Quotes by Lenny Abrahamson - Page 2

I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Intense
Poland
Warsaw
Festival
Film Festival
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That's the way life is: meaning is always there, but there is no clearly given way of decoding it. Conventional cinema obscures this with an easy reduction of meaning to plot and schematic characters.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Cinema
Conventional
Plot
Reduction
Life Always Way
Schematic
Way Life
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I'm looking for an intensity of focus. It's a bit like tuning a guitar string. You tighten and tighten, and nothing really changes until you hit that tension, and suddenly it's there: you've got a note.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Intensity
Tension
Tuning
Note
String
Tighten
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If you're in Hollywood, with no track record, it's pretty odds-on that you can get swamped and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all; particularly with the intense commercial push that you feel there.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Intense
Overwhelmed
Sheer
Track
Track Record
Scale
Commercial
Swamped
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The thing about America - it's different everywhere, but visually, it's amazing to shoot in the desert in the New Mexico light. It's really hard to shoot in that desert and make anything look not amazing.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Desert
Mexico
New Mexico
Everywhere
Shoot
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People say that soundstage sets never quite look like reality. But actually, they can. They can be as real as you want as long as you pay attention to the kind of detail that is given for free in a real place.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Pay Attention
Detail
Real Place
Sets
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Film is so much about that intensity of focus that there always needs to be some tension and some forward motion. The novel goes into a series of lovely observations about the world, but you've got to find the story.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Focus
Lovely
Needs
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It's something I've noticed with my two children - children frequently know and don't know at the same time. They are aware of aspects of the world that are a little bit shadowy, and they choose not to engage with them.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Time World Children
Aspects
Frequently
Noticed
Shadowy
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I usually shower the night before, lay out all my clothes on the floor, so then I just fall into them, clean my teeth, stumble out the door, get into my car and go wherever it is that we're shooting. You have breakfast on set.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Breakfast
Shooting
Teeth
Floor
Lay
Shower
Stumble
Wherever
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In something like 'Frank,' which is a comedy, albeit a strange and emotional one, you can absolutely put in deleted scenes, and we did because they were just funny and great, but they weren't necessary in the overall structure.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Frank
Structure
Funny Great Comedy
Albeit
Deleted
Overall
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I always felt there was a kind of humanistic impulse in my thinking about film as well as a real interest in its formal and aesthetic properties - just this idea that it can bring you into a very intimate encounter with people.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Aesthetic
Formal
Humanistic
Impulse
Intimate
Thinking Always People
Encounter
Thinking People Always
Properties
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There's a fashion for a macho style of filmmaking. How long can your longest take be? And shooting things in one shot. For me, if you can sort of disappear and make people feel that they are there, that involves massive amounts of work.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Disappear
Filmmaking
Macho
Massive
Shooting
Work Me Long
Work Long Me
Work Long Your
Involves
Longest
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I'm fascinated by people who have to reinvent themselves. I did it a few times - I was going to be a physicist before I was passionate about philosophy - and I realized that one more change, and I'm going to start looking like a dilettante.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Fascinated
Passionate
Physicist
Change Start People
Dilettante
Realized
Reinvent
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There's so much pressure on kids to perform and to be the best they can be, and particularly with boys: boys who are the gifted ones get loaded with an awful lot of expectation and self-expectation, and that's really hard for an 18 year old.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Gifted
Loaded
Pressure
Boy
Awful Lot
Perform
Expectation
Particularly
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'Room' is a very subtly-made film, and directing awards tend to go to the flashier stuff, but it's the Director's section of the academy that make the decision, so I'm very proud they can see something in what I directed and wanted to reward it.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Awards
Directed
Reward
Section
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There was a golden era in film-making in Hollywood back in the 1970s, and although there is some great independent film-making in America, it's actually very hard to get independent films made in the United States. It's much more feasible from Europe.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Golden
Film Making
Feasible
Great America Back
Independent Films
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People who don't quite fit society, they are often kind of either under an awful lot of pressure or otherwise not acceptable to the mainstream and that tells us a lot about who we are. The people that don't fit are a great way of reflecting on all of us.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Awful
People
Who We Are
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I know that it's axiomatic in the film industry that you're not supposed to let the novelist develop their own story. Well, first of all, that's kind of up to the novelist - because they don't have to sell it. But also, I don't believe it. It's about trust.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Film Industry
Develop
Sell
First Of All
Supposed
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As a filmmaker, I've sat on the other side, and I've watched when people I know have a film, and it's doing really well, and people are talking about it in all the trades, and everybody is excited about it, and I've always thought, 'Hmm, what would that be like?'
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Hmm
Watched
People Doing Always
Trades
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Established actors will challenge you if they don't agree with the way you are taking it, and you have to argue it. But with a younger cast, they are more likely to wonder whether what they are doing is okay instead of trying to second guess the director. That helps push you.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Agree
Okay
Established
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Frank's really different from everything I've done. Maybe the one thing that's the same, and the thing that I tend to do, is that I think I can create an intimacy with the characters, like a sense of presence with the people in the film, and that's what I tried to do in 'Room' as well.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Frank
Intimacy
People Done Everything
Presence
The One Thing
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I think, as directors, they may recognize, more than the rest of the body of filmmakers, exactly what you do as a director, because I think sometimes the conception is if the camera isn't swinging around, and it's not pyrotechnic or worthily melodramatic, then the direction is uninvolved.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Conception
Exactly What
Swinging
Worthily
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Having started in sciences, I then turned around and said, 'Oh, I don't want to do sciences. I want to do philosophy.' And to their credit my parents said, 'if that's what you want to do, then go for it'. Then I got the scholarship to Stanford, which was very nice for the parents to talk to their friends about.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Credit
Scholarship
Stanford
Go For It
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As with any actor and any collaborator, it's about forming a trusting relationship. And that's not that you have to get him to trust you so you can get him to do what you want. Especially with a little kid, it's about making them feel really safe, and getting to know and not treating them as a puppet to be moved around.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Little Kid
Puppet
Collaborator
Forming
Treating
Trusting
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There should always be that leeway because if you think of your character as sort of absolutely fixed, then you just try and find actors to come and do exactly that thing, then you're not gonna be working with that actor's own set of internal impulses and who they are, so the best work is always a coming together of the actor and the character.
Lenny Abrahamson / Film Director
Character
Thinking
Together
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Lenny Abrahamson Quotes - Page 2

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