here, Sandra Bullock is caught between Earth and the void of the universe, just floating there in between. We use the debris as a metaphor for adversity.
I have my set rigged with the biggest sound system possible and have a mini jack for my iPod attached to my director's chair. I find playing music is a very direct way to communicate with actors and the crew, especially those crew members who are on the periphery of the set. I like dancing on set too, it's a good way to release tension.
I love that process in which there is no safety net. Then the actor also can allow mistakes, because there's no such a thing as a mistake. You're working with good actors, that thing that starts as a mistake becomes actually the life of what is going to follow in the scene. I find that it is fantastic, and for me it is easier than for the actors.
Wow, I wish I could have done something like that.” That’s the thing, with other filmmakers, if I like them I just feel admiration. And yes, I usually say, “I wish I could have been part of that creative process,” because the films I admire like that are so specific that I know the creative process is also so specific, it’s nothing you could just imitate.
A budget is not an issue. I mean a budget is used if you need more weeks or more time or more elements, but the creative process is exactly the same. In some instances you become more of a boss when you are doing a small movie. So that is not so relevant. The only thing is that the bigger a movie is in terms of budget, is that there are more people giving opinions.
I've been very lucky in that the studios really respect me and they give me all my creative freedom. But nevertheless, they are inputs, they have opinions. It's the same thing for me as if you're in a shower and you're coming up with a tune, with a melody, but there are 70 people trying to sing their own melody at the same time. So you have to focus and concentrate, and not lose the track of your melody.
I'm very aware that the future of any film is not necessarily the theatrical experience, it's the home video experience because that is the one that is going to be presented for years to come. So you want to make sure that you push your movie, but you're talking about a movie that you finished months ago. And your head is trying to move into new grounds and you're still pushing for the other one. That's the tough element of it.